The Promise of Deliverance
Isaiah 8:16-9:7 ·December 1, 2024· Joel Passmore
Part of: Isaiah, Our Promised Salvation
Pastor Joel Passmore preaches on God's promise of deliverance from bondage to freedom through a Child who is a King.
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So we just finished a mini-series on Luke, Jesus' journey to the cross, seven passages that told us something about our Savior, each one. So we learned about our Savior, and now for Advent, you can tell it's Advent because we have these awesome decorations out and everything. We learned about our Savior, and now for Advent, we're going to learn about and look at salvation itself. What is the nature of salvation? What can we learn about it from Scripture?
For that, we're going to turn to four passages from Isaiah this week and then the next three weeks, four different texts from Isaiah. Through Isaiah, God gave a lot of vivid pictures about Messianic promises, the future that He was going to bring about through the Messiah. He used a lot of different images, a lot of different metaphors and descriptors to tell us about the Messiah and the future that the Messiah is going to bring. Now, Advent means arrival.
And the season of Advent is a season of waiting, of expectation, of preparation. But not just for the preparation for celebrating what has already happened, Jesus' first coming, His birth, but it's also preparation for being expectant of His return. So Advent is really about Jesus' first and second comings, the first one we celebrate having happened and the second one we look forward to. It's really about both of those things. And so that's another reason why I chose these passages from Isaiah for Advent.
Because these prophecies that we're going to read about, they begin their fulfillment at Jesus' first coming, but they find their completion at His second coming. And you can find both of those things in all of them. So these prophecies begin being fulfilled at Jesus' first coming and they will be ultimately fulfilled at His second. So they tie in well for Advent. Four weeks, four passages. There's common elements in each one of these passages. At some points you may be like, didn't we read this last week?
There's some similarities there. But each passage has a distinct emphasis. We're going to look at Isaiah 9, 11, 42, and 61. Each one of these has a distinct emphasis and together they tell us about our promised salvation. Our promised salvation. Okay, so today. If you're like me, many times we do reactive things to solve our problems. And we end up only making them worse. In third grade, there was a kid in my class bullying me. And one day he said something and I had had enough.
And so I made up my mind I was going to confront him on the playground. And recess came and I literally took matters into my own hands. I saw him from across the playground. He was on some kind of piece of playground equipment. And I marched over to him, right up to his face, and I just gave him a good hard shove. That'll show him, I thought to myself. To be honest, I hadn't really thought of my next move.
It turns out I didn't have to. Because he fell backward with his arm behind his back. And when I saw the look of pain on his face and the scream come from his mouth, I knew I had just made things a lot worse. I broke his wrist inadvertently by shoving him. He went to the hospital. I went to the principal's office. He got a cast. I got in a whole lot of trouble. At school with my parents.
I tried to be my own rescuer. I tried to be my own solution maker. I got tired of whatever was happening. Whatever he was saying. I thought, this is it. I'm going to handle things. And I made things a lot worse. It turns out being our own rescuer doesn't end all that well for us. Especially for the deep, real, spiritual problems that we face. For these problems, we have got to trust in a bigger solution. A greater redeemer. A capital R redeemer. And that's what today's passage is all about.
The great rescuer. The rescue that God brings to us. The deliverance that he brings. Turn with me in your bulletin or in your Bible to Luke. To Isaiah. I told myself I wouldn't do that. To Isaiah. We're going to start in chapter 8, actually. Isaiah 8, verse 16. And read through chapter 9, verse 7. This is God's holy word. His inspired, inerrant word. Let's pay attention to it. Let's receive it as God's speaking to us and working on us.
Bind up the testimony. Seal the teaching among my disciples. I will wait for the Lord who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. And I will hope in him. Behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me are signs and portents in Israel from the Lord of hosts who dwells on Mount Zion. And when they say to you, inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter. Should not a people inquire of their God? Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living?
To the teaching and to the testimony. If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness.
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 Napoli. 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 shone. 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 and the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping 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. On the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this. Pray with me.
Lord, we thank you for speaking long ago through your prophets. They were giving us your word. They were giving us a vision that would come true because you purposed it to. These are not idle words. They're real. They describe a reality that you are bringing about through your son. Lord, make our hearts soft, our ears open to receive this word, to put our hope, to locate our hope, our ultimate hope in you. Jesus, we pray this in your name. Here's the first element of our promised salvation.
The promise of deliverance. The promise of deliverance. Let's start with this. This promise of deliverance is from darkness to light. It's from darkness to light. This passage was written in 733 B.C., a long, long time ago. The kingdom of Israel at that point was divided. There was a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. The southern kingdom was called Israel. The southern kingdom was called Judah. At this time, Ahaz was the king of Judah. And Judah was not doing well.
They were not doing well at all. Not long earlier, Judah had been attacked on three sides. Israel and Syria had allied and were attacking from the north. The nation of Edom was invading and attacking from the east and Philistia was coming and attacking from the west. Three sides, Judah was under attack. Ahaz wanted rescue. King Ahaz wanted rescue, but he did not think of the Lord. He thought of Assyria. Assyria was the dominant superpower at that time.
The biggest and baddest nation. The regional superpower. Ahaz thinks, you know what? If Assyria fights for me, at least against Israel and Syria, it's hard to keep straight, Assyria was the superpower. Israel and Syria allied against Judah. Ahaz thinks, if Assyria can come help me against Israel and Syria, then I'm going to win. I'm going to be safe.
In Isaiah 7, the prophet comes to Ahaz and he says, Ahaz, don't do it. Don't do it. Don't ally yourself with Assyria. Don't go to them for deliverance. Trust in God. Assyria is weak. Don't trust in man's strength. Trust in God. But Ahaz refuses to listen. He makes the alliance.
Assyria's mighty army succeeds. It seems to work. They come and they push back Israel. They push back Syria. But Ahaz, CERN learns this truth. Whatever protects you owns you. Whatever you look for for protection owns you. And that's what happened. Now the nation of Judah has to serve Assyria. They are a vassal state. They are indebted to Assyria. That's the bargain that he made. They have to pay Assyria annually from their treasuries, from their harvests.
The people of Judah are used as forced labor for whatever the Assyrians want. The Assyrian army literally occupies their land. Altars to Assyrian gods start appearing all over the place on every street corner in Judah. False worship abounds. People turn to cultish practices and away from their Lord.
People stop going to God for guidance. Instead, they consult with mediums, occultists, necromancers, people who are trying to converse with evil spirits. Tell us what to do, they say. The whole nation has been swept away from the Lord because of the king's decision to trust in a foreign power instead of the Lord. Judah's alliance with Assyria has backfired in the worst way possible. Isaiah looks over Judah. This is at the end of chapter 8 that we read.
He looks over Judah and he says, Behold, I see distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. They're thrust into thick darkness. There is no dawn because of what these people are doing. It's darkness all around. Spiritually, it's like they live north of the Arctic circle in the wintertime. North of the Arctic circle of the wintertime, the sun never comes above the horizon. It never dawns. That's what Isaiah looks out and sees. Spiritual darkness. In the dark, everything seems more threatening, doesn't it?
Frightful movies are set in the dark. Sounds seem stranger in the dark. Shadows seem more menacing. Danger feels closer and bigger. Your mind starts imagining things. If there is just some light, you wouldn't go down that path in your mind, but the darkness, it tricks you. You start thinking that danger is right around the corner. You can't even move the same in dark. When it's really, really dark, what do you do? You fumble around? You ever tried to walk to the bathroom in the middle of the night?
You're like, please don't hit the door frame. And sometimes you're like this and the door frame just comes right here and hits you right in the nose. A door frame is a threat in the dark. And so is the corner of a table in the dark. a Lego on the floor. These ordinary, simple things become hazards in the dark.
This is the spiritual condition that they're in. Isaiah says they live in a land of deep darkness. That word, deep darkness, actually the whole phrase, in a land of deep darkness, that is a single word in Hebrew. And it's the same word found in Psalm 23 that's translated there, the valley of the shadow of death. That's the situation that Judah is in. This is not just a funk. This is a dangerous spiritual affliction. This is what happens when we turn away from the Lord, from His word, from Him, and we turn to other places for protection, for information, for guidance.
This passage is a warning to us. Turning away from God is like turning off the lights. Now we might not turn to necromancers and mediums to save us, though those things do exist, but we do turn to people that are other kinds of experts, doctors, financial advisors, specialists, politicians. We open up books and listen to podcasts. Sometimes we do those things absent of any kind of guidance from the Lord. We don't stop and ask, what does the Lord want me to do?
How does He want to speak to me? Those experts seem awfully convincing, awfully loud, awfully authoritative. We end up looking to those things sometimes for assurance about our safety and our future.
Does it really lead to more hope? Do I end up more hopeful at the end of that conversation? Does that hope last? Or does it fade away? Now this is where, like the people of Judah, we need to listen to the prophet of God. Because the prophet actually, starting in verse 2 of chapter 9, Isaiah has a special word from the Lord. It's a word of hope for us today. We're going to spend most of our time on this word of hope and come out of the darkness. Listen to the voice of Isaiah call us out of the darkness and into His marvelous light.
What Isaiah says, starting in verse 2 of chapter 9, it's so beautiful, he switches to poetry instead of prose. If you look in your Bible, you notice the meter start right there. It's poetry because it's so beautiful. It's so sure he puts it in past tense even though he's talking about future events. That's how confident he is in what's going to happen. He speaks of it like it's already happened. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.
On them has light shone. When you've been stumbling around in the dark and then a sudden light comes on, it's startling, isn't it? You shield your eyes, but it's also a relief. The danger flees away. That Lego on the floor, now you can see it and avoid it.
The darkness is also cold, isn't it? We feel that in the wintertime. On them has light shone. Think of the warmth that can come even on a cold day when there's no wind and the sun shines on you.
But that's just the beginning. That's just the beginning. We're brought from darkness to light and we're also delivered from bondage to freedom. The promise deliverance is multiplying. Verse 3 has rejoice, glad, and joy twice. Four words about joy. Rejoice, glad, joy, joy. Life has been miserable in Judah. Subjugated under Assyria, groping around in spiritual darkness. They would have been shocked to hear Isaiah say, you have multiplied the nation.
You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest. Harvest time was the most joyful time of year in the ancient Near East. But it hasn't been lately in Judah because most of their harvest goes straight to the Assyrians. You think taxes are bad.
Occupied by Assyria is worse. They take the good stuff and leave you the dregs. That's what it's been like for many years because those things went to the earthly deliverer that they trusted. There's not much celebration that goes on when people occupy your land. But then everything is changing. That's what Isaiah says. It's changing. The joy of the harvest is returning. They will again see and enjoy the fruits of the land. The days of hunger and lack are going away.
And they are glad when they divide the spoil. When a battle is won, you can keep all the armor, the weapons, the things that they leave behind. Those things become yours now. They're spoiled. They're glad when they divide the spoil like victors in battle. Now there's an accusation that goes around. And young people, I want you to listen to this because you're going to hear this. If you haven't already, there's an accusation that goes around that God is a cosmic buzzkill.
All he wants is to keep you from doing fun things. That following him means a boring life. That he wants to deprive you of joy. He wants to keep it from you. Billy Joel wrote a lot of great songs. I'm a fan. In one of them he sings, I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints. The sinners are much more fun. But you know, friends, I know another songwriter. His name is David. He walked with God, the living God, and he wrote this, in your presence there is fullness of joy.
In your presence, Lord, there is fullness of joy. At your right hand are pleasures forevermore. Now that's a good song. That's a song that speaks the truth. I don't know what the tune was, but boy, those words are great. And they're true. Young people, they are true. At God's right hand there are pleasures forevermore. In his presence there is fullness of joy. God isn't trying to steal your joy.
Verse 3 tells us that. He wants to give it to you in fullness. He wants you to have true and lasting joy, and the only way to have it is through him. You don't have to choose between God and joy. The truth is you can have them both or you can have neither. That's what you can take to the bank. When the world whispers in your ear, he's trying to steal your joy. He's trying to do it again. It would be so much fun if you didn't have to do this Jesus stuff.
That's a lie. And you rebuke it with the word of God and nurtured and protected by him will give to you for your entire life. And the key to that joy is freedom. Look at verse 4. That's where the freedom starts. For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder and the rod of his oppressor you have broken. You've broken these things. When Ahaz allied with Assyria it was a sellout. It was a national the kingdom of Judah got the yoke the staff and the rod and they were all held by a tyrant.
But friends God also has a yoke and a staff and a rod right? But his yoke is easy Jesus says. His rod and his staff they comfort us Psalm 23 says. He uses these tools to bless us to grow us to nurture us not to beat us to get things out of us to subjugate us he uses them to bless us to lead us beside still waters and in green pastures the question is this my friends who would you rather hold the yoke the rod and the staff would you rather than be held by a tyrant or freedom from bondage God will liberate his people from oppression from the suffering of tyranny and God himself will do it by ending war and bringing peace verse 5 says every boot of the tramping warrior and battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned war itself has done away with these things are nothing better than to make a fire and cook your food and heat your home all the battle gear from every battlefield and armory their only good now is fuel for the fire we've been in a world of war lately haven't we they're far away but they still seem close they still rattle us we long for peace don't we we listen to Isaiah's words and we want them to come true it's something that we all want whether we're religious or not this season you're probably going to hear it's happy x-mas war is over this song has a choir in it listen for it at the end of the song but Lenin was a humanist through and through so the choir doesn't sing of deliverance by God it sings of deliverance by humanity war is over if you want
it they sing war is over now if you want it it's just a choice this song preaches to you it's just a choice just make that choice people and war can be over longing for war to be done away with is a noble desire but to believe that we can end it ourselves all it does is reveal our sinful pride rejecting God and expecting peace is like telling off your boss and expecting a paycheck rejecting God and expecting peace is like telling off your boss and expecting a paycheck it doesn't happen God is the only one who brings peace people will never bring it they will never make that choice haven't the events of the past two years proved that for us once again doesn't the witness of history tell us people don't choose peace God has to come and accomplish it he has to make peace any honest look at history shows that peace on earth is for to us a child is born to us a son is given church God says I've got a gift for you a humble child this great promise is going to come to pass through the birth of a child and he is given to us not something earned but something offered this child has many names he's wonderful counselor he like the best counselor he helps you understand yourself and God he gives you a clear vision of what it means to move forward he is mighty God mighty God this child is fully divine he is human but divine he is strong enough to overcome all other forces and powers he can fulfill the hopes that are beyond our strength to fulfill he is everlasting father even the best human
fathers run out of strength and the worst ones never show up at all he is different you can always rely on him he is prince of peace he is a ruler that brings rest and wholeness and not as some lower bureaucrat not as just a mayor of some little town somewhere the government shall be upon his shoulder of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end he has all the power not some power not some influence he's got no corruption there is no inept or corruption in this government it's a government that's held by the king of kings just like judah in isaiah's time there is a deep darkness and anguish among us his prophecy of light and a freedom of deliverance it addresses the longings that we have the needs that we have we want it to be true and church we know that it's true don't we because we know something that this prophet didn't know we know the name of the promised child Jesus of Nazareth we know how this son fulfilled all of these promises he came as the light piercing into the deep darkness illuminating all around he endured the distress on he was oppressed and subjugated so that we would be free through faith in him he brought about peace by doing battle with our war he died so that his people could have eternal life friends God sees our sufferings and our afflictions even the ones like Judah that we bring upon ourselves and his heart burns with the redeeming love of a good father the promised deliverance has begun through Christ if you're here today and
you've put your trust in other things or other people God is ready to forgive you he's ready to receive your turn towards him he's ready to his return every every ounce of light of joy of freedom and peace spoken here will be fulfilled the zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this you can count on that so until then no matter what comes your way no matter how many fronts you feel assailed by and confronted by don't turn to worldly powers for your deliverance don't come up with your own solutions go to God and look to him for your deliverance look to him for rescue Charles Spurgeon said this God is wonderful in his design and excellent in his working nothing will take him by surprise he has arranged all and you have but to patiently wait and you shall sing a song of deliverance let God where we cannot trace him let us trust God where we cannot trace him Jesus is the promised light for a people in darkness to us a child is born to us a son is given thank you Lord