Isaiah chapter 9. This is a chapter that some of you may be familiar with, especially at
this time of year. We're just looking at the first two verses, the verses that you may
be familiar with or a little further down in the chapter. That might be good homework
for you this week, but we're just looking at the first couple of verses here. Isaiah
chapter 9 verse 1. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 1 and 2. Let's pray and we'll get started.
Father God, we come to you and we thank you for being good to us. We thank you for the
freedom and the privilege that we have to come into this place. I thank you for the
love that you give us. I thank you for the love that's in this building, dear Lord, that
you call us to be brothers and sisters in Christ, that you call us to come here and
meet as a group called Enterprise Baptist Church, dear Lord. We thank you that you bring
us together and let us be part of this family. I thank you for the beautiful people that
are here and the love that they have for you and for one another. I pray that you just
bless us tonight and I pray that you'd hide behind the cross so that I would preach and
teach in a way tonight that brings glory to you, that helps us to keep our focus on Jesus,
that Jesus would light our life, dear Lord, and that we would take the light that Jesus
puts in us and that we would be a light for a world that needs to see it. I ask these
things in Jesus' name. Amen. A little context to the passage we're fisting
to look at. God is fisting to bring judgment on His people. You read the Old Testament,
God's people are just like we are. They have days where they are going to be obedient to
God and follow God and serve God, and no sooner than they get started good, something in the
world comes up and they turn to some idol and they give in to their sin, and next thing
you know, they're not walking according to God's ways. God delivers them time and again,
and they fail time and again, and He delivers them time and again, and here in Isaiah He's
talking about, look, hard times are about to come for His people. But God's Word always
gives us hope. God's Word doesn't always say life's going to be easy. Sometimes there are
consequences for the decisions we make. Sometimes we find ourselves in trouble, just like God's
people did when we began to seek our own desires and our own way, and we begin to stray from
the Lord, but this verse is a good reminder to us that there is hope tonight, and maybe
some of us need hope tonight. We live in a world that is full of darkness, and that's
such a simple and beautiful illustration that we see all throughout scripture that sin is
called darkness, and light is God and God's deliverance from that darkness, and we look
around our world today and we see darkness everywhere. We see sin everywhere. We see
evil everywhere, and if we are honest, we probably see some of that even in our own
lives on occasion, maybe more than we would like to admit. Maybe there's some darkness
in our life, and anytime we begin to stray from God, who is the source of all good and
all light, we go to a dark place, and God's people in these verses are in a dark place,
and he told them in the chapter before that, look, I'm going to bring judgment on you,
but listen to what he says in Isaiah chapter 9 verse 1.
Nevertheless the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times
when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Nephtali. Now, what he's saying there
when he talks about Zebulun and Nephtali, those are two of the twelve tribes of Israel.
He's speaking of them in particular, but really this promise is for all of those tribes, for
all of God's people, and ultimately the promise that God is making here for the light that
is to come, it is to you and I too. So when he says Zebulun and Nephtali there, he's talking
about his people Israel. But in the future, he will bring honor to the way of the sea,
the land east of the Jordan and the Galilee of the nations. Now, those are three different
ways of kind of saying, hey, these are different areas where there's distress and there's trouble
and there's problems now, but things are going to get better. There's going to be a time
that there's going to be a restoration to God's people and these surrounding lands.
And listen to what he says in verse 2. The people walking in darkness have seen a great
light. A light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness. Now Isaiah is pointing
forward to something that was going to come far in the future that this audience was not
going to see. But as we continue to read through Isaiah chapter 9, what we see are words that
are leading us and pointing these people to Jesus Christ. That in the midst of the darkness,
in the midst of their sin, that even though there are about to be hard times, that if
God's people would just pay attention, that there is hope, that there is hope that we
can call out to God, that there was a hope that was going to come. And even though these
people never saw Jesus Christ come in this lifetime, there was hope. There was hope that
in the midst of their darkness, in the midst of their sin, in the midst of their trial,
that there was hope, that God would not abandon them, but there was going to be deliverance
for them. And there was a light that was going to come. In the midst of the darkness, there
was going to be light. Now that's what our world needs today more than anything. Our
world needs to see the light. There were certainly times throughout the history of our world
where the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ shined bright. There are other times where
it was dim. It seems as though the light of the gospel of Jesus Christ is getting dimmer
in this day and age. It seems as though people want to hear less about Jesus Christ. Where
years ago, maybe in this country, God would have been at the top of people's list. And
Christianity and Jesus Christ would have been at the top of the list for people in this
country. It's began to work its way down people's list, and it's probably not even in the top
ten. So nowadays, you don't see much preaching and teaching about Jesus Christ, at least
not in the way that you once did. But that's what our world needs. Our world is living
in darkness, and the longer our world continues to live and see in the darker it's going to
be. But here's the beautiful thing about darkness, is it only takes a sliver of light to break
that darkness. A sliver of light. Now, what you're going to see here in a few minutes
is you're going to see thousands of Christmas lights that are all on the front of this church
that are going to be bright and they're going to be beautiful. And when they're all lit
up, it's going to really light up the whole front of the church. But you take one of those
little bulbs by itself, it's not much to it. One little Christmas light bulb doesn't put
out much light, but even a little bit of light can shine in the darkness. And so we need
to acknowledge and we need to realize today that the only source of light in our world
is Jesus Christ. The only source of light that's going to get us through our dark times
and going to pull us out of our sin and going to help us with our struggles is Jesus Christ.
And some of us may be living in darkness today, but I want to tell you, if you would just
look to the word of God, if you would look to the son of God, you would see that there
is light in the darkness. You would see that there is hope and help for you in the midst
of your darkness. And once we experience the light of Jesus Christ, we need to continue
to be in God's word because there are times in our life that our light is not shining
as bright for the Lord as it should be. There are times in our life where we walk in obedience
to God and are excited about God and are in God's word and are living for God and we are
shining bright for the kingdom of God. But even for God's people, there are times in
our life that we don't live in the way that we should. We find ourselves slipping back
into the darkness of sin. And maybe tonight we need to repent. We need to refocus our
attention on Jesus Christ, that our light may begin to radiate within us. We want to
experience the light of Jesus Christ today, but we are called as Christians to let that
light shine into the world. We aren't the source of the light Jesus is, but we're like
a mirror. We reflect that light. We reflect that light, but that light can only be reflected
based on whether or not we're going to allow it to be reflected. And that depends on whether
or not we're going to be obedient to God. And so maybe we're like that one little Christmas
light bulb. Maybe we look around in our world today and we say, man, our world's pretty
bad. We may say, golly, my workplace is pretty bad. My school is pretty bad. My family is
pretty bad. What good can I do? My little bit of light that I make and shed on those
that I encounter, is that really going to make a difference? Well, I can assure you
it is. If you don't believe me, you go home and you get in the pitch black room and you
get you one little Christmas light bulb, unplug all the other thousand off the line, and you
plug it in with that one and guess what? You're going to find out that that one little light
bulb, it's going to make a little light in that room. Not much, but it's enough to break
the darkness. And so maybe the little bit of light that
we can bring into our world will be enough to break the darkness. Maybe the little bit
of light that you can take into your workplace this week will be enough to break the darkness.
Maybe the little bit of light that you can take when you go visit your family this holidays
will be enough to break the darkness. Let us be those who shine bright for the Lord.
Let us be those who look with hope to know that a lot of times we're not in any better
are shaped in God's people that were receiving this prophecy.
Sometimes we're pretty rotten, but there's hope in Jesus Christ.
For unto us a child has been born.
These people that receive this prophecy, for them it was something that was in the future,
but even still some look forward to it.
Some of God's people heard these words and they look forward to it.
For us it's in the past.
We've seen it come to fruition.
We have seen Jesus Christ come.
We have seen God send the light into the world, into the midst of the darkness that we live
in and so we take that light and let it be a source of hope for us so that we can reflect
that light into the world to be a source of hope for this world that is living in darkness.
Let's pray.
Father God, we come to you.
We thank you for your good word.
I pray dear Lord that you would help us to look at our own lives.
Father God, if we're yours, we should want to shine brightly for you and maybe we do.
Maybe there are times that we do.
Maybe there are some in here tonight that are doing really good and they're shining
bright.
I pray that you would protect them and encourage them and help them just to keep shining bright
with everybody they encounter.
Dear Lord, maybe there are some tonight and well, they're in the midst of distress and
sin and some darkness of their own.
Maybe it's some dark times ahead and maybe they've made some boneheaded decisions or
maybe not dear Lord.
Maybe it's just life, just the darkness of life and our journey.
Sometimes it takes us through the darkest valleys, but yea though we walk through the
valleys of the shadow of death dear Lord, we will fear no evil.
So God, I pray that tonight even if we are in a dark valley that we would know that Jesus
Christ is the source of light and he can reach into the deepest and darkest crevices of our
hearts into the worst places and the worst things about us.
And dear Lord, we pray that you would shine light on those things.
That God, that our sin and our failures would be just like a bunch of roaches dear Lord
when the light comes on.
They all scatter.
So I pray that Jesus Christ would shine into our heart dear Lord that whatever's in there
would scatter, that we would be restored.
And I pray God that we would put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ.
Maybe there are some in here tonight that's never done that.
I pray tonight that they would get out of the darkness, that they would turn to the
one that this scripture was talking about, that they would turn to Jesus Christ.
That we would rejoice that the day has come, that the light has come.
And that we would live in the light and that we would let that light reflect from us into
the world and all those we encounter.
In Jesus name I pray it.
Amen.