Lesson Focus:
Our king
comes. He is the light of the world and the
Son of David. His Kingdom, characterized by justice and righteousness, will
never fail.
Catch up on the story:
Judah, the
southern portion of what was once the unified nation of Israel, is ruled by
King Ahaz. Ahaz is a rather inept king
whose policies will not help Judah as she is confronted with pressure from the
north in Assyria. The prophet Isaiah,
for his part, seeks to encourage Ahaz to exercise radical obedience and faith
in God. Ahaz refuses and so Judah
suffers immensely. To be sure, Judah’s
fate is not all Ahaz’s fault. They have been faithless in their relation to God
for quite some time. Oracles of doom and
gloom are abundant in the chapters leading up to our current passage, but hope
is latent in Isaiah’s encouragement to Ahaz to follow God.
Critical Questions:
1.
How does this text reveal to us the
nature and character of God/What is God doing in this text?
2.
What
does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
3.
How
does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
The Text:
As
we begin to approach this text we are greeted with a theme that has run through
all of our passages this Advent. Anguish
and pain are being replaced through God’s action in our world. This particular passage has a long history of
being read by the church in a Christological way. That is, seeing that Jesus is the focal point
of the passage. Ultimately we will read
the text the same way. With that being
said, the passage takes place in a very real and concrete setting in
Judah. Understanding the passage’s
historical setting will help us see with greater clarity God’s work for his
people then and now.
Verse
one is actually verse 23 of the preceding chapter in the Hebrew text. It connects the judgment found in the later
parts of chapter 8 with the hope of chapter 9.
This is coupled with the “former time” and the “latter time” which gives
us a sense that judgment and anguish lay in the past while a new beginning is
being created for Judah. As we look at
the passage in its historical and literary context, the “former time” is the
time of the great failure and subsequent oppression by Assyria under the rule
of King Ahaz. The “latter time” then
will be the new royal leadership found in and through Hezekiah. Hezekiah will be a good king who will establish
justice and righteousness.
More
generally, however, the passage can be read to specify the time of the exile
and the postexilic time. Exile is
certainly a time of oppression and anguish while the return from exile
represents homecoming and restoration.
If we expand the reading even further, then we can understand the
“former” and “latter” times as being the times before God incarnates himself in
the person of Jesus, and after Jesus’ death and resurrection.[1]
Certainly
Judah in exile, and humanity steeped in its sins, represent times of great
darkness. We are a people who walk in
darkness, longing for the light to illuminate our way so that we might not
stumble and fall. The prophet announces
for us the words we so desperately need and want to hear: that in the midst of
this great darkness there is a light that is dawning.
Verses
2 and 3 form the first section of this passage.
The prophet announces that a great light now shines. For Judah, in her context, that light is a
new king with a new administration that will bring peace, prosperity, justice
and righteousness to God’s people. Their
leaders have failed them for so long.
The coming of this new king, who will be in the line of David, will
bring a time of great joy. This king,
for us as well as for Judah, comes now only through the power and creative
movement of God.
Verse
3 tries to describe, in images familiar to the day, the type of joy that will
be experienced. It will be the joy that
comes at the end of a harvest, when the crops have all been collected. In an agrarian culture there is always the
fear that the harvest may not come, that something will harm the crops. Without the harvest there will be no
food. Without food there is little hope
for the future. Our own Thanksgiving
holiday has roots in the celebration of the successful harvest of agricultural goods. Many of us, in contemporary culture, do not
live with this type of angst and celebration.
If we were to write this poem today, we might describe our joy at the
successful application for a well-paying job, or the joy at the completion of a
successful pregnancy. Or, perhaps we can
compare it to the completion of a college or masters degree. Any event, which if not completed
successfully significantly limits our ability to live full and productive
lives, is a candidate for producing the type of joy the prophet describes.
The
second type of joy is that of those who collect the spoils of war. For Judah, this has more to do with a victory
that frees them from an oppressive regime and allows them to once again
experience lives of plenty. When the war
is over and victory has been secured, joy breaks forth because the prospect of
life that is now not constantly endangered is over. While, in most of our lifetimes, we have not
experienced the type of warfare about which the prophet speaks, we can understand
the joy that comes from enduring any situation that threatens our life. We experience this joy when we survive
significant natural disasters, or when we defeat a sickness like cancer. What is at stake is life itself, and when we
come out on the other side, we emerge with great joy and celebration.
Judah
is joyful because her God is now fighting for her, bringing the possibility of
life where none had existed before. We
are joyful because the light of Jesus now shines upon us so that we might have
victory over sin, death and the grave.
Our very lives have been saved.
As
the passage continues with the second section (verses 3-4), the prophet
describes further reasons for joy that are grounded in and compared to God’s
acts of victory in the past. While God
is always working in new and expected ways, we can be sure that those new ways
will still produce the same saving results as in days past. Judah’s “yoke of their burden” is
broken. “Yoke” here refers not to the
yellow part of an egg, but a farming tool used to harness two beasts of burden
together to accomplish work. In Israel’s
prophetic literature, “yoke” almost always carries a negative connotation. A yoke, for Israel, is the burden of being
oppressed and ruled by anyone other than God.
But the prophet announces, however, that the oppression will cease. God will intervene and redeem Judah as he has
done on another occasion, namely the “day of Midian.”
“The
day of Midian,” refers to the great victory that God won for Israel through Gideon
in Judges 6-7. Gideon’s victory was
inexplicable apart from the mighty hand of God.
Judah’s victory will be won as it was won on that day, by God’s hand. Similarly, the victory that Jesus has won for
us from sin and death is inexplicable, too.
It makes little sense that loving self-sacrifice would defeat the forces
of death and evil. As God has worked in
the past, in surprising and unconventional ways, so God works now.
The
defeat that Judah’s enemies experience is complete and final in nature. The prophet describes what becomes of the
clothing and implements of war that belonged to Judah’s enemies. These enemies are so completely defeated that
every thing they have is used as fuel for fire.
The victory is complete and the enemy will not rise again. So also is the final victory that Jesus will
bring.
The
third and final section of the passage, verses 6-7, amounts to a royal
announcement. Until now no royal agent
has been named. The only thing known is
that God is bringing about these changes.
Now, however, we learn that a child has been born, a child who will
exercise great power and authority. For
Judah, this is a new king who will sit on David’s throne. He will have authority like David did, as one
who has been anointed by God. He will be
wise, shrewd and discerning. He will be a “wonderful counselor.”
He
will be “mighty god.” One commentator
points out that this does not point to a claim of divinity for this king. The Hebrew word translated as “God” is the
generic name for a god, el not the
more specific Yahweh or even elohim.
Rather, the title points to the power that the king will wield
especially in regards to the military.
“Everlasting father” then refers to guaranteeing power that the king
possesses. Finally, the title “prince of
peace” indicates the type of order that the king will establish. Peace, and the policies that are needed to
establish peace, is in stark contrast to the reign of Ahaz.[2]
For
us, as we apply these titles to Jesus, we begin to see the establishment of
God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven.
Jesus is and will finally and fully be our Wonderful Counselor, the one
who leads us with wisdom and discernment.
He is, indeed, our Mighty God as he is “God of God, Light of Light, very
God of very God,” as the Nicene Creed confesses. Because he is God, he is our Everlasting
Father and our Prince of Peace, the one who will establish peace for all of
eternity.
In
verse 7 we are told that the authority of this king will continually grow
resulting in endless peace. But peace is
never established without justice and righteousness. Judah’s king, and our King Jesus, will only
bring peace through a kingdom that rests on justice –right treatment of all
people, especially those without rights– and righteousness –right relatedness
between humanity and God and humanity and humanity. The king comes to establish justice and
righteousness so that peace, or more specifically God’s Shalom (peace, wholeness) might always exist.
Important Terms:
Justice & Righteousness:
It
is hard to separate these two terms as they are used in the Old Testament. Both terms are relational in nature. Often times, in North America at least, our
understanding of the biblical idea of justice is blinded by how our criminal
justice system understands the word.
Justice is served when one who has committed a crime receives the
appropriate penalty for his or her crime (retributive justice).
The
biblical understanding of justice is much broader. While it includes this sense of retributive
justice it also includes the systems that make up society. A just society, according to the bible, is
one in which all people are able to participate fully and freely in the
community. An unjust society is when
people or groups of people are excluded from participatione in the community,
creating a class of poor and outcast.
The constant concern of the prophets in the Old Testament is that Israel
act justly, allowing for the full participation of people on the economic,
social and religious margins. Systems
and polices which constantly trapped people in economic or social bondage were
to be confronted and changed (See, Jeremiah 22:3-5, Micah 6:8, Isaiah 1:12-17;
58:6. Without justice, God’s peace
cannot be known.
Righteousness
we can define as right relationships between people. Injustice or unjust societies always damage
relationships between individuals and groups of people. While one starves and the other grows fat
there can be no righteousness. For to
ignore the causes and systems of injustice which force one to starve is an
outright devaluation of the other person.
The same can be said for issues of racism and any kind of
discrimination. To withhold from another
the opportunity to participate fully and freely in a community devalues
them. When one person or group of
persons is valued more than another person or group of persons, righteousness
cannot be known.
So What?
The
light that has dawned, for Judah and for us, is the light of a king who comes
to establish God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. For Judah it was an earthly king who was
anointed by God to do God’s work on earth.
For us, this King is none other than Jesus whose birthday we soon
celebrate. If we look back over the
lessons we have learned this Advent, we fill find that we have been saved by
this King even though we have been in our sins for so very long. We find ourselves always waiting for God to
intervene. But God does intervene. When
we think there is no possible way of salvation, God works in some new way that
achieves the same saving outcomes that God’s actions always produce.
Our
salvation does not stop with merely our escape from those things that pursue us
to our destruction. No, in our salvation
we long for the hands that so lovingly crafted us to take our broken and
misshapen lives and make them beautiful again.
And as our lives are reshaped we are beckoned to cry out from the
tallest mountains the good news we have received and experienced. We are called to be evangelists. Our call as evangelists was never meant to be
only verbal. We are commissioned to
participate with God in binding up the brokenhearted and repairing the ruined
cities of people’s lives.
Certainly
the salvation and liberation that God gives is for us. But it is for us so that we might participate
with this King Jesus in what he is doing, establishing justice and
righteousness so that peace might prevail.
Our faith is for us, but it is for us so that it might be put to work
for others. As we celebrate the birth of
this King Jesus, we do so by working through the power of God’s Holy Spirit to
establish justice and righteousness in our lives, families, church, towns,
countries and world.
Jurgen
Moltmann, a contemporary theologian, believes that if we want to bring
righteousness to the world we must first start from our experience of God’s
righteousness.[3]
This Advent, and hopefully every Advent, as we move toward King Jesus’
birth, we have experienced in our own lives God’s justice and
righteousness. May our experience of
God’s righteousness and justice in our own lives compel us out to proclaim
Christ’s birth by working to establish righteousness and justice here and now.
Critical Discussion Questions:
1.
How does this text reveal to us the
nature and character of God/What is God doing in this text?
a.
We are shown the nature and
character of God in Jesus Christ as we read verses 6 and 7. All authority rests on Jesus’ shoulders; he
is a wise and shrewd leader. He is our
God forever and he will provide peace through establishing justice and
righteousness.
b.
God’s peace and wholeness will not
come through violence and war, but through the justice and righteousness that
entails judgment and mercy, holiness and forgiveness, faithful love and
freedom.
2.
What
does holiness/salvation look like in this text?
a.
Salvation
is always God’s initiative. It is God’s
movement toward us, offering us light to replace our darkness. It is God’s power to undo the deathly
situation we put ourselves into, delivering us from all that enslaves and
oppresses us.
b.
Our
response to this salvation is our joyful sanctification, our being set
apart. We respond, in joy, by working
for peace and by seeking to do justice and righteousness in our world here and
now.
3.
How
does an encounter with this story shape who we are and who we should become?
a.
Our
first response should be that of joyfully proclaiming Jesus as King. This joy is the joy that comes at the end of
the harvest, or the successful application for a job. Or the joy that comes with the pronouncement
that one has defeated a life threatening illness.
b.
Our
second response is to seek peace through justice and righteousness. We must find ways, in our current contexts,
to right the wrongs of injustice and to establish right relationships between
ourselves and those around us.
Specific Discussion Questions:
Read the text
aloud. Then, read the text to yourself quietly.
Read it slowly, as if you were very unfamiliar with the story.
1.
The
text talks about “former times” of darkness and gloom, and “latter times” where
darkness and gloom are no longer.
Describe a time in your life that was filled with darkness and
gloom. Describe a time in your life when
you emerged from the darkness and gloom into the light. What feelings were associated with that
movement?
2.
Who
are the people who have “walked in darkness” and what is the light that now
shines for them?
3.
The
prophet describes the joy the people have in this new light as the joy at the
end of a harvest and at the collection of plunder after a war. What similar life situations might produce
those types of joy in us today?
4.
In
verse 4 the prophet describes the “yoke of their burden.” What is that yoke? How is God going to deal with that yoke? (For more context on the day of Midian, read
Judges 6-7)
5.
Who
is the child that is born in verse 6 for Judah in its social and political
context? Who is the child for us
today?
6.
How
have you experienced Christ as “Wonderful Counselor,” “Mighty God,”
“Everlasting Father,” or “Prince of Peace?”
7.
What
does justice mean? What does
righteousness mean? How might they be
related to the peace God intends for creation?
What might is look like for us to seek to establish justice and
righteousness?
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