Sermon Tone Analysis

Isaiah 9:1-7

Christmas According to Isaiah

 

Few people are able to distinguish between Luke’s rendition or Matthew’s account of the Incarnation.

Most contemporary Christians grew to adulthood hearing a conflation of the two accounts and in their mind the two are indistinguishable.

Perhaps that is good since each account presents a different perspective of the birth of the Son of God in order to provide a complete story.

However, because we have heard these two accounts so frequently we are perhaps prone to think that only these two evangelists were aware of the coming of the Son of God.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

From the moment of the Fall of our first parents God had promised a Saviour.

Much later we are able to look back through the eyes of the Apostles and discover that the One who has been appointed to set us free from bondage to death was chosen even before the Creation of the world.

What is apparent from even a casual acquaintance with the Word of God is that Christmas has always been central to God’s plan for mankind.

The Incarnation—the revelation of God’s Son as one of us—has from eternity past been the focus of God’s plan for fallen humanity.

Christmas is essential for our salvation.

Isaiah lived in the dark days of Israel’s decline.

Though superficially the nation seemed secure, a dark rot gnawed away at the foundation of Jewish society.

Economically, the nation was prospering and people lived in ostentatious splendour.

There were, it is true, a significant number of the people who were excluded from enjoying the fruits of national affluence; but the nation generally enjoyed great wealth.

Militarily the nation seemed secure.

The armies of Israel were strong and well equipped.

The borders of the nation were secure and the throne was unthreatened.

No major wars were then being fought and those few enemies which might otherwise menace national security seemed remote and incapable of mounting a major threat.

No significant social foment stirred the populace during those days.

However, the underpinnings of Jewish society were decayed and the seeds of destruction were sown.

Family life was in disarray.

Contempt for authority was the rule of the day.

Disrespect of elderly had become a common feature of Jewish life.

Parental authority was constantly challenged.

Morality was ridiculed and unrighteousness was exalted.

Worship of the true and living God was a façade, religion having been reduced to mere rituals thoughtlessly carried out by ageing adherents to the Faith.

Society in general was characterised by a muted sense of quiet despair.

Into this environment of hopeful hopelessness, God revealed His grace by sending a message of hope.

The message pointed forward to events which were yet some seven hundred fifty years in the future.

That which Isaiah prophesied would usher in the Age of Grace.

The One to whom Isaiah pointed would complete the prophecy when He concludes His Millennial reign and at last puts down all rebellion.

Explore this study of Christmas according to Isaiah.

Reasons for Christmas [*verses one through five*] — Nevertheless is the first word in our English text.

The word, though an interpolation by the translators, is required for understanding of Isaiah’s prophecy.

We are prone to think that the chapters of the Bible are separate units, each standing alone.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

The ninth chapter is a continuation of the eighth.

Read *Isaiah 8:19-22 *with me.

/When men tell you to consult mediums and spiritists, who whisper and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?

Why consult the dead on behalf of the living?

To the law and to the testimony!

If they do not speak according to this word, they have no light of dawn.

Distressed and hungry, they will roam through the land; when they are famished, they will become enraged and, looking upward, will curse their king and their God.

Then they will look toward the earth and see only distress and darkness and fearful gloom, and they will be thrust into utter darkness/.

Isaiah’s contemporaries were embracing nature worship even as they /exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images/ [see *Romans 1: 23*].

Even then mankind had already /exchanged the truth for God for a lie/ [see *Romans 1: 25*].

The Prophet speaks of /the yoke that burdens them/, /the bar across their shoulders/, and /the rod of their oppressor/ [*Isaiah 9:4*].

Isaiah wrote of a time of enforced humility for the people, and of a time of war and conflict [*Isaiah 9:5*].

In such a time of darkness and fearful gloom, God would send a Saviour.

When the Son of God was born the world stumbled about in deep darkness.

The voice of the prophets had been silenced for at least four centuries.

Worship of God who is light had degenerated into mere routine—a burden tolerated as a necessary cultural mandate.

Even among the professed people of God were many who had adopted Greek and Roman pagan theologies as truth.

By and large the peoples of this earth had staggered into darkest sin, and ignorance of God was paraded as wisdom.

The mystery religions of Mithraism, the Magna Mater, the Dea Syria, Isis and Osiris, Dionysus and Eleusian mysteries held sway throughout most of the world, giving evidence of mankind’s continual futile search for cosmic significance.

Where the “civilised world” had not yet gained influence, pantheistic religions (such as druidism and Wicca) or polytheistic religions (such as Hinduism and animism) prevailed to enslave the darkened hearts of fearful societies.

The people of God had been humbled through repeated conquest and occupation.

Constant wars on the fringes of the Empire necessitated a continual flow of recruits to fight Rome’s battles, halting probes by the barbarians—the Celts, the Teutons, the Huns, the Vandals, the Goths and the Visigoths— to test Roman resolve.

Into that darkened and threatening environment the Son of God was born.

Not much has changed!

If I ignore the conditions during the intervening centuries between the First and the Twenty-first Centuries, conditions are comparable.

I am not fearful; I am actually optimistic to an exaggerated degree.

I am convinced that we are entering new dark ages.

As Christians, we shall be tested by increasingly powerful, irrational and unreasonable opposition.

However, the darkest hour permits those few lights which yet shine to penetrate farthest and to appear the brightest.

When evil seems to abound, those who walk with the Lord will be most readily recognised as empowered by Him.

The day of darkness will ensure the clearest distinction between righteousness and wickedness.

We are confident that where sin increases, grace increases even more [see *Romans 5:20*].

Christians need not fear the darkness since we walk in the light.

During this past week I have again reviewed contemporary society.

Spiritual wickedness grows unrestricted in western society.

As we enter the Christmas Season, stores are decked out in Holiday colours and houses are gaily festooned.

The streets are tinselled and lights are strung between the lighting standards.

Yet too often we are unable to openly acknowledge the reason for this observance in our schools or in our civic activities.

“Winter Festival” and other such innocuous names are given to the festivities in order to avoid damaging the sensitivities of any non-Christians.

Instead of being a Christian observance, the Christmas Season has been increasingly secularised to a point that it is sometimes difficult to see the Faith through the layers of materialism and overt paganism.[1]

Paganism—ancient druidic rites, worship of Gaea (Mother Earth) and growth of Wicca—has ascended to a point that the Faith is threatened in this day.

I preached from this passage ten years ago and made the observation at that time that Camosun College planned to offer a non-credit community course on Wicca and that the Province of British Columbia was considering registering a group as a religious society under the name of “Temple of the Lady Society.”

That which was in the planning stage ten years ago has come to full flower.

Temple of the Lady, located in Delta, provides handfasting services (marital unions) performed in any “Pagan tradition—Gardnerian, Asatru, Dianic, Thelemic, etc.).[2]

This society competes with the Wiccan Church of Canada[3], the Congregationalist Witchcraft Association of British Columbia[4], the Covenant of Gaia[5], the Pagan Federation of Canada[6], the Alta Pagan Community[7], the Lillith Temple Society[8], numerous covens[9] and the Aquarian Tabernacle Church of Canada[10] to provide prison ministries[11], handfastings (marriages)[12], apologia[13] and outreach throughout the Province.

There has been a steady influx of recruits to neopaganism from a number of environmentalist groups including Greenpeace, the Western Canada Wilderness Committee and the Sea Shepherd Society [see *British Columbia Report*, Nov. 5, 1990].

Were such overt paganism insufficient to give Christians pause when considering the effectiveness of our witness today, we need but read the daily news to realise that evil has infected society to a dismaying extent.

Gender wars have contaminated the Faith.

Feminists demand and compliant males agree that the Apostle to the Gentiles was misogynist and mistaken about setting women apart to the pastorate.

Feminists, funded by our taxes doled out by our current government, exclude pro-life, pro-family and Christian representation at United Nations sponsored conferences.[14]

Our compassionate neighbours permit the delivery of a baby until only the head remains undelivered, and then kill the infant by inserting scissors into the skull to macerate the brain.[15]

That same nation now debates whether babies born alive should be protected or permitted to die.[16]

Our province seeks to redefine marriage to permit same-sex marriage.[17]

In doing this they ignore not only the history of western society but ridicule the Faith of most Canadians.

Clubs which promote homosexuality are promoted in public schools and by the B.C. Teachers Federation and those few, courageous, conscientious parents who dare raise their voices in protest are silenced by such quasi-judicial entities as the B.C. Human Rights (or Wrongs) Commission.[18]

This promotion follows the American model of GLSEN which provides training in how to convert elementary school children to accept sodomites and lesbians as morally upright individuals.[19]

At least twenty-three prime time programs on television this season feature homosexual characters[20]—and this despite the silence of Christians who watch such vile sitcoms.

Conscientious individuals who dare speak out against such spiritual wickedness are increasingly seen as hate criminals.[21]

Increasingly the attitude is adopted that it is good to ridicule simple-minded Canadians who accept God as Creator and who dare believe the biblical account of His creative work.

The wisdom of this age is witnessed in the rejection of Christian morals even as the views of pagans and Hindus and Muslims and a plethora of eastern cults are embraced as the epitome of spiritual enlightenment.

In these past days I have noted that Liberal MP John Bryden introduced a bill to “take Christ out of Christmas.”[22]

Our Federal Minister of Multiculturalism, assigned to promote Canadian tolerance, is free to ridicule evangelical Christians.[23]