Dr. Rodney Plunket

Isaiah 9:1-7

Many Christians think that there are only five books in the Old Testament (OT) that are loaded with Hebrew poetry––Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Song of Solomon. We even call these books the Books of Poetry. And, indeed, they are loaded with poetry. But many other OT books also contain lots of poetry. And this Sunday and the next I want us to look at two examples of poetry in the Book of Isaiah. There are many, many examples of Hebrew poetry in Isaiah; and many of those poetic passages remind me of the psalms. In fact, the two poetic sections that we will be studying are from a group that I refer to as Isaiah’s psalms.

The Isaiah psalm which we will be studying this morning you have already heard and participated in reading. It is Isa 9:2-7, the passage that served as our Scripture reading. To begin our study of that psalm I want us first to look at a passage in the New Testament (NT). So please open your Bible to Matthew (Matt) 4:12-16.

Before we read that passage, let me tell you that it follows immediately after the report of Jesus’ baptism by John the Baptist and Jesus’ temptation by the Devil in the desert. Let me also tell you that Matt 4:12-16 is Matthew’s description of the way Jesus began His ministry. Now please follow along as I read Matt 4:12-16.

When Jesus heard that John had been put in prison, he returned to Galilee. Leaving Nazareth, he went and lived in Capernaum, which was by the lake in the area of Zebulun and Naphtali—to fulfill what was said through the prophet Isaiah: "Land of Zebulun and land of Naphtali, the way to the sea, along the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles—the people living in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned."

Now turn to Isaiah (Isa) 9:1 and follow along as I read that verse, the verse that introduces the Isaiah psalm that we will be studying this morning. In Isa 9:1 we read,

Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles, by the way of the sea, along the Jordan

It is not hard to see that Isa 9:1 is being cited in Matthew 4:15. And that focus on the ninth chapter of Isaiah continues in Matt 4:16 which says, "the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light, and for those who sat in the region and shadow of death light has dawned." Those words come out of Isa 9:2 which is the beginning verse of the Isaiah psalm we are studying this morning.

What I want you to notice is that Matthew’s Gospel tells us that when Jesus made Capernaum His home and Galilee the focus of His ministry, He was fulfilling an Old Testament prophecy concerning the landholdings of two ancient Israelite tribes, the tribes of Zebulun and Naphtali. And if you take a map of the tribal lands of Israel during the OT period and you overlay the New Testament (NT) sites of Nazareth and Capernaum, you will find that NT Nazareth is in the OT region of Zebulun and NT Capernaum is in OT Naphtali.

What Matthew’s Gospel tells us is that this geographical item has great significance. Jesus’ choice of those areas for ministry were not random decisions. They were made to fulfill a prophecy from Isaiah. Then Matthew’s Gospel cites a portion of that prophecy, Isa 9:1-2.

So what is the meaning of the prophecy that Jesus’ fulfills in the way he begins His ministry? That is our concern this morning.

Let’s begin by looking briefly at Isa 9:1, the verse which introduces this Isaiah psalm. The meaning of this verse is clarified when we know that the armies of the Assyrian Empire conquered the lands of Zebulun and Naphtali in about 732 BC. Those lands were then incorporated into the Assyrian Empire. When Isa 9:1 says that "in the future [God] will honor Galilee of the Gentiles," it is predicting a time when those lands would be redeemed from that subjugation by Assyria. The Gospel of Matthew connects God’s concern for those regions to Jesus’ active ministry in those same regions. In other words, Matthew let’s us know that God was working in Jesus to honor those regions as God had promised through Isaiah.

Matthew 4 cites only v 2 of the psalm found in Isa 9:2-7, but it is a powerful citation. Let’s look more closely at the first verse of this Isaiah psalm. It says, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." Notice that the prediction is put in a past tense, "The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned." In fact, almost all of this psalm’s finite verbs are in the Hebrew perfect tense which comes into English as either a past tense or a past perfect tense. Why is this the case when the context makes clear that the items referred to in this psalm are to take place in the future? Such a use of verbs was Isaiah’s way of making clear that what he was predicting was so certain that it was as if it had already happened.

Isaiah 9:2 reveals that something wonderful was going to happen to the people of Zebulun and Naphtali. At the time of Isaiah’s writing it seemed like a great and oppressive darkness had descended on people of these regions. It seemed that way because of the conquest by Assyria. But Isa 9:2 predicts that this dark state would change. The change would be so radical that it would be as if they had been flooded with light. Matthew knew that Jesus beginning His ministry in Zebulun and Naphtali was just such a flooding with light.

Before we move on to the remainder of Isa 9:2-7, we need to point out that the NT authors were writing for people who knew their Bibles well, and the Bible for the earliest Christians was the OT. That has led many NT scholars to realize that when NT authors cited only a portion of an OT passage, they expected their readers to think of the passage as a whole. I agree with that realization. So I believe that when Matthew cited Isa 9:1-2 he knew his readers would think of the entire passage. In other words, I think Matthew expected his readers to connect the whole of this Isaiah psalm to Jesus and not just to the two verses that are explicitly cited.

Now look at Isa 9:3-5. There we read,

You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy; they rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian’s defeat, you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor. Every warrior’s boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire.

This passage tells of a great victory with which God would impact the nation as a whole, but a victory that would especially impact the oppressed regions of Zebulun and Naphtali. This passage says that God would end the oppression, and every vestige of military subjugation would be utterly destroyed.

But how would God do it? How would God achieve such a comprehensive victory?

The answer to that sounds surprising, at least to us. Listen to the first half of Isa 9:6. "For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders." God was going to achieve this comprehensive victory through a male child that would be born. The effecting of such a victory through the birth of a male child may not have been such a surprising concept in the time of Isaiah. It may be that when a king was crowned the metaphor of birth was commonly used. I.e., it may be that the king was viewed as so intimately connected to God that it was as if the king had been reborn as a son of God when he was crowned to be king. The OT scholar, J. J. M. Roberts, certainly makes a very cogent argument to that effect ("Whose Child is this? Reflections on the Speaking Voice in Isaiah 9:5," Harvard Theological Review 90 [April 1997]: 115-29).

Reference to this argument by Roberts leads me to make explicit something that has been implicit to this point. Although Isa 9:2-7 applies to Jesus centuries after the death of Isaiah, it is virtually certain that this prophetic passage referred to someone else nearer in time to Isaiah’s original composition in the eighth century BC. Why is it virtually certain? Because most if not all other prophetic passages that refer to a coming king have a near fulfillment that is easily identifiable and then a more distant and more complete fulfillment in Jesus Christ. Some OT scholars think that Isa 9:2-7’s near fulfillment was King Hezekiah. Others think it was a son of Isaiah named Maher-shalal-hash-baz whose birth is reported in Isa 8. Others think it was King Josiah. One scholar does not even think this passage in its original setting is to be understood as a promise. He sees it as "an attempt . . . to bolster hope," an attempt "to change the mood of doom and gloom" that dominates Isa 8:9-12 (John D. W. Watts, Isaiah 1-33, Word Biblical Commentary vol. 24 [Waco, TX: Word, 1985], 135). I think this passage is a passage of promise, but I do not know who the first fulfillment of this prophetic oracle was. However, I do believe that none of the likely OT era candidates fulfill this passage the way Jesus does. For example, a king’s rebirth as a son of God, if such an understanding was actually present in Israel, was a symbolic way of referring to the special relationship between the Lord and the king. The king was not really divine; he was not viewed as divine. Jesus was divine––by birth and by nature. His physical birth in reality was the giving of a divine Son by God to God’s people. So with Isaiah 9:6 we can say in an enhanced way that "to us a child is born, to us a son is given"––a child from God, the Son of God, the Son of God in whom the apostle Paul says, "all the fullness of the Deity lives in bodily form" (Colossians 2:9). What a great and glorious fulfillment of this passage is Christ Jesus our Lord!

Now look again at the remaining half of Isa 9:6. It says of this Son that "he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." Christians have traditionally applied these names or titles to Jesus in such a way that Jesus is Himself the "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace." John Goldingay of Fuller Theological Seminary argues that such is not the case, and I think he is right. Due to the virtual certainty that this passage had a fulfillment much nearer to the time of Isaiah’s writing, it is all but impossible to believe that Isaiah would have applied such titles to any person near to his time. What OT figure would have deserved to be called "Mighty God" or "Everlasting Father"? And I am doubtful that even Jesus would have felt comfortable being viewed as God the Everlasting Father since He always referred only to God as Father, and Jesus indicated that the sovereignty which the Father possesses was above the sovereignty of Jesus Himself. Goldingay argues that these titles are similar to names commonly found in the OT, names that say something about God. For example, the name Joah, means "Yahweh (or the Lord) is brother" (Isa 36:3). Goldingay shows how the titles in Isa 9:6 can be turned into a name that he translates as "One who plans a wonder is the warrior God; the father for ever is a commander who brings peace." ("The Compound Name in Isaiah 9:5[6]," The Catholic Biblical Quarterly 61 [April 1999]: 239-44). If Goldingay is correct, then the one whom this passage predicts will be a person through whom the Lord shows forth the Lord’s power as a God who goes to war against oppression for the purpose of bringing peace. Whomever God did that through in OT times, it is obvious through whom God did it in NT times and through whom God continues to do it today. His name is Jesus. Jesus’ fulfillment of this divinely appointed name is an ongoing fulfillment that blesses us all even today over twenty-seven hundred years after these words from Isaiah were originally written.

Now look with me at the final verse of this powerful psalm from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 9:7 says,

Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David’s throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.

Whoever the near fulfillment of Isaiah’s prophecy was, he could only fulfill this verse in the limited sense of being part of a dynasty that would never end. But the two kings who are most often viewed as the fulfillment of this passage, Hezekiah and Josiah, both died. They lived on only in the sense that the line of King David lived on. They established and upheld David’s throne and kingdom forever only in the sense that their descendants reigned. And the only sense in which their descendants reigned forever is through Jesus, the divine descendant of David’s line, the Son of God who will reign forever.

Now look again at the final clause of Isa 9:7. It says, "The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this." Yes God was going to raise up a king to sit on the throne of David. But the real power which would bring about this work of deliverance was God. It was God’s zeal, God’s passion that would get it done.

When a person comes to realize that the glorious fulfillment of Isa 9:2-7 is Jesus the Christ, that person can also realize that what Jesus did was God’s idea, God’s enterprise, God’s redemptive passion at work in the world. I have sometimes heard people talk as if Jesus is a sensitive, warm deity while God the Father is the hard and angry deity. Isaiah 9:7 and many passages like it in both the OT and the NT make clear that what Jesus did was due to the initiation of God and was accomplished through the passionate, loving power of God. Jesus reveals who God has always been. As John 1:18 says, "No one has ever seen God, but God the One and Only, who is at the Father’s side, has made him known." Jesus did not change God. Jesus just showed us more clearly than ever before the nature of our God. And that nature is to enlighten and to love and to redeem and to bring peace. And God did all of those things through Christ Jesus our Lord.

But is Jesus still bringing light into people’s lives? Is Jesus still breaking yokes of oppression and bringing life-changing peace? Yes He is. Let me read to you a report of a great contemporary example.

I recently returned to the United States from the city of Moscow where a number of American ministries sponsored a leadership training seminar . . . bringing nearly 1500 pastors and ministers from throughout Russia and the surrounding republics. We held two back-to-back leadership conferences in which a wide variety of training, teaching and equipping was offered. Needless to say, the whole occasion was charged with the presence of the Lord and with the prophetic excitement that characterizes these days of harvest.

Often, as I faced the Russian disciples––most of them very young both in years and in the Lord––I wondered who was really being trained, them or us! The fire in their eyes, the zeal in their hearts and the excitement and abandonment with which they cast themselves upon the Lord brought us both conviction and great joy.

Expecting to find a persecution-minded and dispirited group of believers (which was true for years), we were met with very lively, excited and prophetic disciples. As they came to the conference, traveling hundreds of miles on trains and buses, they were already positioned toward the Lord and were quick to enter into intense intercession and corporate worship. They were so young in some ways, and yet so mature in others. Indeed, as dark as the Russian landscape may be, the brightness of the emerging church is already drawing the multitudes to God’s embrace.

Not only are these disciples and leaders hungry for God’s presence and eager to grow, they also possess a very contagious prophetic vision for their land and for the entire earth. I remember a group of these Russian believers describing to us how they fully expect, after building the house of the Lord in their lands, to be sent southward to the Moslem republics. And after evangelizing them, paying the price of suffering and martyrdom, they believe God will open the Moslem world before them––sending them on to India, China and all the way to Jerusalem, where they expect to welcome the Lord’s return. Oh, for such vision and fervor for us all! (Link) 

Yes, Jesus still bringing light into people’s lives. Jesus is still breaking yokes of oppression and bringing life-changing peace. May the joy of that fill our lives. May the joy of that define our lives. May the joy of that cause us to shine to the glory of our God! "Unto us a Son is given." Let’s live our lives giving thanks to God for the gift of God’s Son. Let’s live our lives in light of the joy of assembling at the throne of God’s Son. Let’s stand and sing.