Micah McCormick: Turn to Isaiah, please.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah, chapter 21.
Micah McCormick: We're heading through this Old Testament book and the passage for this morning is going to cover chapters 21 through 23.
Micah McCormick: I'm not going to read all three of those chapters.
Micah McCormick: I want to read, to start with this morning, a portion from chapter 21,.
Micah McCormick: But we'll be looking at that whole section for our sermon text for today, isaiah 21,.
Micah McCormick: I'll read the first 12 verses.
Micah McCormick: This is what God's word says, a pronouncement concerning the desert by the sea.
Micah McCormick: Like the storms that pass over the Negev, it comes from the desert, from the land of terror.
Micah McCormick: A troubling vision is declared to me.
Micah McCormick: The treacherous one acts treacherously and the destroyer destroys.
Micah McCormick: Advance Elam, lay, siege you, medes, I will put an end to all the groaning.
Micah McCormick: Therefore, I am filled with anguish.
Micah McCormick: Pain grips me, like the pain of a woman in labor.
Micah McCormick: I am too perplexed to hear, too dismayed to see.
Micah McCormick: My heart staggers.
Micah McCormick: Horror terrifies me.
Micah McCormick: He has turned my last glimmer of hope into sheer terror.
Micah McCormick: Prepare a table and spread out a carpet, eat and drink.
Micah McCormick: Rise up, you princes, and oil the shields.
Micah McCormick: For the Lord has said to me go, post a lookout, let him report what he sees.
Micah McCormick: Then the lookout reported.
Micah McCormick: Lord, I stand on the watchtower all day and I stay at my post all night.
Micah McCormick: Look, riders come, horsemen in pairs.
Micah McCormick: And he answered, saying Babylon has fallen, has fallen.
Micah McCormick: All the images of our gods have been shattered on the ground, my people who have been crushed on the threshing floor.
Micah McCormick: I have declared to you what I have heard from the Lord of armies, the God of Israel, a pronouncement concerning Duma.
Micah McCormick: One calls to me from Seir watchman what is left of the night, watchman, what is left of the night?
Micah McCormick: The watchman said morning has come, and also night.
Micah McCormick: If you want to ask, ask, come back again to ask, ask, come back again.
Micah McCormick: Let's pray again briefly, lord, as we always pray.
Micah McCormick: We need your Holy Spirit to show us things from your word and we feel our own weakness and need.
Micah McCormick: But in that humility we come before you, knowing that you're so gracious to give wisdom from those who ask, to give understanding from those who seek it.
Micah McCormick: So give us that understanding.
Micah McCormick: This morning we ask in Jesus' name, amen.
Micah McCormick: Hello darkness, my old friend, I've come to talk with you again because a vision softly creeping left its seeds while I was sleeping and the vision that was planted in my brain still remains within the sound of silence.
Micah McCormick: If you're under 50 years old, let me explain that to you.
Micah McCormick: I was quoting a song.
Micah McCormick: It was the number one hit, first number one hit of Simon and Garfunkel over 50 years ago, called the Sound of Silence, and you might not know it was a number one hit in places like Australia and Japan.
Micah McCormick: It's kind of an eerie song.
Micah McCormick: Hello, darkness, my old friend.
Micah McCormick: What would be so resonant about a song like that?
Micah McCormick: Well, people seem to resonate with darkness, whether 50 years ago or today.
Micah McCormick: The portion of scripture I just read from the beginning of our passage, there's a lot of darkness.
Micah McCormick: In verse number one, storm clouds are gathering.
Micah McCormick: In verse number three of chapter 21, the prophet can't see.
Micah McCormick: In verse number four, the last glimmer of hope is fading.
Micah McCormick: Verse number eight a lookout is standing post all night.
Micah McCormick: And in addition to those things, we have this strange pronouncement in verses 11 and 12, where a night watchman is asked what time it is and then he says morning has come and also night.
Micah McCormick: Why would he answer that way?
Micah McCormick: Remember, in this time period people didn't have cell phones, they didn't have clocks.
Micah McCormick: So if you wake up in the middle of the night it's hard to know what time it is.
Micah McCormick: You could imagine a soldier maybe peeking his head out of the tent, these different watchmen that are posted for night shifts hey, how much longer until morning?
Micah McCormick: And the watchman here says, yeah, morning's arriving, but it'll still be dark.
Micah McCormick: You can keep asking, but I wouldn't bother, it's just going to be dark, night will stay.
Micah McCormick: Imagine the soldier putting his head back inside the tent.
Micah McCormick: Did the watchman just break up with his girlfriend, or what's going on?
Micah McCormick: Because he just said even when morning comes, night is still going to be here.
Micah McCormick: It's still going to be dark.
Micah McCormick: Darkness in these prophetic pronouncements, these oracles.
Micah McCormick: Darkness is normally here, a sign of God's judgment.
Micah McCormick: Darkness falls on those who deny God.
Micah McCormick: That's the prophet's message from this section of scripture.
Micah McCormick: Darkness falls on those who deny God.
Micah McCormick: You might think, well, darkness will be here for a little while, but then it'll get better.
Micah McCormick: Morning will come.
Micah McCormick: If you're denying God, that thought process is all wrong.
Micah McCormick: This is the burden of the word of the Lord.
Micah McCormick: Even with the morning, night comes.
Micah McCormick: Darkness falls on those who deny God.
Micah McCormick: Three points today Number one pain in darkness.
Micah McCormick: Number two guilt in darkness.
Micah McCormick: And then number three light in darkness.
Micah McCormick: Let's look first at the pain that's described here when the prophet gives these oracles and oracles that seem shrouded in so much darkness.
Micah McCormick: The pain of this darkness is a universal pain.
Micah McCormick: Why do I say that?
Micah McCormick: Well, so far in the book of Isaiah, isaiah has given a number of different oracles.
Micah McCormick: That just means a divine message certain to come true.
Micah McCormick: A lot of oracles or pronouncements about specific peoples or specific individuals an oracle against Egypt, oracle against Assyria, oracle against Israel or an oracle against the king of Egypt.
Micah McCormick: But when we come here to chapter 21, verse one, this is an oracle concerning the desert by the sea.
Micah McCormick: What did the desert ever do?
Micah McCormick: In verse 11, an oracle concerning Duma.
Micah McCormick: What is Duma?
Micah McCormick: It's?
Micah McCormick: We're confident it's not a South American plantain dish, but we're not sure what it is because it sounds very strange.
Micah McCormick: Verse 13 mentions Arabia.
Micah McCormick: That's a little more familiar to us, but it's a large area, more than a particular nation, arabia.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 22, verse 1, look there, here's a fourth pronouncement in this section concerning the Valley of Vision.
Micah McCormick: And then, finally, chapter 23,.
Micah McCormick: We come to a pronouncement against Tyre, which, if you read your Bibles, that gets us a little more into the realm of familiarity.
Micah McCormick: Okay, I've heard of Tyre, it's city over there by Lebanon.
Micah McCormick: It was a nation at this time.
Micah McCormick: So Egypt, moab, tyre Okay, I understand pronouncements against those places Arabia, a little more abstract, but a valley of vision and Duma and the wilderness by the sea.
Micah McCormick: Why is Isaiah speaking so cryptically?
Micah McCormick: This is how one person answers that question.
Micah McCormick: The enigmatic titles are Isaiah's way of showing that he's left the sharp clarity of his contemporary scene and is looking into the future.
Micah McCormick: If so, history is not a tale of everything getting better and better, but divine judgments become starker.
Micah McCormick: This passage and these oracles, they do relate in some ways to specific people or specific places.
Micah McCormick: There are some clues within the oracles.
Micah McCormick: So if you look at chapter 21, verse nine, it says Babylon has fallen.
Micah McCormick: So the desert by the sea, which is the title, seems to relate to Babylon in some way.
Micah McCormick: And then if you look down at chapter 21, verse 11, it mentions Seir, which is connected in other scriptures to Edom.
Micah McCormick: So that pronouncement seems related to Edomites.
Micah McCormick: And then verse chapter 21,.
Micah McCormick: The Valley of Vision in chapter 22 speaks of the destruction of God's dear people.
Micah McCormick: 22, verse 4.
Micah McCormick: And then chapter 22, verse 8, says God has removed the defenses of Judah.
Micah McCormick: So the Valley of Vision relates to the city of David in some way, and the people of God.
Micah McCormick: So the Valley of Vision relates to the city of David in some way and the people of God.
Micah McCormick: But even though there are clues within the oracles about specific people and recipients, the titles are quite abstract.
Micah McCormick: The abstraction of those titles, those cryptic titles, that helps to show us that all those people everywhere who bear the image of these idolatrous places will likewise fall into darkness.
Micah McCormick: The pain of darkness is not simply for this nation or that time or those people.
Micah McCormick: It's a universal darkness, a universal pain.
Micah McCormick: It's almost like think about one of those horribly disfigured Picasso paintings.
Micah McCormick: He might've begun with a specific subject, but he breaks it up on the canvas to try to say something about the human condition that moves beyond that individual subject that he started with.
Micah McCormick: And this idea reiterates a theme that Pastor Doug has brought out a number of times here in Isaiah.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah prophesies and he speaks of different horizons.
Micah McCormick: On the near horizon, in Isaiah's prophecies, we have the events of his own day, peoples of his own day.
Micah McCormick: On a farther horizon, Isaiah speaks to the coming of Messiah, the birth and death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, and the ascension and the glory of Christ.
Micah McCormick: And on a yet more distant, third horizon, isaiah speaks about the second coming of the Lord and final judgment and the end of all things.
Micah McCormick: And the section for today leans toward that final horizon of God's final judgment to come, even as it takes into view specific judgments about the people of Isaiah's day.
Micah McCormick: So in Isaiah 21, this watchman who's expressing this pain and despair of darkness becomes an emblem of all people everywhere who reject God and can await only darkness.
Micah McCormick: That's why scripture can speak of people who are cast into outer darkness.
Micah McCormick: Picking up on the same theme.
Micah McCormick: So the darkness here, the pain, is universal and the pain is also lonely.
Micah McCormick: Chapter 21, verse 11,.
Micah McCormick: Look there again at this pronouncement against Duma.
Micah McCormick: Who or what is Duma?
Micah McCormick: Look there again at this pronouncement against Duma.
Micah McCormick: Who or what is Duma?
Micah McCormick: We get a little more help from scripture.
Micah McCormick: Ishmael has a descendant named Duma, and Esau lives in a place that seems connected to Duma.
Micah McCormick: Who were Ishmael and Esau?
Micah McCormick: They were rejected brothers.
Micah McCormick: The pain of isolation.
Micah McCormick: Duma is also a Hebrew word that refers to silence.
Micah McCormick: So, for example, in Psalm 94, 17, it says if the Lord had not been my helper, I would soon rest in the Duma of Duma.
Micah McCormick: The silence of silence.
Micah McCormick: When you're in pure darkness, usually you don't want to speak, not because you're tired of gabbing but you don't see anyone.
Micah McCormick: It's lonely, that isolation that's there.
Micah McCormick: Why is there such pain in darkness?
Micah McCormick: There's pain in darkness because of guilt Pain and darkness because of guilt.
Micah McCormick: It's true, there are people in scripture, like Job, who experience pain not directly tied to their own guilt.
Micah McCormick: Here Isaiah is not speaking so much to the Job's of the world.
Micah McCormick: He's speaking to people who have rejected God, who have despised his word, so that the pain that's coming for them corresponds to the guilt of their rejection.
Micah McCormick: This is a darkness.
Micah McCormick: It's much more than seasonal sadness.
Micah McCormick: This is the very undoing of creation, again pointing forward all the way, in the final analysis, to that grand judgment at the hands of the Lord.
Micah McCormick: Pain in darkness stems from guilt in darkness.
Micah McCormick: And you see that chapter 21 says in verse number two treacherous people act treacherously.
Micah McCormick: People are doing wrong things, the way that this passage opens in chapter 21,.
Micah McCormick: Things, the way that this passage opens in chapter 21, like storms that pass over the Negev.
Micah McCormick: It comes from the desert, from the land of terror.
Micah McCormick: It comes what comes.
Micah McCormick: It's ominous, it's almost like a horror movie.
Micah McCormick: I'm not really a horror movie guy.
Micah McCormick: I know some of you like horror movies not really my thing.
Micah McCormick: But do you notice in horror movies sometimes who the victims are?
Micah McCormick: It's rarely ever a woman who's trying to lead a Bible study.
Micah McCormick: You know, it's usually people that are.
Micah McCormick: I shouldn't say usually.
Micah McCormick: It is sometimes people who are transgressing boundaries in some way.
Micah McCormick: It's the teens who are in the backseat of the car and they get attacked by the hockey mask.
Micah McCormick: It's the young people by the fire who are drinking too much and they're underage and the chainsaw comes out of the forest.
Micah McCormick: It's the children who are out after curfew and the monsters are going to get them that register of I'm transgressing a boundary and it's.
Micah McCormick: They should feel wrong and you as the viewer kind of feel like it's wrong.
Micah McCormick: And then, if they're doing that kind of bad thing, what greater bad thing might happen to them?
Micah McCormick: And then you get hooked in.
Micah McCormick: Michael, wait a minute here.
Micah McCormick: Underage drinking is not wise, but it doesn't mean you should get chopped in half by a chainsaw.
Micah McCormick: They're not that guilty when we come to the horror and pain of the darkness here in these oracles.
Micah McCormick: This is God's divine story.
Micah McCormick: God never makes an error in judgment.
Micah McCormick: Parents sometimes exaggerate threats to their children because they want to control behavior.
Micah McCormick: God doesn't exaggerate his threats.
Micah McCormick: All that God pronounces in the judgment he makes perfectly accords with the reality and nature of human guilt.
Micah McCormick: Look at verse number nine of chapter 21.
Micah McCormick: Babylon has fallen has fallen.
Micah McCormick: All the images of her gods have been shattered to the ground.
Micah McCormick: These are false gods and worthless images.
Micah McCormick: The Babylonian civilization crumbles, their light is snuffed out and the darkness is in every way deserved because of its idolatry.
Micah McCormick: The book of Revelation picks up this same language and applies it to all the Babylonian, like kingdoms of the world.
Micah McCormick: Revelation 18, verse two it has fallen.
Micah McCormick: Babylon the great has fallen.
Micah McCormick: Do you hear the words echoed there from our passage in Isaiah?
Micah McCormick: And God tells his people in Revelation come out of Babylon so that you wouldn't share in her sins or receive her plagues, for her sins are piled up to heaven and God remembered her crimes.
Micah McCormick: There's guilt.
Micah McCormick: That's there.
Micah McCormick: What's Babylon guilty of?
Micah McCormick: Well, revelation gives us a little more than this particular verse of Isaiah.
Micah McCormick: But it speaks of kings of the earth committing sexual immorality, with Babylon, with wealthy merchants growing in abundance and excess off of the backs of other people in an unjust way that Babylon sits as a proud queen.
Micah McCormick: There's a list of some of the guilt sex, money, power.
Micah McCormick: There's not unfamiliar themes and those are guilt-inducing themes.
Micah McCormick: Guilt-inducing themes.
Micah McCormick: But we want to notice how sin works.
Micah McCormick: Sin so often takes something God has given to us and twists it.
Micah McCormick: God doesn't say whatever you do, avoid sex.
Micah McCormick: Whatever you do, avoid money.
Micah McCormick: Whatever you do, don't take power.
Micah McCormick: Satan wants you to think that God says that.
Micah McCormick: That's not what God actually says.
Micah McCormick: Sex is a good gift in the context of a home and a man and woman in marriage.
Micah McCormick: Money is a wonderful tool to be used for your family, for society.
Micah McCormick: Authority, rightly exercised, can model and bring God's loving rule and reign to bear in the world.
Micah McCormick: But it gets distorted and the guilt comes when we fail to listen to God's instructions about those things and we listen to Babylon voices instead.
Micah McCormick: That's the crux of the matter.
Micah McCormick: Are we going to listen to the Lord's identification of all that's wonderful and good and true?
Micah McCormick: Are we going to listen to Babylon?
Micah McCormick: Look at Isaiah, chapter 22, one chapter over verse number nine.
Micah McCormick: I'll start there.
Micah McCormick: You saw that there were many breaches in the walls of the city of David.
Micah McCormick: You collected water from the lower pool.
Micah McCormick: You counted the houses of Jerusalem so you could tear them down to fortify the wall.
Micah McCormick: You made a reservoir between the walls for the water of the ancient pool.
Micah McCormick: They're trying to protect themselves against an enemy possibly a reference to what happens with Hezekiah in 2 Kings, chapter 20, where, through his ingenuity, he allows a way for water to still be able to come into the city amidst a siege.
Micah McCormick: Well, that sounds like a good thing, right?
Micah McCormick: But then look what Isaiah says here.
Micah McCormick: But you did not look to the one who made it or consider the one who created it.
Micah McCormick: Long ago, you trusted in your own engineering and you didn't look to God.
Micah McCormick: Guilt is there, judgment is coming, and a little verse like this, a passage like this, is a powerful reminder of the nature of our guilt.
Micah McCormick: When I say that darkness falls on those who deny God, I don't mean merely people who deny that God exists.
Micah McCormick: There's many people in our day like Israel of old.
Micah McCormick: They acknowledge God exists, but they live their lives with little or no regard to him.
Micah McCormick: It's not just people that are shaking their fist at God.
Micah McCormick: It's like chapter 22,.
Micah McCormick: Verse 13 says people that are just content to eat and drink and be happy.
Micah McCormick: Let's tear down our barns and build bigger ones, but don't you know that your soul is required this night.
Micah McCormick: God personalizes the accusation of guilt in verse 15.
Micah McCormick: He speaks of a specific palace steward named Shebna.
Micah McCormick: I'll pick up at verse 15 of chapter 22.
Micah McCormick: The Lord of armies said go to Shebna, that steward who was in charge of the palace, and say to him what are you doing here?
Micah McCormick: Who authorized you to carve out a tomb for yourself here, carving your tomb on the height, cutting a resting place for yourself out of a rock?
Micah McCormick: Look you, strong man.
Micah McCormick: The Lord is about to shake you violently.
Micah McCormick: He will take hold of you, wind you up into a ball and sling you into a wide land.
Micah McCormick: There you will die.
Micah McCormick: The self-reliance.
Micah McCormick: Shebna thinks I'm quite the piece of granite.
Micah McCormick: I'll make a monument for myself.
Micah McCormick: The Lord says you think you're a piece of granite.
Micah McCormick: I'm going to crush you into a pebble and, like a slingshot, hurl you into oblivion.
Micah McCormick: Because you didn't acknowledge me, you trusted in yourself.
Micah McCormick: The guilt of people like Shebna or Judah, or Babylon or Tyre in the next chapter, it's a staggering guilt because of who they are sitting against.
Micah McCormick: They're sitting against the God of all creation, the Lord who made them.
Micah McCormick: When we jettison God's word, we're saying no to the almighty God word.
Micah McCormick: We're saying no to the almighty God.
Micah McCormick: So it gets so bad here.
Micah McCormick: It's so thick with judgment.
Micah McCormick: Look what God concludes in chapter 22, verse 14.
Micah McCormick: The Lord of armies has directly revealed to me, that's to Isaiah this iniquity will not be wiped out for your people as long as you live.
Micah McCormick: The Lord of armies has spoken.
Micah McCormick: This dark saying of iniquity is remaining.
Micah McCormick: Guilt is such a heavy weight to bear.
Micah McCormick: Darkness will fall on those who deny God.
Micah McCormick: Pain in darkness, guilt in darkness.
Micah McCormick: Now I said at the outset, the third point of the sermon, final point, is light and darkness.
Micah McCormick: I'm not hearing a lot of light, micah, that verse, your iniquity is going to remain on you forever.
Micah McCormick: That doesn't sound very light-giving.
Micah McCormick: We might have some Simeon Trust graduates here saying Micah, stay on the line.
Micah McCormick: Darkness, don't you get off the line.
Micah McCormick: Don't you bring optimism into this text.
Micah McCormick: It's a minor key.
Micah McCormick: Don't try to modulate to a major key and I might be guilty of bringing too much optimism and I'll admit that from the outset.
Micah McCormick: If you want to come up afterwards and explain the way of God more perfectly to me, I welcome that.
Micah McCormick: That would be great.
Micah McCormick: But every passage has a text.
Micah McCormick: Ultimately, our text is the entire Bible.
Micah McCormick: Paul did say, he determined to know nothing but Jesus Christ and him crucified.
Micah McCormick: And it's true that the passage from last week in Isaiah 19 had a greater amount of hope than our passage for today.
Micah McCormick: But there's some glimmers of light, I think, even here.
Micah McCormick: Look first at the end of chapter 23.
Micah McCormick: So Isaiah speaks of this great city of Tyre with all of its shipping prowess.
Micah McCormick: It compares Tyre to a prostitute.
Micah McCormick: Prostitutes want money.
Micah McCormick: This merchandising place.
Micah McCormick: They were basically business prostitutes.
Micah McCormick: So it doesn't sound like much light.
Micah McCormick: But look at the last verse of the chapter, the last verse of the passage for today, isaiah 23, 18,.
Micah McCormick: But her profits and wages will be dedicated to the Lord.
Micah McCormick: They will not be stored or saved, for her profit will go to those who live in the Lord's presence to provide them with ample food and sacred clothing.
Micah McCormick: Wait a minute, that sounds good.
Micah McCormick: Dedication to the Lord's people.
Micah McCormick: They're able to help out providing sacred garments for the temple, for the priests, food perhaps.
Micah McCormick: Where did the good come from amidst all of this darkness?
Micah McCormick: Isaiah doesn't give us a full explanation right here in the passage.
Micah McCormick: Remember those horizons?
Micah McCormick: He goes back and forth in those horizons, those horizons.
Micah McCormick: He goes back and forth in those horizons.
Micah McCormick: But it sounds like what we read about in Egypt.
Micah McCormick: Egypt was an idolatrous place, just like Tyre.
Micah McCormick: Remember from last week, those that were here last week?
Micah McCormick: Egypt is going to offer sacrifices and vows to the Lord, isaiah 19.
Micah McCormick: Here's Tyre getting judged, but they're going to be providing sacred clothing and vows, in a sense, for the Lord.
Micah McCormick: It sounds like what we read about in Revelation where in one chapter in Revelation these proud profiteering merchants who are selfish and greedy have only their own success in mind.
Micah McCormick: They're judged along with the fall of Babylon the great.
Micah McCormick: But then you get to a later chapter in Revelation and the kings of the earth are bringing the glory of their wealth into the new Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: Darkness falls on some, even as representatives, a remnant from all kinds of places walk into the light of God's glory.
Micah McCormick: Derek Kidner writes just as Egypt, the political oppressor, became the bearer of hope back in chapter 19, so Tyre, the religious corruptor, becomes the hope symbol here in chapter 23.
Micah McCormick: So the big question for us this morning is what group do we expect to find ourselves in?
Micah McCormick: Are we a part of the city of Babylon or the new Jerusalem?
Micah McCormick: Is darkness falling on us or are we walking in the light?
Micah McCormick: The first thing to do is submit to God's word.
Micah McCormick: If we're looking for light, first thing to do is submit to God's word.
Micah McCormick: If denying God begins with denying his word, rejecting his word, then the first step in coming to the Lord is receiving his word.
Micah McCormick: There's so much guilt heaped up.
Micah McCormick: He's the only one that can give us the answers.
Micah McCormick: We got to listen to him and his word.
Micah McCormick: That Simon and Garfunkel song that I mentioned, the sound of silence, it's a.
Micah McCormick: It's a haunting song.
Micah McCormick: It's not a Christian song.
Micah McCormick: Paul Simon, the writer, said it's a song about the inability of people to communicate with one another.
Micah McCormick: If you want to sound really sophisticated, you can say it's a song about technological alienation.
Micah McCormick: But let's just go with what he said inability to communicate with one another.
Micah McCormick: We find that on a horizontal level.
Micah McCormick: We find isolation.
Micah McCormick: But those problems on a horizontal level exist ultimately because there's a vertical problem.
Micah McCormick: There's isolation between us and God.
Micah McCormick: That's the bigger problem.
Micah McCormick: One of the lines of that song says the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls.
Micah McCormick: I can assure you, if you want to hear a prophetic word from God, don't go to Lexington Avenue subway station and scour the walls.
Micah McCormick: That's not where you're going to find it.
Micah McCormick: You've got to come to this book.
Micah McCormick: You've got to submit to scripture to find God speaking here.
Micah McCormick: That's where we see light, in his light.
Micah McCormick: As you get into scripture, you'll find that we as mere human beings can never through our own engineering, our own self-reliance and pride.
Micah McCormick: We can never ultimately come to light on our own.
Micah McCormick: We need God's revelation, we need his grace.
Micah McCormick: In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
Micah McCormick: We're called to receive the light of the world, god's son.
Micah McCormick: Go back to Isaiah 22 with me.
Micah McCormick: We were there earlier, so if you're, chapter 23,.
Micah McCormick: Now back to chapter 22.
Micah McCormick: Late in the chapter we meet these two court figures.
Micah McCormick: I mentioned Shebna earlier.
Micah McCormick: That's the guy from verse 15 who thought he was the piece of granite, and God puts him up like a golf ball and just drives him in the next week.
Micah McCormick: Then we find another figure, a historic figure, a court steward named Eliakim, in verse 20.
Micah McCormick: And in verse 20 and 21, god says he will clothe Eliakim with Shebna's robe and hand Shebna's authority over to Eliakim.
Micah McCormick: So it's like this guy Shebna is proud and arrogant.
Micah McCormick: He's ousted, and then Eliakim gets put in his place Verse 23,.
Micah McCormick: Ousted, and then Eliakim gets put in his place, verse 23,.
Micah McCormick: God says that he will drive him in like a firm peg to bring honor for his family.
Micah McCormick: Wonderful, all is good for Eliakim, but look at verse 25.
Micah McCormick: On that day the declaration of the Lord of armies the peg that was driven into a firm place will give way, be cut off and fall, and the load on it will be destroyed.
Micah McCormick: Indeed, the Lord has spoken.
Micah McCormick: You can't hang your hopes on mere human beings.
Micah McCormick: There's Eliakim the new guy.
Micah McCormick: Hey, we've got a new leader in the palace, everything's going to be great and we can just put our fur coats and hang and next thing, you know, it broke off and it's on the ground and all of our coats are muddy.
Micah McCormick: Because we weren't supposed to hang all of our hopes on the new palace figure.
Micah McCormick: We were supposed to trust in the Lord, god, the Almighty One.
Micah McCormick: Okay, bring us.
Micah McCormick: How does this relate to Jesus Christ?
Micah McCormick: We're speaking about submitting to God's word, not trusting in ourselves that's the way of darkness but receiving God.
Micah McCormick: How do we find Christ here?
Micah McCormick: Well, think a moment about Eliakim.
Micah McCormick: Here's this strong peg, but he's temporary and he crumbles.
Micah McCormick: Jesus was a human being in the line of David, but not a mere human like Eliakim.
Micah McCormick: He's the firm peg that, as Michael Barrett says, can hold up under any weight and load, so that we can hang it all on him.
Micah McCormick: And if you think that's a that's a little stretch, this will help you see Christ even more clearly.
Micah McCormick: Look again at verse 22.
Micah McCormick: I will place the key of the house of David on his shoulder.
Micah McCormick: What he opens, no one can close.
Micah McCormick: What he closes, no one can open.
Micah McCormick: In Isaiah's historical context, that first horizon, eliakim is going to become the right hand palace steward.
Micah McCormick: He gets the keys.
Micah McCormick: He, the people that have keys, have authority.
Micah McCormick: They can lock things and open things.
Micah McCormick: So Eliakim, on behalf of Hezekiah the king, can do all kinds of things with the keys.
Micah McCormick: But if you read your Bibles, that's not the only place we come across a passage like this.
Micah McCormick: It should sound familiar.
Micah McCormick: Right Revelation, chapter three, verse seven, write to the angel of the church in Philadelphia.
Micah McCormick: Thus says the Holy one, the true one, the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will close.
Micah McCormick: Who closes and no one will open.
Micah McCormick: Revelation takes those words about Eliakim and applies them directly to the resurrected and exalted Lord Jesus Christ.
Micah McCormick: Revelation 3.12 goes on to say the people of Christ become pillars in God's temple.
Micah McCormick: They get a new name from a new Jerusalem.
Micah McCormick: So the Jerusalem from below, the Jerusalem of Eliakim's day, is going to give way in God's story to the Jerusalem from above, because the son of God has descended from the heavenly Jerusalem and he's come to bring light to people who dwell in the land of darkness.
Micah McCormick: Humans like you and me take hold of him, trust in him.
Micah McCormick: That's where you find light.
Micah McCormick: And I don't want to overlook one church application here.
Micah McCormick: Where else are keys mentioned?
Micah McCormick: Matthew 16, jesus gives Peter keys of the kingdom and, by extension, the church.
Micah McCormick: Matthew 18 corroborates that by talking about the church binding and loosing, the same thing the keys did back in chapter 16.
Micah McCormick: So we, as the people of Christ, we have authority to do things on behalf of King Jesus.
Micah McCormick: What an amazing privilege.
Micah McCormick: It doesn't mean we'll always do those things perfectly, but we want to announce the gospel clearly and guard the gospel carefully as people of the king.
Micah McCormick: It's not a coincidence that during the crucifixion, darkness falls on the land for three hours.
Micah McCormick: The gospel writers are making a theological point that God, in his providence, allowed darkness to fall for those three hours during that moment of the crucifixion as a sign that judgment was falling.
Micah McCormick: It's not every time there's ever darkness, but here there's a significance.
Micah McCormick: Judgment was falling as darkness fell for those three hours.
Micah McCormick: But who was judgment falling on?
Micah McCormick: It was falling on that man hanging on the cross.
Micah McCormick: It was falling on him so that it wouldn't have to fall on us.
Micah McCormick: Three hours of darkness.
Micah McCormick: Three days later it's morning.
Micah McCormick: The tomb is empty.
Micah McCormick: An angel in bright clothing announces he's not here because he's risen, as he said, so that all those who turn from their sin and trust in that Christ, they experience an eternal morning, eternal light, eternal life.
Micah McCormick: Isaiah 22 begins with a pronouncement concerning the valley of vision.
Micah McCormick: I briefly mentioned earlier that it speaks of my dear people.
Micah McCormick: It seems to be a reference there in that pronouncement to Judah, more narrowly Jerusalem, but calling Jerusalem the valley of vision.
Micah McCormick: It's a strange title.
Micah McCormick: Yes, there are mountains that surround Jerusalem, but Jerusalem itself is not really in a valley, it's on a hill.
Micah McCormick: But what happens in valleys?
Micah McCormick: Light has a hard time getting there, the darkness of the valley, of the shadow of death, and sometimes we need to be in the valley to see our need for the light.
Micah McCormick: That phrase, valley of vision, might ring a bell for some of you, there's a book of collected prayers called the Valley of Vision.
Micah McCormick: Not inspired prayers, but prayers that are laced with scripture, like even the title alluding to this verse in Isaiah, and I want to close today in prayer by reading a portion of one of those prayers, as we seek the Lord for the light that only he can provide, let's pray oh father, you have brought us to the valley of vision, where we live in the depths but see you in the heights, hemmed in by the mountains of sin, yet we behold your glory.
Micah McCormick: Help us to learn, by paradox, that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all that, to bear the cross is to wear the crown, that the valley is the place of vision.
Micah McCormick: Help us, oh Lord.
Micah McCormick: Help us find your light in our darkness, your life in our death, your joy in our sorrow, your grace in our sin, your glory in our valley.
Micah McCormick: We ask these things for the glory of your name, oh God of light, amen.