Speaker: Dustin Scott

Passage: Isaiah 9:6-7

MAKING SPACE FOR JESUS

Merry Christmas, everyone. Can you believe it’s almost here? So, I’m going to ask a question, I’m going to break you all into two categories before we begin this morning. The first category is, I want to ask, how many of you are elves this morning? I don’t mean like the traditional folklore elves, but like the obnoxious Will Ferrell like ready-for-Christmas-in-July kind of elf? Anyone? All right. 

The next question I have is, like me, how many of you are Grinches, and you don’t want to hear Christmas music until Christmas Day? Raise your hand. Well, it has come time for us Grinches to repent because Christmas is almost here. And we’ll be reading from one of the famous messianic passages. We’ve been exploring it already as a church from the Book of Isaiah, chapter 9. 

ISAIAH 9:6-7

And you know I’m going to make you do it, but you can take solace in the fact it’s the last time you’ll have to do it this year. Would you stand with me for the reading of the Scriptures? This is Isaiah 9:6-7, and I’ll be reading from the New Revised Standard Version. 

“For a child has been born for us, a son given to us.” I’m going to read that again. “For a child has been born for us, a son has been given to us; authority rests upon his shoulders, and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Great will be his authority, and there shall be endless peace for the throne of David and his kingdom. He will establish and uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time onward and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.” 

Lord, we give this time to You this morning, as we study Your Word. Would You take this familiar passage, and would you show things to us that are unfamiliar? Would You help us to learn new things in Your Kingdom, how we’re to live as disciples of You, how we’re to reflect You in this season? 

Lord, I think of the Christmas season, and when else is Your name declared in the marketplaces and ease ways and on the radio? There is no season like this. So, in a time where the world is hungry to hear You, to see You, to know You, would You create in us a repentance and a transformation so that the world can experience You through us? 

Make us more like You, Lord. If anything I say that isn’t from You, would You allow it to be forgotten? And would You correct me later this week? We ask these things in Your name, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, giving this time to You. Amen. You may be seated. 

Last week, Pastor Greg opened us up into this familiar Christmas time passage. And we know that this prophecy given to the prophet Isaiah was definitively and ultimately fulfilled through the virgin birth of Jesus, we also have to remember that this prophecy was given at a specific time and place. 

We must remember that while all Scripture is written for us– it’s infallible, it’s given under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit– the Scriptures were not written to us. I know it would be nice if we opened up our New Testament and we found a book in there saying The Letter To Vintage City Church, that could maybe help us clear some things up from time to time, but that isn’t the way the Scriptures work.

And while the Scriptures are as true today as they were centuries ago when they were first written, as truthful interpreters of the Scriptures, we always have to ask, How would the original hearer have understood this passage before applying meaning to our lives today? 

AHAZ

The prophecy of Isaiah addresses a person, a place, and a problem. The person is named King Ahaz, and in the technical theological terminology deserving of a great theologian like Thomas Aquinas, we could say that King Ahaz was a bad dude. 

What’s the place? It’s the southern kingdom of Judah, approximately one hundred years before the Babylonian exile. Lastly, what’s the problem? How many of you grew up in a house where your parents would sometimes yell at you, Hey, what’s your problem? This morning, we’ll be asking that of Ahaz. What’s your problem, Ahaz? 

Well, the problem is this: the unrestrained idolatry, the perverse violence, and the unrepentant sin of King Ahaz had invited the judgment of the Lord, and for that reason, King Ahaz was appealing to the king of Assyria for help. 

The kingdoms of Edom and northern Israel were seeking to invade Judah. And this is the moment when the prophet Isaiah comes to Ahaz with an invitation of mercy and repentance. He says to Ahaz, If you do not stand firm in faith, you shall not stand at all. 

I want to contextualize King Ahaz’s situation for us today. I want to ask us two questions, the first one is this: when facing a crisis, how many of us have ever struggled to believe that God would forgive our past sin? Any of us? 

Maybe we’ve been stuck in a situation that I like to call this the first year college atheist mistake when it comes to the Bible, where we believe things like in the Old Testament, God was mean, He was harsh, He was punishing. But when we get to the New Testament, Jesus is loving, He’s accepting. Have any of us ever fallen into that trap before? I know I have. 

And while these sentiments are understandable, they could not be further from the truth. How do I know that? Because of the story of King Ahaz. Remember, King Ahaz was a bad dude, and yet the Lord is coming to him in this moment with a message of mercy, reconciliation, and new beginnings. 

So, let’s talk about this bad dude, King Ahaz’s gross immorality. If we go to 2 Kings 16 and 2 Chronicles 28, King Ahaz sacrificed his own sons through fire to the Canaanite deity Molech in the Valley of Hinnom. This is bad stuff. 

This act was so abysmal and disgusting in the eyes of the Lord that in the New Testament, the word gehenna, which comes from the Hebrew word ge-hinnom, meaning the Valley of Hinnom, is actually one of the New Testament words for Hell, our eternal judgment. 

Can you imagine committing a sin so bad that people later on decide to name Hell after it? Now, many of us put our parents through hell when we were teenagers, but that’s something else entirely. 

King Ahaz flirted with lies and pagan immorality by establishing Asherah poles, perverse sexualized altars, in the high places of Judah, all while worshiping a goddess named Asherah, the supposed sexual partner of Yahweh. This is blasphemous stuff. 

What would lead Ahaz into this kind of foolishness? We see the same logic today when you want to commit a sin, when you want to engage in wickedness, what better way to justify it than to come up with elaborate theologies which say it’s okay? We see the same problem alive today. 

Lastly, Ahaz desecrated– I accidentally said decorated last gathering, he was not decorating for Christmas– he desecrated the Temple and stripped it of ritual objects in order to make an altar to the pagan gods of the Assyrian Empire. This guy is like a super villain in the Scriptures. 

HOW ARE WE LIKE AHAZ?

In the prophecy of Isaiah, chapters 7-9 are going to pit the faithlessness of Ahaz against the faithfulness of God. And I think many of us would step into judgment in this moment. We would maybe read the story of Ahaz and go, This is a really bad guy. Like, it’s interesting to learn about him, but he doesn’t have any application to my life, does he? 

Well, hold on. Think about it. If we were honest with ourselves, how many times have we sacrificed what is holy and precious in the eyes of God for our own selfish wants? How many times have we compromised our own moral integrity for the sake of expedience, personal benefit, good consequences? 

And lastly, how many times have we neglected, maybe expressed embarrassment at, or outright mock the truths of God in order to be attractive and desirable in the eyes of the world around us? 

You see, we’re not that different than Ahaz. When we’re at our worst, we often step into the same life patterns as he did, and for that reason, I think Ahaz is given in the genealogy of Joseph in the Christmas story for a reason because he represents something. 

Ahaz represents the very worst parts of who we are in sin, signifying just how far we can fall into sin. And yet, what’s the beauty of this story? What is the Good News or Gospel of this story? That in spite of Ahaz’s insane wickedness, God is giving him a path to reconciliation. 

It’s into this moral catastrophe that the prophecy of Isaiah 9, the faithfulness of God that would be revealed in Jesus, is given as God’s answer to all human brokenness and sin. Ahaz got his own personal prophecy about Jesus. That’s pretty merciful. 

When we think of the Christmas story, I think we often imagine the major players. We think of Joseph, we think of Mary, we think of the shepherds of Bethlehem. There’s all kinds of myths and folklore that drive me nuts. Like Joseph was supposedly one hundred and five years old, and Mary was only ten. That’s not true at all. Also, Jesus was born in a cave, not in the barn or stable we’re familiar with in our imagery, but I can’t get into that. That’s off track. Back on topic. 

I don’t think we often imagine Ahaz when we remember the Christmas story, the destitute, the damaged, the epitome of moral and spiritual ruin. But it’s Ahaz who is precisely who the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit intended to save through Jesus. 

THE LOVE OF GOD

Sometimes I think we read stories like this in the Scriptures, and we gloss over them, forgetting that in the words of Paul in 1 Corinthians 10, that they were given as an example for us, that we’re supposed to see ourselves in this figure. 

And the Biblical figure of Ahaz stands before us like a mirror, and it’s our own face staring back at us. The self-giving love of God in Christ came for you and for me when we were at our worst, and the part of the story that annoys us sometimes is in an identical and inseparable way, that same love came for all those around us who annoy us and who we dismiss as irredeemable or unimportant. 

The love of God is that big, and this isn’t some kind of toxic and comparative goodness where we can say things like, Well, I’m pretty good because look at so and so, or look at Ahaz over here, I’m not bad compared to this guy. Guess what? At our worst, we are. 

That’s why, through Divine grace, we can say with the apostle Paul, the saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. 

Left to our own devices, we all become Ahaz. We all excuse our sin, we all hide from God’s voice and ignore it, and we justify ourselves by comparing our lives to others, engaging in this fallen goodness we see after the fall in the Garden of Eden of, Hey, I’m not that bad. Look at them instead. They’re worse than me. 

That is not what Christmas is about. Christmas is about the grace which takes an absolute, reprobate sinner and turns them into the reflection of Christ. I think the truth of Christmas, though it might sound a little dark, is we’re all scoundrels, and we’re all villains without Jesus. 

Pastor Greg says this statement of himself: he says, Greg Sanders is not a good guy without Jesus. I can say Dustin is a scoundrel without Him. And the life of Divine grace is found in repentance, the continual exchange of the little Ahaz that lives inside of me for the nature and the character of Jesus. This is why Paul will say, “If anyone be in Christ, there is a new creation.” 

I want to fast forward to the Christmas story as it’s given in the Gospels. There’s a particular man who foreruns Jesus, who brings a message of the Kingdom of God before him, and it’s His cousin, John the Baptist. 

And John the Baptist comes with a message and a baptism of repentance. And I think this teaches us something, it’s a spiritual principle. You could say the move of God will always be preceded by repentance, where I say to the Lord, Enough of me, more of You. 

This Advent season, where are you hungry for a move of God in your life? Are you hungry for God to move in your family, in your workplace, in your friendship groups, in your marriage? Maybe as a church, we’re hungry to see the move of God in our city, in our region? 

I would encourage you, the first step is repentance, where we say, Lord, enough of me, enough of my brokenness. I’m taking upon myself You. 

SEEKING REPENTANCE

This leaves me with a handful of questions: where do we personally relate to Ahaz? Do we believe our historic mistakes are unforgivable? Do we live for the admiration and the praise of people? Do we feel paralyzed by fear and anxiety? Do we return to the same sin over and over and over again in a broken cycle? 

Where do we, if we were honest with ourselves, match up with the life of Ahaz? Ahaz was rushing to the king of Assyria to save him. My question is, what’s our Assyria? Where do we run to in our times of fear, panic, insecurity, instead of running into the arms of the Lord? 

Do we try to get even? Do we blame others? Do we fall into apathy like Ahaz? Do we go back and keep chasing the same sin over and over and over again? Do we try to get comfortably numb in front of a digital device? What is our escape instead of running to the arms of the Lord? 

Next, who is the target of our toxic goodness? Who’s the Ahaz around us in our life, where we go, Hey, I’m not that bad. Look at them. They’re pretty bad. Who’s the target of our toxic goodness? Because the move of God will never respond to toxic goodness, because God gives grace to the humble. 

Lastly, and most importantly, where do we need to prepare the way for Jesus this Advent season? Where do we need to repent? Where do we need to tell the Lord, Hey, I’ve been doing this all wrong. I surrender my way, and I take upon myself Your way. Where do we need to repent of our sin in order to make room for Him? 

We sing this song, which, in my own mind, has a bit of a goofy bridge. It says, cleaning out the clutter for the only One who matters. Now, most of us are probably familiar with spring cleaning, but I would encourage us to do some Christmas cleaning this Advent season, some cleaning of the heart. Where do we need to clean out the clutter within ourselves to make room for Him? 

The world is so hungry, we have secular people and pagan people blasting hymns from the 1700s and 1800s in their stores, where they’re just trying to make more money. This is the perfect opportunity to share Him. So, let’s prepare the way for Him so that He can be seen, known, and experienced this Christmas season through us. 

Let’s pray. Holy Spirit, would You give us ears to hear what You’re saying to the churches? I pray particular grace over my own church family here at Vintage. Lord, we also pray for all the churches who surround us in this region. Would You make us forerunners like John the Baptist? Would You give us a heart and a mind of repentance so that we can clean out the clutter that lives within our minds, our hearts, and our spirits to make room for You?

Lord, for all the practical places where we need to repent, we’ve been running to the wrong things, we’ve been doing the wrong things, we’ve been seeking the wrong things, would You give us grace today as we go before You in prayer this week? And would You assess us and give us Your new creation life? 

Lord, for practical things, maybe we’ve been treating our spouse wrong, show us how to treat them right. Maybe we’ve been disciplining our kids wrong, show us how to have Your heart of gentleness and humility. Maybe we’ve been handling ourselves at work wrong, show us where we failed, and show us how You would have us live. Lord, we ask for Your peace, Your Kingdom.