Dennis Tuuri

Book of Isaiah beginning at chapter 8 verse 19 and going through chapter 9 verse 7. Isaiah 8:19-9:7. And when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter, should not a people seek unto their God, for the living, to the dead, to the law, and to the testimony? If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

And they shall pass through it hardly be and hungry. And it shall come to pass that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves and curse their king and their God and look upward. And they shall look under the earth, and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness. Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation. When at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations.

The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death. Upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation and not increased the joy. They joy before thee according to the joy in harvest. And as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden and the staff of his shoulder. The rod of his oppressor is in the day of Midian.

For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government in peace, there shall be no end. Upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this.

Let’s pray.

Last week after my sermon, Keith Hansen gave me a quote from George MacDonald about really echoing much some of what I mentioned last week in terms of the blessings that God gives us. They can become idolatrous to us whether they’re material blessings and prosperity, the gifts we receive at Christmas, or even instruction in the word and doctrine can become idolatrous if we somehow disconnect it from the person and work of Jesus Christ and God the Father and God the Holy Spirit as well.

MacDonald said this: “The recognition of a living master is far more than any notions about him. And the worship of him, a thousand truths are working, unknown and yet active, which embodied in theory and disassociated from the living mind that was in Christ, will certainly breed worms, as any owner of hoarded manna.”

Now that’s a nice quote and what he’s saying is that if somehow we disassociate from the person and work of God as the person, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the doctrines and truths we learn about him, then they become as cursed as the manna which was given by God as a picture of Jesus Christ, yet hoarded, disassociated from the command of God and from his person. That manna rotted and just as surely the blessings that we accumulate to ourselves not realizing, not placing the significance and the person of God behind those blessings, whether the material prosperity, his word and his law and the blessings that come with it or whatever it is disassociated from the person of God becomes a curse to us.

Now, Christmas, one of the reasons I like Christmas and why I think it’s a good time to rejoice before God at this time of year is because it reminds us of this, doesn’t it?

Christmas is about the birth of a baby. The Son of God comes to earth, becomes incarnate, takes on human flesh as a person as we can identify with people. He identifies with us. He takes upon himself the flesh of human beings that he might suffer and die in that flesh and redeem those who have been held in bondage through fear of death all their lives and deliver them from that bondage. So Christmas properly understood helps us to focus upon the person of Jesus Christ.

And so I think that it’s good and proper then at this time of the year to read the verses that remind us of the incarnation of the Son and the implications of that. And I’m just going to talk shortly here on the verses from Isaiah 8 and 9.

Now, in verse three of chapter 9, we read, “They joy before thee according to the joy of harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.” It’s our purpose this day that we rejoice in the person and work of Jesus Christ. And that rejoicing is aided and embedded as we understand the implications of his coming to earth. Then, and then as we also look at the advent briefly of Joshua, the lesser Jesus, Jesus in the land of Canaan before then and then also bringing it up into our day and age, the advent of Jesus Christ in our midst today.

So I want to look at Isaiah 8 and 9, the verses we just read real briefly, focusing on the person, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, the implications of that for our lives. And this is kind of a result of the last two chapters of the book of Joshua, chapters 18 and 19, where we finish up the inheritance of the tribes. Two of those tribes were mentioned in the reading we just read from Isaiah 8 and 9, Zebulun and Naphtali, they are said to dwell in the Galilee of the nations or the Galilee of the Gentiles is another way to interpret that phrase that we read from verse one of chapter 9.

And I’m going to talk briefly here then an attempt to get our joy to be full in the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. I want to talk briefly about the Galilee of the nations, the darkness that precedes the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ. And then secondly, that Jesus come in that particular portion of the geography of the Holy Land.

Now, we talked about geography a lot in the book of Joshua and we got to understand that the geography pictured for us there sets up then the arrival of the Lord Jesus Christ in Galilee itself and he spends most of his ministry there. So, the darkness of the Gentiles of the nations. Secondly, the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to Galilee. Third, that the Galilee of the nations, that phrase takes on a new significance for us as we understand the implications of the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ to that portion of the globe and the implications of it and then we’ll draw some correlations to us today here in America in 1984.

So first the Galilee of the nations: you’ll notice a tremendous transition of course going from chapter 8 to chapter 9 the verses we just read it talks about the darkness the dimness the cursing of God upon men in this particular portion of Canaan in verses including verses of chapter 8 and into first verse of chapter 9 says that he afflicts them in the land of Zebulun the land of Naphtali in the sea beyond Jordan and Galilee of the nations.

Zebulun and Naphtali occupied lower and upper portions of Galilee. If you remember on that map we had there the two tribes on either side budding to the Sea of Galilee itself on the north of Israel. And they’re referred to as the Galilee of the Gentiles, this land rather is referred to as the Galilee of the Gentiles or the Galilee of the nations. I think for a couple of different reasons.

First of all, because they were in the north, they were close to the Gentiles on the northern portion of the land of Canaan. They were subject then to continual warfare with Syria and then later with Assyria. Continual striding would go on in that particular region from the establishment of those tribes in the book of Joshua for the next 1500 years. There’d be warfare up in that area. The Gentiles would be frequently living in the context of them in terms of combat and also in terms of influencing then the land the tribes of Israel in Zebulun and Naphtali in the area of Galilee.

So because of their physical proximity to the Gentiles, that circle of land up there that portion of land around the Sea of Galilee to the north of it is referred to as the Galilee of the Gentiles because of their proximity because of their warfare with the people of Israel and also because of their influence then the resulting influence of Gentiles living in the context of the tribes of Israel.

So we have those significances to this particular phrase, but the phrase I think is also applied to the tribal areas themselves, to the people of God, so-called people of God, lineage back to the father Jacob, but who had essentially apostasized from the faith.

We see in the verses that lead up to verse one and verse two of chapter 9 that they dwelt in darkness. That darkness was a couple of things. First, it was an ignorance or a rejection of the word of God. We read “to the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to these things, the testimony that is they have no truth in them. They have no light in them. They are darkness.” So the darkness of God’s people here is portrayed as a removal from the word of God which brings to us his presence and understanding of his person into our lives.

But secondly, the darkness is then the resultant persecutions that come upon them. The warfare of the Gentiles against them and the ungodly influence of the Gentiles was essentially the curse of God upon a disobedient people who had rejected his law. So the darkness is portrayed in Isaiah 8 and the end of chapter 8 and beginning into verse 1 and 2 of chapter 9.

The darkness of the Galilee of the nations is that land occupied by the tribes in Galilee. That darkness is related to the absence of the word and as an influence in their lives and instead the influence of the gentile nations around them in judgment from God against them. But it is this particular piece of geography that is the focal point then of the coming of the light that’s described in verse 2 onward. The light that is of course the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The scriptures frequently ascribe to Jesus the attributions of light and the sun itself. For instance, we read in John 8:12 that Jesus is the light of the world. In Isaiah 43:6 and 49:6 that he is a light to the nations. We read in Malachi 4:2 that he is the Sun of Righteousness. And of course Psalm 19 relates as well Jesus to that rising sun upon a darkened world. Indeed in John 2:11, we read of Jesus’s first miracle where he comes and as the scriptures tell us, he begins to manifest forth his glory by his miracles and teachings that are accomplished in the region of Galilee.

So Jesus first comes to Galilee. If you turn your scriptures to Matthew 4:12-17, the particular verses we just read are cited in terms of Jesus’s early ministry. Turn to Matthew 4, verses 12-17.

We read there of Jesus beginning his ministry in this way: “Now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed unto Galilee. And leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zebulun and Naphtali, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, ‘The land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, by the way of the sea beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up.’ From that time, Jesus began to preach and to say, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’”

Jesus comes to this particular area. Apparently, we see direct implications from Isaiah 8 and 9 and other places that this particular portion of the geography of Canaan was the most oppressed, the most afflicted, the darkest of the region. The most oppression happened to the people of God there. Of course, based upon their disobedience to God’s word, but nonetheless, it is in the darkest place of the geography essentially then that Jesus upon hearing word of John’s imprisonment, which is the beginning then of his ministry as we have the shift from John the Baptist to Jesus the Messiah to come, the Savior who has come, now he immediately goes to this particular region where his people are most afflicted by sin and misery, where the depths of their sin in Israel are most understood.

Galilee is scorned by the contemporaries of the apostles of the Lord Jesus Christ. You remember the Pharisees said, “Are you still following this fellow from Galilee? Don’t you know that no prophet arises out of Galilee?” It was this place of scorn and derision because of its intermingling with gentile ways and practices. And yet it is there at the very darkest portion, so to speak, of the geography of Canaan, the Lord Jesus Christ comes and begins to shine forth the light of his words, the light of his miracles, and then the saving light of the work upon the cross.

So the Galilee of the Gentiles, the Galilee of the nations takes on a new significance. Now it is the place that Jesus comes and begins to manifest himself and his work and his presence in the context of his people. The scriptures then talk about Galilee as a place no longer of darkness but a place of great light and blessing.

Theodoret strikingly remarks the following relative to this region of Galilee as the coming of Messiah came to that place and enlivened it. Galilee was the native country of the holy apostles. Apparently, Pink, for instance, says that all of the twelve apostles came from the region of Galilee. I haven’t checked that out, but I suppose at least most of them did. They came from that darkened region of darkness and absence of light. Yet, when Christ comes, that’s the place where the holy apostles come from, Galilee.

It was in Galilee that the Lord performed most of his miracles. There he cleansed the leper. There he gave back to the centurion his servant sound again. There he removed the fever rather from Peter’s wife, Peter’s mother-in-law. There he brought back to life the daughter of Jairus who was dead. There he multiplied the loaves. There he changed the water into wine. The Galilee of the nations, that’s where the light of Jesus Christ comes and shines as his advent comes upon that nation and that portion of the nation that is darkest.

So this Galilee of the nations becomes then no longer a place of darkness, but as Isaiah 9 says, “the people that dwelt in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death. Upon them hath the light shined,” and that is the Lord Jesus Christ.

While previously to this God had multiplied the nation, but not increased their joy, they now joy before Christ and before the Father according to the joy of harvest. And as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. The brightness of his coming is set against the blackness of men’s sin and the perverting Gentile influence upon his people. And therefore, the light of Jesus Christ comes to drive back that darkness and that curse from God as he comes to roll back the curse as far as it is found and to bring light and blessing to his people.

And now the term Gentile, the Galilee of the Gentiles, the Galilee of the nations takes on a new significance because the blessing that is described in Isaiah 9 and is portrayed for us in the rest of the scripture is not simply reduced or restricted to the coming of Jesus Christ to his people Israel, the twelve tribes. No, because it is in the Galilee, the Galilee of the Gentiles, that he now begins to preach forth the message which will indeed draw all nations of the world to him.

And his ministry then begins in the very place where Jews and Gentiles are intermingled in sin. And yet he comes to shine forth his light and cause them to be intermingled now in true worship of the Lord himself. He brings them to his holy mountain. He brings them to the preaching of his word. And so the Galilee of the Gentiles becomes now not a term of derision, not a term of darkness, but a term of lightness, of light and blessing as well.

The term Galilee itself means actually a circle or a haven. Galilee is where Christ went when he came back from Egypt and it provided a haven then for his mother and father and himself from the attacks of Herod. But now we see that haven the Galilee itself becomes the haven for the Gentiles because the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ is the true haven for those who seek rest and solace and right relationship to God, repentance for sins and enlivenment back to new life coming back from the dead through the resurrection of their souls.

The Galilee of the Gentiles then where Jesus Christ preaches forth the word takes on the new significance that it is now the haven of the Gentiles. The blessings that are described in Isaiah 9 chapter 1 and following says that the government shall be upon his shoulders and all nations shall stream forth to him. He’ll be called the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Prince of Peace.

The Lord Jesus Christ’s light comes in that advent then to the darkest place to bring not simply light of deliverance to his people in terms of national Israel but light in terms of the deliverance of all those who are elected in the person and work of the Lord Jesus Christ.

J.A. Alexander in summing up this chapter 9 says: “The change for the better which was promised at the close of the eighth chapter is described in the ninth as consisting in the rise of the great light upon the darkness in the increase of the nation and their joy excited by deliverance from bondage and the universal prevalence of peace arising from the advent of a divine successor to David who would restore, establish, and enlarge his kingdom without limitation.”

Hengstenberg says the following: “The people are filled with joy on account of the deliverance granted to them by the Lord. Their deliverance from the yoke of their oppressors from the bondage of the world which now comes to an end. As the bestower of such deliverance, the prophet beholds a divine child who having obtained dominion will exercise it with the skill of the God-man, who will with fatherly love in all eternity care for his people and create peace to them who will at the same time infinitely extend his dominion the kingdom of David not by means of the force of arms but by means of light and righteousness the exercise of which will attract the nations to him so that with the increase of dominion the increase of peace goes hand in hand the guarantee that these glorious results shall really take place is the zeal of the Lord and it is this to which the prophet points.”

At the close of this section in Isaiah 9, the Gentiles, the Galilee of the Gentiles rather, has become a place now of great brilliant light.

Now, we’ve seen in the coming of Joshua to Canaan, the coming of a deliverer, Joshua, the lesser Jesus. Jesus is the Greek form for the name Joshua. Joshua means Jehovah is Salvation, Yahweh is Salvation. Jesus means Savior. Same name essentially. And we’ve seen in the book of Joshua, the coming and advent of the Lord Jesus Christ in the person and work of the lesser Jesus, Joshua. We’ve seen him come to a dark region.

Remember why he’s there. The sin, the rebellion of the Canaanites has become full. God’s wrath will come upon them because they become fully evil, developed in their iniquity. It’s interesting, you know, the article about that Oregonian editorial, that new evidence, not editorial, rather a piece from the science page I believe in the Oregonian talked about the new research that has been done on the Philistines.

Remember the title of the article in the science page of all places? “Biblical Bad Guys” and the subheading says, “Archaeologists Dig Up Real Story of the Philistines: A Cultured, Urban, Advanced People.” Well, you know, they might have been in the sense of culture and urbanity and advancement of what the Oregonian believes in absence of a knowledge of God and instead an attempt to build culture and society and civilization upon the works of men.

But that’s the darkness that was described to us in the prophet in the statements that Joshua would come to the people whose iniquity had become full. They may well have been cultured and vain and advanced. And it’s interesting that the Lord Jesus Christ in his advent at the time that Isaiah 9 says is a time of great darkness over the world, not simply the place of Zebulun and Naphtali but still the Lord Jesus Christ comes and there we have also a people developed in that region who had occupied Israel, the Roman Empire, who also become advanced in their iniquity and rebellion against God.

And they also of course are described by people in our contemporary day as cultured and urban and civilized and advanced culturally as well. The Romans, they’re held up as a great model for us today if there were some kind of great thing. Augustus Caesar was essentially the antichrist. He was the false Christ. He claimed that salvation was only possible through Caesar that was printed upon their coins.

The advent of Caesar provides the backdrop for the real advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

So Joshua comes to a sin-darkened people in Canaan and brings salvation to the elect of God, not simply tribal Israel, but to Rahab and to others, the Gibeonites as well, in the context of Canaan. The Lord Jesus Christ comes to a darkened land as well and brings salvation finally to the world that the salvation offered by Joshua was simply a foreshadowing of.

And these things are important for us today because we live in the context of a world that is also cultured and urban and advanced in terms of its civilization or it thinks to be in terms of the Oregonian perspective on the Philistines and the lands in which we live. A land that has departed from the gospel of Christ who ignores the blessings of God and instead attempts to build a cultured, urbane and civilized society on the basis of man’s own efforts.

It’s interesting that the culture we live in likes Christmas, you know, they like the idea of peace, goodwill, and joy on earth. They don’t like Easter much because they don’t like the reminder of sin and that only peace can only come through repentance from sin. Remember the Prince of Peace himself originally that title is given to the man who thrust through a sinning Israelite, a man, a prince of one of the tribes for to bring God’s blessing to the people dealing with sin.

But they like Christmas. They like peace, goodwill, and all the blessings of God that God promises to those in Christ. But of course, they’re perverted and used for their own ends. Well, we live in a darkened time as well, I guess, is what I’m saying. The iniquity of the Amorites, so to speak, in our day and age, the Philistines in our cathedrals is also becoming full. They’re becoming advanced and cultured in their rejection of God in an attempt to build society apart from him.

And so the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, both in Joshua’s time historically, and then the advent of the incarnate Christ, to bring light to the world 2,000 years ago, also promises the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ to God’s church whenever they see again the land in which they live, becoming the Galilee of the Gentiles, of the nations in the negative sense.

Matthew Henry said this about this passage from Isaiah 9: “Note, in the worst of times, God’s people have nevertheless to comfort themselves with something to allay and balance their troubles. They are persecuted but not forsaken, sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. And it is a matter of comfort to us when things are at their darkest, that he who forms the light and creates the darkness has appointed to both their bounds and set the one over against the other. He can say hitherto the dimness the darkness shall go and it shall go no further.”

Again to quote from Hengstenberg: “The prophecy is not exhausted by this one fulfillment and the fulfillment in a new prophecy. Wheresoever in the church we perceive a new Galilee of the Gentiles we may upon the ground of this passage confidently hope that the saving activity of the Lord will gloriously display itself once more.”

And so we gather around the throne room of God today, praising him for the advent of light, rejoicing in the coming of light to remove the darkness of the dark and gentile world and the church of God that prostitutes itself to gentile thoughts and practices. We rejoice that Jesus came 2,000 years ago. We rejoice that Joshua came 3,500 years ago and brought peace, the order of God, to that particular portion of the land.

We rejoice that after 1500 years of sin and backsliding on the part of the tribes of God, he brought the Lord Jesus Christ to bring the true light of the nations to Galilee itself. And we rejoice because now we know that as we see once more the Galilee of the Gentiles appearing in our day and age, the rebellion of God’s people, the rejection of the law and the testimony, and the coming darkness then upon their understanding and thoughts, and the intrusion of Gentiles into the people of God, we know that the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ is near once more.

He comes in history repeatedly as he came 2,000 years ago to drive back the darkness to bring the light of the preaching of God’s word. And we rejoice this day that God’s word is once more being preached forth in its full implications in its full glory. The light is being removed now from the bushel basket that has been placed over it by theologies that rejected the law of God, the dominion of Jesus Christ, and the words that we just read from Isaiah 8 and 9, “to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to these because there’s no light in them.” And that light then comes that Christ’s government might be established and might be increased and at the increase of it there is no end.

So we rejoice this day in the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You know we spent a lot of time talking about the blessings upon the twelve tribes from Deuteronomy and Exodus. Deuteronomy 33 concludes the blessing of the twelve tribes in this manner:

“There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rideth upon the heaven in thy help and in his excellency on the sky. The eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. And he shall thrust out the enemy from before thee, and shall say, ‘Destroy them.’ Israel then will dwell in safety alone. The fountain of Jacob shall be upon a land of corn and wine. Also, his heavens shall drop down dew. Happy art thou, O Israel. Who is like unto thee, oh people saved by the Lord, the shield of thy help? And who is the sword of thy excellency? Thine enemy shall be found liars unto thee, and thou shalt tread upon their high places.”

And thus ends the blessing of God upon his people. We are the true Israel. We are the ones who in the providence of God taken through a period of darkness and brought into the great light of the gospel. We are the ones who rejoice in his presence now as in the joy of harvest.

And every time we see again the manifestation of darkness as the church rejects God’s word, we know that as a brief interlude before God once more shines the light of his gospel into our culture and civilization. And then once more the church rejoices in these words from Deuteronomy 33: “There is none like unto the God of Jeshurun, who rides upon the heavens in thy help.”

He rides upon the heavens in our help and he holds us up. His hands, his wings hold us up keep us secure and safe and more than that promises that our feet rather shall tread upon the necks of our enemies. Now we don’t take that in some kind of joyous delight somehow wreaking and meting out God’s retribution but we rejoice in that because it means the establishment of the Lord Jesus Christ, his followers, his believers, his elect covenant community, their establishment, their peace, God’s order once more in the land on the basis not of might or arms, but on the basis of the preaching forth of his word, as he manifested for us in Galilee 2,000 years ago in his first advent and has repeatedly throughout history manifested in advent time and time again.

When his word is preached forth, it brings blessing to his people. It brings the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ into our lives. Again, it takes the abstract doctrines that we speak of and puts them in the context of the person of Jesus Christ who is amongst us, resides in us through the work of the Holy Spirit. And his work then in his presence brings forth victory and blessing and great joy from his people.

We’re going to spend the rest of today singing songs, reading passages, hearing passages about this joy and singing forth our joy to the Lord Jesus Christ, to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit.

Let’s pray.

Father, we do rejoice in your presence. We thank you, Lord God, for the light of Jesus Christ. We thank you that it comes to enlighten our dark hearts as well to roll back the sin and the curse of sin that you place justly upon it. We thank you, Lord God, that you have brought us then into the blessed light of the Lord Jesus Christ and into his kingdom. And we pray now that we would rejoice before you as men in times of harvest.

May we rejoice in the birth, the advent of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the many advents foretold by that one, his coming to roll back darkness and to shine light into the world through the preaching of his word. We thank you for these things and we pray, Father, you would bless this service to your glory and to our edification. In Christ’s name we ask it. Amen.