Isaiah 9:1-7 page 1
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Isaiah 9:1-7 page 1 |
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A Hindu, a Muslim and a politician were attending a conference. Unfortunately, the hotel was overbooked and the manager explained that there was only one room available with two beds. Apart from that, there was an old barn in the field outside. The Hindu humbly offered to spend the night in the barn, leaving the other two to enjoy the comfortable beds. But a few minutes after the Muslim and the politician fell asleep, there was a knock at the door. It was the Hindu, deeply apologetic, but there was a cow in the barn and his religious scruples forbade him to spend the night in its company. So the Muslim graciously offered to take his place. A few more minutes passed and there was another knock on the door. It was the Muslim. There was a pig in the bard and, he regretted profusely, he could not compromise his beliefs by sharing the night with it. So the politician reluctantly gave up his bed and walked off to the barn. A
few minutes later, there was a loud knock at the door. It was the cow and the
pig. Now perhaps you think that by telling that story on Christmas Eve I'm going to link to Luke 2:1-20 and the 'no room at the inn' theme. But I'm not. The subject of politicians makes me think of Isaiah 9:1-7. For here is a manifesto for the Messiah. Now the trouble with political manifestos is that the parties do not always fulfil the commitments they make in manifestos at election time. No wonder Winston Churchill defined the main qualifications for being a politician as
'The ability to foretell what is going to happen tomorrow, next week, next month
and next year - and the ability afterwards to explain why it didn't happen.' And what we have in Isaiah 9 is a manifesto that was not completely fulfilled. Isaiah expresses his prophetic hopes in tenses that suggest the things are happening or already have happened, but then at the end he sees it as being fulfilled by God in the future: 'The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this' [verse 7]. It's a passage Christians traditionally associate with Jesus, and especially Christmas. We take the four titles of verse 6 - Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace - as applying to him (although there is no New Testament warrant for doing so). But the prophecy is associated with Jesus by Matthew. When Jesus as an adult moves from Nazareth to Capernaum, he notes that Jesus is moving to the area denoted at the beginning of this prophecy, Zebulun and Naphtali, Galilee of the Gentiles, and he says this fulfils the word that the people walking in darkness have seen a great light [Matthew 4:15-16]. And so it's not unreasonable to regard Isaiah 9 in broad terms as like the manifesto of the Messiah. Even when Jesus came, he only began to fulfil these manifesto commitments. But he is continuing to fulfil them and one day they will be completely fulfilled. Unlike the politicians, he won't have to explain why they didn't happen. What are the manifesto commitments of the Messiah? There are many found in Scripture, but I detect three in Isaiah 9:
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Copyright © David D Faulkner, 2006 except where other sources are attributed or noted as inspiration. |
