“Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a Son, and shall call His name Immanuel.” Isaiah 7:14
If you are like me, you may be having a hard time getting into the spirit of the season. Faced with a war, geopolitical unrest, ongoing recession, inflation, a cultural war, societal polarization, and the never-ending pandemic, it seems like a miserable dark cloud is hanging over our heads. There is so much to worry about that the joy of Christmas seems almost out of place.
I was recently reading the book of Isaiah. The prophet Isaiah lived in Jerusalem during the bleakest time of the Jewish nation. He prophesied during the Assyrian king Sennacherib’s siege of Jerusalem, when the city was surrounded by over 200,000 Assyrians. The Assyrians sent a letter to King Hezekiah, blasphemed God, and threatened Jerusalem with annihilation (37:9-13). The king and the whole city trembled in fear.
As Hezekiah took the letter to God and prayed, Isaiah told the king that God Himself would defend the city (37:21-35). “Then the angel of the LORD went out and killed in the camp of the Assyrians one hundred and eighty-five thousand; and when people arose early in the morning, there were the corpses.” (37:36-37)
Through Isaiah, God reminds us that in the Jewish nation’s darkest hour, He intervened. And in human history’s darkest hour, God intervened by sending us His Son.
Almost one-third of Isaiah’s writings contain prophecies about Jesus Christ. Isaiah foretold how Jesus would come to give His life as a sacrifice for our sins (Isaiah 53). Jesus would come back to life after being crucified (26:19), and He will establish His kingdom (9:6-7).
Praise the Lord! Jesus is God’s intervention into human history that was destined for annihilation. Because of Jesus, we have hope and can live in hope regardless of our circumstances. Merry Christmas! May you be filled with all joy and hope.