Dealing with the Darkness

This week’s chapter from Isaiah can be divided into three sections. In the first, the God of Israel makes sure that His people know why they were sent into exile. It was not because of His weakness. It was because of their sin. The second section is Isaiah’s description of Jesus and His teaching ministry, the reaction against Him by His enemies and His bold confidence in His God. The last section is an exhortation to the saints. Here, Isaiah describes two different kinds of people and the choices that they make when they are confronted with the darkness. It is this last section that I will be dealing with this morning.

Please listen as I read Isaiah 50.

Here, Isaiah presents two ways in which you can respond to the different expressions of the darkness that come your way. Before I explore these two choices I want to remind you of one thing that we’ve already seen in Isaiah. ‘I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the LORD do all these things.’ You will face darkness. You already have. Sometimes the darkness will come in some big crisis moment and other times in much smaller doses. In all of this, you must remember that darkness is from Jesus. He sends it your way to do you good. If you forget this, life becomes very difficult, even overwhelming. You will face darkness. Don’t be surprised. And when it comes, remember who sends it and why.

Now, when you face this darkness you will have to choose how to respond. Isaiah has given us two options here. Let’s start with the second choice. ‘Behold, all you who kindle a fire, who equip yourselves with burning torches!’ It’s clear that this is a bad decision because of what Jesus promises to those who opt for this choice: ‘…you shall lie down in torment.’ Responding to the darkness by creating some light, by kindling a fire, is not a good idea. Why? Well, consider the other option, the first choice that Isaiah presents. The basic idea there is not to deal with the darkness directly but to trust in the name of the LORD and to rely on your God, to wait for Jesus to deal with it. Some refuse to do that. Instead, they act on their own. This is an example of self-reliance. ‘I can handle this myself. I will deal with the darkness.’ This is a significant danger for us because we have all been taught how to deal with darkness. We have been taught to rely on ourselves. When confronted with a problem, we are to figure out some solution. Self-reliance is a virtue in our subculture. But Jesus said, ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing.’ Now, did Jesus mean ‘nothing’ as in ‘nothing religious’, or did Jesus really mean plain old ‘nothing’? Actually, we needn’t worry about trying to figure out an answer to that question. It evaporates as soon as you remember that for us there is no ‘religious – not religious’ division. For us everything is ‘religious’. So, there is no part of your life where Jesus’ words don’t apply. ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing.’ However, many hear the appearances say, ‘This is something, and I did it on my own’. But the reality whispers, ‘This is nothing. Apart from Jesus, it is nothing.’ Self-reliance, kindling your own fire to dispel the darkness, is the attempt to take nothing and make it look like something. It will work for a while, but at some point the truth will out. So, don’t be fooled by those who seem to be able to do something without Jesus. Those who give themselves to dealing with the darkness in this way will lie down in torment. So says Jesus.

There is a better way to deal with darkness. Let me read that other verse again. ‘Who among you fears the LORD and obeys the voice of his servant? Let him who walks in darkness and has no light trust in the name of the LORD and rely on his God.’ Notice, again, that doing it right, fearing God and obeying His commands, does not mean that there will be no darkness. Following Jesus is hard. Expect it to be hard. He will send darkness. Don’t be surprised when He does. Rather, remember Paul’s exhortation. ‘In all things give thanks.’ The darkness is sent for your good. You will become a better person because of the darkness Jesus sends your way.

Now, how to respond? Let’s look more closely at that second verse. The first thing that I want you to notice from this is that your hope is not in yourself. Your hope is that someone else will deal with the darkness you face. So, - and I find this so very freeing – you don’t have to figure it all out. So, don’t look to yourself. Look to Jesus. Whenever the darkness confronts you, expect Jesus to deal with it. Now, according to our verse, that will require two things. First, it will require trust. Let me use an illustration that I suspect many of you have heard. This is one way to explain the notion of faith to an unbeliever. The house is on fire, and a little boy is still in his bedroom up on the second floor. The smoke is everywhere so he can’t see. But he hears a voice. He goes to his window. It’s his father calling to him. The boy hears his father, but he cannot see him because of the smoke. The father tells his son that he can see him. All the boy needs to do is jump from the window. His father promises to catch him. Christian faith is hearing the promise of Jesus in the Gospel, ‘I will catch you. I will make sure that you will be safe’, and then jumping into His arms. And that’s what it means to trust Jesus. My point is simply this. This kind of trust doesn’t just happen at the beginning of the Christian life. It is what is needed every day of a Christian’s life. Every day you will be confronted by the darkness. There will be something going on at the job. Your to do list for the day will be blown to pieces before breakfast is over. A relationship that you’ve enjoyed for some time is slowly falling apart. Questions loom. Challenges confront. Darkness. What do you do? Whom will you trust? You can listen to the voice that says, ‘You can to figure this out.’ Or you can listen to Jesus who says, ‘Let Me figure this out.’ Whom will you trust?

The other command here is ‘rely’. You are called to rely on your God. There is, here, the reminder of covenant language. ‘I will be your God and you will be My people.’ In His covenant with us, God promises that He will be to us all that a God is to be. He will provide, protect, encourage, discipline, love, care for, guide and whatever else a God is to do for His people. He is our God. And the command is simply for you to rely on Him, to depend on Him as your God. This Hebrew word for rely shows up in a familiar verse. ‘Trust in the LORD with all thine heart; and lean not unto thine own understanding.’ The Spirit is telling you not to lean on your own understanding of the situation in order to figure it out. Rather, lean on, depend upon, rely on your God to do that.

Doing this is really difficult. We all, to some extent or other, believe in self-reliance. The heroes of our culture are the people with a ‘take charge’ kind of attitude. We are told of the importance of being pro active and self-assured. And then, there is Jesus. He calls us to something that feels awfully passive, to something that boils down to reliance on someone else, to something that feels really weird. If you struggle with this, let me make some suggestions. Go back to that quote from Jesus: ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing.’ You’ll find it in John 15. What does that mean? Does ‘nothing’ actually mean ‘nothing’, or is it somehow limited? Consider the larger context. What is Jesus getting at? If there is some way that we can do something without Him, then that has much to say about how to understand our text. So, what does that ‘nothing’ mean? And then consider this: When you are confronted with some aspect of the darkness, you usually need to respond right then. Office politics waits for no one. So, what do you think? Can Jesus respond in real time? Can He provide some light exactly when it’s needed? If the answer is ‘No’, then that has a lot to say about how to apply our text. Here’s my thought behind this suggestion. Sometimes facing the real questions and wrestling with them a little can be the doorway to the next level of discipleship. In facing these kinds of questions we bring the Bible’s commands and promises into closer connection with life as we live it. You’ve done this kind of thing in the past. It’s something that we all need to do again and again. How else will the Gospel become real? I have dealt with these kinds of questions, and I am convinced that: ‘nothing’ means ‘nothing’ and that Jesus will respond sooner than you think, if you are willing to trust Him and ready to listen for Him. But my believing all of that is not the same as you believing all of that. Some of you need to take the time to wrestle with these things. Ask the hard questions, and see what answers you come up with.

Now, to the practical how-to. You see the danger of self-reliance. You understand that you are to trust and rely on Jesus when it comes to dealing with the darkness. So, what’s next? How do we actually do this? Let’s talk about Nehemiah. He was an exile from Jerusalem. Some of the Jews had returned to Jerusalem and one of them reported to Nehemiah how life in Jerusalem was going. And it wasn’t going well. Darkness. This is how Nehemiah responded. ‘As soon as I heard these words I sat down and wept and mourned for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven.’ Some time later this happened: ‘In the month of Nisan, in the twentieth year of King Artaxerxes, when wine was before him, I took up the wine and gave it to the king. Now I had not been sad in his presence. And the king said to me, “Why is your face sad, seeing you are not sick? This is nothing but sadness of the heart.” Then I was very much afraid. I said to the king, “Let the king live forever! Why should not my face be sad, when the city, the place of my fathers' graves, lies in ruins, and its gates have been destroyed by fire?” Then the king said to me, “What are you requesting?” So I prayed to the God of heaven. And I said to the king…’ Here’s my thought from the example of Nehemiah. If you are going to trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon your God, then you will need to pray. There are two kinds of prayer that you will need to pursue. First, there is the prayer that happens when you step back from the situation and discuss it with the Father. That was Nehemiah’s first response. He ‘continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven’. For me, this is my time for morning prayer. You may have a different time. But this is the time when you bring to God the different areas that need His attention. There’s some issue at the job, one of the kids is coming down with something, or there’s some other bit of darkness that is looming on the horizon. You need to spend time, each day, discussing these things with the Father. But then there is the other kind of prayer, the quick shot to heaven. I get this from the time when Nehemiah was before the king. ‘So I prayed to the God of heaven.’ He doesn’t tell us what he prayed, but I’m guessing that it was something profound like, ‘Lord, help!’ You need to cry out to your God in the situation, right when the darkness confronts. And sometimes it’s just saying, ‘Lord, help!’ This is shorthand for, ‘Lord, you know how I can look to myself in situations like these. You know that I really can’t figure out what to do on my own. You know how weak my trust in You really is. So, Lord, please help me! And please do it now.’ So, you need to pray, and you to pray in both ways. It’s just a fact that without prayer you’ll never make it. The lack of prayer is the evidence of self-reliance.

Now, I need to say that you will fail at this. I don’t say that to discourage you. But it is a fact. Remember that you are a sinner. So, you will fail at this. But Jesus came for sinners and that’s what qualifies you to be a Christian. So, your failing at this does not mean that you are a failure. Now that you are His, you have His Spirit. And what the Spirit does is teach you how to follow Jesus. And that means that you are in the process of learning how to do that. And learning includes failing, getting lots of things wrong. Just think about the Twelve and how often they failed as they were being taught by Jesus. So, do not be discouraged. But understand what is real. You are learning. Expect to fail. Jesus expects that, and He still loves you. But by the Spirit you will fail less and less.

At some point this week you will face darkness, and you will choose poorly. The Spirit will point out that you chose to kindle your own fire, to depend on yourself, instead of depending on Jesus. What you will need to do at that point should be clear: repent and believe the Gospel. Admit your sin and come again to Jesus for forgiveness and for change. Some other time this week you will also face darkness. This time you will trust in the name of the LORD and rely on your God and you’ll be able to do that because of what the Spirit has been teaching you. And that’s your life as a disciple, learning how to follow Jesus when the darkness comes; and though you stumble at times, you still make progress, bit by bit. Isaiah warns the rebellious that they will lie down in torment. Life will not be good for them. But that implies that for those who do work at following Jesus there will be good. As you work at trusting and relying on Him, your experience of life – real life, eternal life – will grow. There will be more joy and hope and love. Your ability to trust will develop. There will be much to enjoy. And most importantly, you will be able to make Jesus look really good. So, let me encourage you to work at this. It will be hard, but it will be worth it.