(1) Because They Have No Dawn

Isaiah 8:22 - 9:2  To the teaching and to the testimony! If they will not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land, greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their God, and turn their faces upward.   And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish. And they will be thrust into thick darkness. But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.  The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shined.

Remember my post about Nehemiah and how then God stopped speaking for 400 years? Four hundred years of silence.  His people wandered in darkness for centuries because they would not listen to God's warnings against idolatry.
Isaiah is giving them hope that a Savior is coming - a Messiah.  The Light will shine on the Israelites again, but will they 'see' it?  It would come, never to be extinguished again.  Never again would God's voice be silent.  The Light would come for those that lived for so long in darkness.
God kept His promise to His people.  He always does.
As we begin to look forward to the celebration of Christ's birth, let's ponder the lives of those wayward ones, without hope and without purpose and without God's guidance.  What would we do with this prophecy to come?  How dark is our world?  How wayward are we? There is a dawn for us. There is a Light...

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!