Matthew 4:16

Thursday, 26 September 2024

The people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,
And upon those who sat in the region and shadow of death
Light has dawned.” Matthew 4:16

“The people sitting in darkness, it saw Light – great, and sitting in a country and death-shadow, Light – it arose upon them” (CG).

In the previous verse, Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the coming great Light began. That now continues with the words, “The people sitting in darkness.”

The words explain the situation described in the previous verse. The Assyrians had come in and conquered the land, removing the northern ten tribes for their faithless conduct before the Lord. In place of them, pagans from around the Assyrian empire were brought in. They worshiped all the gods of their homelands, bringing great spiritual darkness when they did.

Many of these false religions partly continued, being intermingled with the customs and religion of the Jews, as it said in 1 Kings 17:33, “They feared the Lord, yet served their own gods—according to the rituals of the nations from among whom they were carried away.”

This lack of properly worshiping the Lord continued throughout the years. And notice the use of the present participle, sitting. Those translations which render it as “sat” do a disservice to the intent. They were sitting and continued to sit in it.

The light of the worship of the Lord under the law did not permeate the darkness in which they sat. Something greater was needed to pull them out of the state of darkness in which they were stuck. But when Christ came, of this area of darkness, “it saw Light – great.”

It is referring to Jesus and His ministry. This is the area of His main focus for an extended period. And it wasn’t just to the Jews, even though that was the primary calling. An example of His bringing light to others is found in John 4 where Jesus was presented as the Messiah to the Samaritans in Sychar.

Throughout the region, there was only darkness. And this included the religion of the Jews in the synagogues. They had been taken over by the religious leaders who misdirected the people with their false, self-centered, teachings. These received the greatest rebukes from Jesus.

As He said to them, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you travel land and sea to win one proselyte, and when he is won, you make him twice as much a son of hell as yourselves” Matthew 23:15

Thus, the words of Isaiah continue, referring to the masses of this region, “and sitting in a country.” 

The people were sitting in darkness and the darkness is now equated to the country. The area is within the original borders of the land of Israel, and yet there was only darkness. Something greater than the law was needed to move them into a right relationship with the Lord, as the words of the prophecy next note, “and death-shadow.”

The Greek is two separate nouns: skia, a shadow, and thanatos, death. Taken together, they translate the single word found in the Hebrew of Isaiah, tsalmaveth – “death-shadow.” The death referred to carries a double connotation. It is the spiritual death that results in the physical death of humanity.

In other words, without the spiritual life of Christ, man is destined to die. This is what Jesus came to change. He came to give light and life to His people, bringing them out of the spiritual death in which they lived and from the physical death that all suffer because of it. In His coming, the words of the prophecy thus say, “Light – it arose upon them.”

The words are beautifully explained by John as he opened his gospel narrative –

“In Him was life, and the life was the light of men. 5 And the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it.
6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7 This man came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all through him might believe. 8 He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. 9 That was the true Light which gives light to every man coming into the world.” John 1:4-9

In Jesus’ appearing, the words of Isaiah are fulfilled. He is the Great Light that came into the world and who appeared in the spiritual dark lands noted by Isaiah.

Life application: In John 7, we read these words –

“Then the Pharisees answered them, ‘Are you also deceived? 48 Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him? 49 But this crowd that does not know the law is accursed.’
50 Nicodemus (he who came to Jesus by night, being one of them) said to them, 51 ‘Does our law judge a man before it hears him and knows what he is doing?’
52 They answered and said to him, ‘Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.’” John 7:47-52

These religious leaders had the words of Isaiah right before them, and yet they refused to accept what he had written because it would not fit their presuppositions about Jesus, and they failed to check things out.

This is still the case today. Why are there some who follow the doctrines of Calvinism and some who completely reject Calvin’s main points? Why are there people who accept that you can lose your salvation while others teach salvation is eternal? Many believe in a rapture while others reject the notion as silly. And even among those who accept the premise of a rapture, there are disagreements on the timing of the event.

This is a teeny portion of various disagreements within Christianity over doctrine. In fact, it is an infinitesimally small portion of them. Why is this so?

There are several reasons. One is that people are arguing from different viewpoints about the source of what they believe. Some hold to Scripture alone, but they may hold to a single source text of the Hebrew or Greek or to a single English translation.

Some think that the church has been given ongoing authority to set doctrine while others accept that the Bible is the sole source of doctrine for believers. But the latter again goes back to “which source text or translation.”

Even if a standard is agreed on, if one fails to take the Bible in its proper context, there can be no agreement on how doctrine is presented. If Jesus speaking to Israel under the law is used to make a doctrinal point in the church, and if that conflicts with what Paul says in his epistles, then there will be a disagreement on a particular doctrine.

And, of course, there are those who simply pull doctrines out of nowhere and teach them as if they are biblically correct. These may be based on emotions, sensational events, or desires for power or money. In using those as the basis for instructing others who are uneducated in proper theology, people are captivated and brought into often disastrous situations.

We each must decide what standard we will accept as authoritative. As God has said His word is authoritative, that is the safest place to hang one’s hat. From there, each step of the way, we should consider our next step carefully while fixing our eyes on Jesus, whom the Bible says is “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2).

If we do this, we should at least have our priorities right as we continue our walk before our God. Let us do this above all else as we seek His face in the Great Light of the face of Jesus Christ our Lord.

Heavenly Father, Hallelujah to You for having sent Jesus to lead the way out of the darkness of this world and into the magnificent light of Your glory. Thank You for what You have done for us. Hallelujah and Amen.