Message by Rev. Yeomyeong Jeon
Translated by Mariko Tsujimoto
December 10, 2023
Isaiah 9: 1-7
Hello, everyone gathering in Battle Creek. My name is Yeomyeong Jeon and I used to attend the Battle Creek Japanese worship services from 2011 to 2015. I attended Western Seminar in Holland Michigan and used to give sermons as a seminar student. Attending the Battle Creek Japanese worship service once a month is one of the most precious memories while I studied in the US.
People of many demographics were all gathered and everyone was welcome as they were. Seeing how we were all one in Christ, was like a preview of heaven. After graduating seminary, I was called to serve at Ibaraki Bible Church in Osaka and Kobe Megumi Chapel for about seven years. Last year, I returned back to South Korea to live with my parents due to my mother’s health. I live in a city called Anson and gather with a few other families to have worship. I am truly happy to be able to worship with everyone from Michigan again. To God and everyone, I am very thankful to be invited to the Christmas service.
As I was preparing this sermon, I was thinking back to the five years that I spent with you all in Michigan. At the time, I saw various reactions to the Gospel as I interacted and ministered to many Japanese students. For some, their faith became grounded and strong as time went and set roots into a church. But for others, they may have been interested in Christianity and life as a Christian, but were not able to accept the Gospel. As I encountered the latter people, I asked myself the question; “why is the Gospel difficult to accept for some?” “What are the obstacles in accepting the Gospel?” There are numerous answers to those questions; however, a very common answer based on my experience, is that people are unable to understand the severity of sin and death.
In order to understand the Gospel, one would have to understand salvation in Jesus Christ, as it is at the core of the Gospel. However, one must also understand what we are to be saved from. What are we saved from? The answer is sin and death caused by sin. By truly understanding how horrible and sad this is, one would be able to see the true value in salvation. Prophet Isaiah describes the condition that Israel was in as “suffering”, “darkness”, and “shame”. Isaiah’s word choice echoes the severity of the situation. Let’s dig into Israel’s historical background as to why Isaiah chose those words.
After the death of King Solomon, who worshiped pagan gods, Israel was divided into North Israel and South Judea, and they both became corrupt. Kings of both kingdoms forgot who the true King is and ruled for themselves. As a result, pagan worship became rampant, relied on other strong countries, leaders became corrupt, and the socially marginalized were ostracized. As both kingdoms walked away from God became very weak and had no choice but to obey the neighboring countries as their demands became more and more.
North Israel was especially in a bad situation. In verse one, it mentioned that they were put to shame. Around 8th BC, Assyria was very strong when they attacked, many many people of Zebulun and Naphtali were ruthlessly killed and forcefully taken to Assyria. There was very little hope for Israel to recover. In verse two, Isaiah describes the people as “walking in darkness”, as the Israelites had given up and had accepted their fate of death.
Isaiah is speaking about the situation in which the Israelites were put in at the time; however, it is also a reflection of a person’s situation when they walk away from God. Israel looked to human kings instead of God and the results were horrific. Similarly, it is very easy for humans to mistakenly think that we are the rulers of our lives instead of God, then pursue what looks and feels good. This is our nature as humans. This way of life will only take us further and further away from God. There will be times of joy and fun, but there is no true rest and peace for our soul, away from God. Eventually, death will come and will separate us completely from God. So as Isaiah said, without God, we are not only walking but residents of the darkness. No one can escape death.
Death is one of the most interesting topics of discussion, especially since this is a fate that every single person will go through. Myself, my family whom I love, my friends, everyone will die. Death is no illusion, it is a reality for us all, yet, it is not the most popular topic of discussion. Tim Keller makes an observation in one of his books, that people in recent society prefer not to talk about death.
Many discuss death from an outside perspective via murder and terminal illness, but will rarely talk about what death is and what it means to them personally. People prefer to think less about death but instead think about what feels good. As Kim Keller pointed out, it is a rather unusual phenomenon, because society today is very obvious and honest. Infidelity, fraud of politicians…many topics that were considered taboo before are now discussed openly, except death. Previous generations were curious about the meaning of death and our fate after death; however, today, people prefer not to talk about their own death or people around them.
There’s a tendency to prove and explain death with science. People say that death is simply a part of the natural process, a biological function that disintegrates cells. In previous times, it was believed that a person’s soul would leave its physical body; however, today it is more common for people to believe that souls do not exist and that our heart, thoughts, feelings, are all just chemicals in the brain. Once we die, our body will rot and disappear and there are no such things as souls that enter into the afterlife. Which means death is not a reason for sadness or fear, only an inevitable process and that may be one of the reasons why death is considered to be less critical for some. In other words however, if the weight of death has lessened, there should be less hesitation to openly discuss death but instead, people actively avoid the topic. I speculate that this is one of the reasons why death has become a topic less discussed under unspoken agreement.
Since when did the general population’s perspective on death change as such? I read that the time around the Industrial Revolution is when. Many artists at the time were very keenly interested in this shift and expressed them through their work. There is a book called “Dance of Death”, which explores the changing art work through the various generations.
Have you heard of Edvard Munch, a Norwegian artist? I’m sure you’ve seen his painting, The Scream. Munch sensed that the general population living through the early 20th century were all feeling a sense of unease and Munch was keenly aware and interested. During the Middle Ages, people understood and accepted death as part of their faith. However as times changed, people’s beliefs shifted to understanding that death is simply a part of a biological cycle. With this shift, people became more anxious than before even though they now had a more simple and clarified definition of death.
There is another artwork by Munch, where he is depicted to be performing an autopsy on his own primary doctor as if death means nothing and expressionlessly cutting open his doctor. Whilst this is happening, the painting itself has a dark and pained atmosphere. The clash of sadness of death and belief that death is nothing but a simple process is being shown.
There’s another Swiss artist, Ferdinand Hodler, from the same time period who was also very interested in death. There is a painting by him called Night and it depicts an anonymous person in a black cape sitting next to a person. This man in the cape is death itself. Everyone else in the painting is asleep, but death woke up just this one person, and he cannot help anyone. What is this work trying to express?
Back in the day, people with similar beliefs lived together as a unit and prepared for death with their family in faith. But as individuality became more extreme, death began to be considered something to prepare individually. Especially in Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, many elderly are forced to live on their own as their children become independent and their spouse passes away. There have been many instances where elderly people are found dead alone. It’s truly horrifying to think that that might happen to us. That kind of horror and loneliness is very well expressed on this man’s face. The twist is that this man is the Holder himself. He was expressing his own anxiety and loneliness of dying alone through his painting.
As these two artists’ works show how people have tried to lessen the blow of death by simplifying it as a biological process instead of a spiritual process, people wanted to believe that we can face death on their own and tried to reduce the importance of relying on our family in faith. However in the end, death did not become less impactful, it is still a very cruel reality in our hearts, it is still not something that as weak creatures, we cannot overcome.
We’ve looked at how sin and death cannot be ignored and denied as a part of reality. The reason why we must emphasize this so much is because it is by accepting this reality that we are able to take away anything from salvation. After we acknowledge that we are terrible sinners, we are able to understand the weight of God’s grace that God loved is even in our sin. It is when we accept our own darkness that we are able to see God’s light described in the Gospel. To accept the Gospel means that faith bridges the uncrossable gap of our darkness and God’s light.
The Book of Isaiah is just as so, let’s read verse two, “The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of darkness a light has dawned”. This type of comparison of light and dark is used in various other parts of the Bible as well. What this darkness is describing in this verse is the sin and death that was caused by Israelites choice to follow people instead of God. Light in comparison is describing something that is on the other end of the spectrum of peoples’ sin, of God’s holiness. There is a presence that is able to bridge this darkness and brightness, let’s read verse six. “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And they will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
Surprisingly, the person that embodied the bridge was a small little baby. This little baby described in Isaiah points to Jesus Christ. This baby holds God’s brightness within yet came into humanity’s darkness.
There is a legendary Polish person, Witold Pilecki, who lived during World War II, who is known to have voluntarily gone into the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Auschwitz was not notorious from the beginning. It was a mysterious place where Jewish, Oramn, Polish and many others were taken but did not come back out. With time, people came to understand what was happening. Pilecki was an activist and felt that he must go into Auschwitz to understand what was happening and report to world.
Auschwitz was hell itself. People lost their will to live under the immense physical labor and violence. Anyone unable to work was sent for human experiments or to the death chamber. The food was minimal and lacked nutrients, to where people became like skeletons. Pilecki endured three years and was eventually able to escape. After his escape, he reported his experience in Auschwitz to the many countries involved in WWII, which became known as the Witold Report and played a very critical role in shutting down Auschwitz.
How did you feel listening to this? Maybe you thought that Pilecki is similar to how Jesus came to this earth to live amongst humans. Pilecki put himself in Auschwitz rather than gathering information from outside in an effort to save his comrades. He experienced and lived with them. So what did Jesus do to save us? Jesus also came into this world, rather than stay on the outside, and experienced our pain and suffering with us.
Jesus experienced poverty and discrimination living in a very poor village as a very lowly social group. Jesus was constantly subject to others’ jealousy, betrayal by people Jesus trusted and loved, was physically abused…Jesus not only entered this world but experienced the horrors of this world. Which is why we can say that Jesus understands us and our pain. Jesus understands our weaknesses, our faults, what hurts us, and more. Because Jesus is also human and shares human experiences, Jesus is able to be our representative. However unlike us, Jesus never sinned, which is why Jesus was able to die in our place. Jesus died for us and freed us from the darkness and death caused by sin, and can be transferred to be with God.
Isaiah brought up four names, first being “Wonderful Counselor”. A counselor is a person who was commonly a war strategist. Second one being Might God, a person whose God was always with them and led them to victory. Third one being Eternal Father, was a person who looked after their family with love and loyalty. Fourth being Prince of Peace, was a leader that followed God and ruled its people with justice.
Jesus holds all four characteristics. How comforting it is to know that such a presence is able to rule our lives. When we believe and accept Christ, salvation does not happen in an instant. After Israel escaped Egypt, they did not immediately enter the Promise Land but rather wandered the desert for many many years before entering the Promise Land. Similarly, we start our lives with Jesus and journey of salvation that continues until the moment we are taken into God’s arms. Living everyday in this sin-filled world is not easy, especially since we are such weak creatures. Our and others’ selfishness, finance, injustice, trials, unbearable danger, …we must face so many things in life that we cannot face them just on our own is the world that we live in.
However, we do not need to panic. All we must do is acknowledge and face our weakness. It is when we understand our imperfectness and shortcomings, that we finally see the true need for Jesus to be our ruler everyday. We can finally see that we are able to receive so much when we surrender to Jesus as we feel our own anxiety and gratitude to Jesus at the same time. All we must do is pursue Jesus, the True Ruler, in our weakness. When we ask for Jesus, Jesus will walk with us instead of from afar.
Jesus as the Wonderful Counselor is able to guide us through our faith, as Jesus has experienced everything first hand. As Mighty God, Jesus is able to give us courage to help us live with God no matter how difficult the situation. As Everlasting Father, Jesus loves us and protects us as God’s children. As Prince of Peace, Jesus will never leave our side and rule us with God’s justice, not just give us commands from the outside but will always be by our side. Until we finish our journeys of salvation, Jesus will brightly shine our every step when times are good, bad, and difficult, in every moment.