Sermon: Isaiah 9:1–4 • Matthew 4:12–23 • The Conversion of St Paul
Epiphany: A Season of Revelation
We have journeyed through Advent’s longing and Christmas’s joy, and now find ourselves in the season of Epiphany — a season not of waiting or birth, but of revelation.
A season when the adult Christ steps into view, moment by moment, sign by sign, until the light He carries becomes so bright that it threatens the powers of the world He was born into.
Isaiah 9 and Matthew 4 are perfect companions in this season. One speaks of a promise; the other shows its fulfilment.
Isaiah’s Vision: A Promise Hidden in the Shadows: Isaiah 9
Isaiah wrote of a world surrounded by shadows about the coming of the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. He said: ‘the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light’.
He named two territories where this would happen — Zebulun and Naphtali — borderlands that had known invasion, humiliation, and despair.
Forgotten places. The first to fall when empires marched.
Those lands, Isaiah says, will be the first to see God’s glory.
And those lands, centuries later, are known as Galilee.
This means Isaiah is saying something astonishing:
The long-awaited Jewish Messiah’s light will dawn not in Jerusalem’s splendour, but in the margins. In the shadows. In Galilee.
But his promise, as beautiful as it was, sat there for centuries — real, but dormant.
Matthew 4: The Promise Awakens
Then, centuries later, Matthew wrote how, after Jesus was baptised in the Jordan and after John the Baptist was imprisoned, He left Nazareth and went to live in lowly Galilee — the very region Isaiah had named.
Matthew wants us to see this connection clearly, so he quotes Isaiah word for word:
‘the people who sat in darkness have seen a great light,”
Meaning Jesus was the long-awaited Jewish Messiah and revealed himself first in Galilee
And this is what many people of that time could not accept.
They could not comprehend how the light promised by Isaiah would first shine in a wounded, forgotten place where hope seemed least likely to take root. In Galilee of all places.
A People Ready for Light: Galilee’s Deep Hunger
But Galilee was a place ready for that light.
It had carried centuries of hardship — from the old Assyrian invasions that first crushed Zebulun and Naphtali, to the poverty, sickness, and heavy taxation of Jesus’s own day.
Work was mainly fishing and farming, but most people lived in acute poverty, and basic survival was the main goal
Because of this, they were vulnerable to blindness, leprosy, paralysis, fevers, and the crippling injuries that came with hard rural labour.
It was a region overlooked by Jerusalem’s elites, a place long overshadowed by the “deep darkness” Isaiah named.
Jesus Among the Forgotten: Hope Made Visible
And this is why Jesus was so well received there:
He spoke the language of farmers and fishermen, he honoured those normally dismissed, and he met people at the point of their deepest need.
He didn’t just preach hope — he enacted it.
He shone light into places that had forgotten what light even looked like.
In Galilee, the blind now saw, the lame walked, lepers were restored, and the oppressed were set free.
In the very place that had known the most darkness, the light Isaiah promised finally began to shine.
Isaiah’s prophecy was no longer a distant dream.
Through Jesus, it was happening in real time, in real villages, among real people.
The Calling of the Disciples: The Light Spreads
Then the light Isaiah promised did not simply shine — it started to move.
It spread from village to village, from shoreline to synagogue, from one life to the next.
But the first people to carry that light were not temple priests, scholars, or the well‑connected. They were fishermen.
Ordinary Lives, Extraordinary Calling
Jesus had walked along the Sea of Galilee and called Simon Peter and Andrew, then James and John — ordinary men with ordinary work.
Men who knew nets better than Scripture, tides better than theology.
Yet when the Light of the World spoke, something awakened within them. They dropped their nets, left their boats, and stepped into a future they could not yet see.
Then the light started spreading quietly — through invitation, through obedience, through the simple courage to follow.
But make no mistake: this moment in time was still every bit as world‑shaking.
Because when Jesus called his disciples, He was not just gathering followers; He was igniting a movement.
The light that dawned in Galilee now began to travel through human lives.
It took on hands and feet. It walked roads, entered homes, healed wounds, and proclaimed the good news.
And it did so through people who never imagined they would be part of God’s story.
Then suddenly, we can see, Isaiah’s prophecy has come together.
- At Jesus’ baptism, the light was ignited.
- In Galilee, the light began to shine through him.
- When disciples were called, the light began to spread.
The disciples became messengers of the Kingdom, carrying Christ’s light into places He had not yet walked on.
Conversion of St Paul: Light in an Unexpected Place
Today, the Church remembers St Paul’s conversion as another moment when divine light breaks through into a human life.
Saul lived in darkness—not the darkness of hopelessness, but the darkness of absolute conviction.
He believed he was honouring God even as he hunted down God’s own people.
On the road to Damascus, a blinding light stopped him, and a voice shattered his assumptions:
“Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?”
The same Jesus who called fishermen then called a Pharisee, transforming an enemy of the Church into its greatest missionary.
Where Will the Light Break In for Us?
So what does this mean for us, standing here in Epiphany and looking toward Lent?
I would say it means God’s light often begins in the places we least expect.
So why not ask yourselves, where are the borderlands in your life? The places you’ve written off as too ordinary, too damaged, too difficult?
Isaiah would say: Keep watching those places.
Matthew would say: Jesus walks into those places first.
Paul would say: The light can break in anywhere, at any time.
The Christian Story: A Living Expression of Divine Love
As Epiphany moves toward Lent, we remember that the brighter the light shines, the more it exposes — and the more it threatens the powers of darkness.
Because the Christian faith is not built upon man-made ideals or popular spirituality.
It is the fulfilment of thousands of centuries of prophecy and cultural history.
It is a living expression of God’s love and the anchor of a worldview that has shaped cultures, ethics, and human identity.
And today, as the baton passes to us, is our moment in history to be a part of this exciting and extraordinary movement.
I challenge you to think in terms of all that God has planned and prepared for us and to ‘seize the moment’ and be part of the grand plan – carpe diem.
