The Hope of Christmas

Put on a tie this morning, a Christmas tie to go with my suit, and just couldn't do it.

Too much swelling in my neck still.

So I will still have some progress to go.

The doctor tells me I've got about two months more of healing to go, but I told him I was preaching this morning and he didn't tell me no.

So uh I'm here.

Uh these sorts of situations really bring it into perspective what the Apostle Paul said in 2 Corinthians 4 7.

He said, We have this treasure in jars of clay, that is, jars that are fragile and can be broken, to show that the surpassing power belongs to God and not to us.

God often brings situations into our lives to show us that He's God, right?

And we are not.

So thank you for your prayers and your support and your encouragement and would appreciate your continued prayers.

I'd like you to take your Bible this morning if you have it with you and turn to Isaiah chapter nine.

Isaiah chapter nine.

Would like to direct your attention this morning to the familiar verses to you, I'm sure, at this time of the year.

Isaiah chapter nine, verses six and seven.

Isaiah records these words.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Amen.

I trust that your spirit is already worshipping our great God who took on flesh to dwell among us, and that you look forward to spending time with friends and family today and tomorrow.

But for some of you, this is a hard time.

Maybe it's the loss of a family member who won't be present this Christmas.

Maybe it's a family torn apart.

Perhaps you are not able to be with family this Christmas.

The reality, if we are willing to admit it, is that there can be an underlying pain about holidays.

And it's often related to family.

Most of us have likely had one of those Christmases, or maybe three or a dozen of them, where an argument broke out on Christmas Day around the dinner table that just ruined the atmosphere for the rest of the day.

Perhaps you've been in a situation where a family member has refused to come to a family gathering because of unresolved issues.

Have you ever experienced anything like that?

If you have, then I'm glad you're here.

But even if you haven't, you will be able to appreciate this passage from God's Word, because we all desire peace, especially at Christmas time.

All but the most depraved among us desire peace.

And yet peace sometimes seems so far away, doesn't it?

All we ever hear about in the news are wars and battles, whether they be actual military conflicts or political battles or social battles.

But most of us have battles in our own lives too.

There are family squabbles and disagreements that separate loved ones.

There are health battles.

And then there's the constant inward battle of sin in our own hearts, isn't there?

When you think about it, if we're honest, that song that we sing at Christmas time about peace on earth and goodwill towards men feels a little bit like a fairy tale.

Now that may seem to you like I'm putting a damper on Christmas, but it's important to understand this in the context of the Christmas account.

Because peace was not present when God made many of his prophetic statements about the birth of his son.

In fact, war was imminent for Israel during many of God's prophetic statements.

And in our passage for today, it was war between members of God's chosen people.

It was war in a family.

There are a handful of common scripture passages that we think about during the Christmas season.

A few of them are found in Isaiah and another one in Micah.

We're going to be looking at Micah next week.

Isaiah and Micah were contemporaries.

Isaiah was serving in Jerusalem, in the capital city of the southern nation of Judah.

So when we look at this passage of scripture, we need to remember the historical setting.

Israel is divided.

There are two tribes in the south and ten tribes in the north, serving as separate, distinct nations.

But they are family.

They are brothers, they are cousins, opposed to each other.

Prophet Isaiah, serving in the capital city of Jerusalem, is writing down God's prophetic statements.

And the background for Isaiah 9 actually begins back in chapter 7.

In Isaiah chapter 7, we see more of the details going into this statement.

Isaiah 7 · chapter mention

And this is before the northern nation of Israel was destroyed by the Assyrians.

Those northern tribes were ruled by a king named Pika, chapter 7 tells us.

And Pikah was determined to wage war on his brothers in the south in Judah.

So determined was he that he enlisted the Syrians as his allies.

So Judah in the south was under attack by her brothers and cousins and their allies.

But rather than call on God for help, Ahaz, the king of Judah, sent out a call for his own allies, the Assyrians.

And the providence of God, that call for help from the Assyrians was the beginning of the end for both nations.

During that time in Jewish history, war and destruction and death were certain because of family bickering, family infighting.

In Isaiah chapter 8, verse 6, God says all of this took place because his people refused him.

Isaiah 8:6

Using picturesque language, God describes himself as this peaceful, gently flowing stream full of life and vitality.

But the Assyrian armies are described like a raging flood, overflowing the banks and destroying everything in its path.

Of course, that happened to Israel in the north and her capital city of Samaria.

But in chapter 8, verse 8, Judah is told that even she would be impacted by this coming disaster.

That, beloved, is the background of the Christmas prophecies.

That's not the quiet, peaceful picture that we often imagine during the Christmas holiday.

In fact, look what God told Isaiah in chapter 8, verse 12.

Do not call conspiracy all that this people calls conspiracy, and do not fear what they fear, nor be in dread.

But the Lord of hosts, him you shall honor as holy.

Let him be your fear, and let him be your dread.

And he will become a sanctuary and a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling to both houses of Israel, a trap and a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem.

Remember, Isaiah's in Jerusalem.

And many shall stumble on it, they shall fall and be broken, they shall be snared and taken.

Now look down at verse 19.

And when they say to you, inquire of the mediums and the necromancers who chirp and mutter, should not a people inquire of their God?

Should they inquire of the dead on behalf of the living, 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.

The language around so many of our favorite passages of Scripture at Christmas time is doom and darkness and destruction.

None of us has ever been in this exact situation.

But most of us have experienced times in life where it felt as though life was filled with nothing but disaster.

As though everything was darkness and gloom and nothing was going right.

And yet God gives hope.

Look at chapter 9, verse 1.

But one of the most beautiful words that you will ever find in all of Scripture.

But there will be no gloom for her who is 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 dwell in a land of deep darkness, on them a light shone.

With these words, we're sort of transported a bit into the future, where Isaiah has turned around and is looking back in time.

So God has told him a time of destruction is coming.

Now he's transported and looking back on that destruction where God is now giving him hope.

Those areas that were the first to encounter the enemy invasion of the Assyrian onslaught, those areas first destroyed, Zebulun and Naphtali and Galilee in the north, those areas would be the first, God said, to see a great light shine in their darkness.

In their deep darkness, a wondrous light would suddenly shine.

Out of disaster, God would bring hope.

Isaiah's prophecies now begin to give unimaginable hope to people living in the midst of a great darkness.

And it begins with God's very clear and very direct promise of a person.

God says, For to us a child is born, and to us a son is given.

I think sometimes we miss the implications of God's promise of a person.

Now let's remember that we are looking back at this prophecy.

We have already seen its fulfillment in the Lord Jesus.

We have seen the perfect and ultimate fulfillment of Isaiah 7.14.

The virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name Emmanuel.

We have seen Jesus born in Matthew chapter 1, where he is given the name Jesus because he will save his people from their sins.

Matthew 1 · chapter mention

We look at this text from the completion in Jesus, but Isaiah and his contemporaries did not see it that way.

They had no understanding of what these texts meant.

For them, it was sufficient that God promised an interruption to their darkness.

God promised a stoppage to war, an end of hostility and fear with the promised birth of a child.

The prophet Micah proclaimed that this birth would take place in a small and insignificant village called Bethlehem.

So Isaiah knew to look for the birth of a child.

A son, even.

Chapter 7, verse 14, God declared that a young lady would conceive and bear a son as a distinct sign that God had not left his people.

But that particular sign signified so much more than Isaiah ever could have imagined.

But we know that the ultimate fulfillment of that prophecy was the conception of a child and a young virgin teenager named Mary.

And it is that child, it is that son of whom Isaiah wrote in Isaiah chapter 9.

Isaiah 9 · chapter mention

Look at verse 5.

Every boot of the trampling warrior in battle tumults and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for fire.

Isaiah knew what was going on.

He knew that war was on the doorstep of Jerusalem.

He could look around and imagine, if not, see the troops garbed in battle clothing, see clothes stained with the blood of his people.

But there was hope because there would be a child, a son born to his people, and that child, that son, would bring light to their darkness.

Isaiah didn't understand how that could occur, but he knew that it would come by the very hand of God, because God was behind this promised birth.

God promised a son to step in and bring them peace.

That is how a virgin can conceive.

This is the work of God.

He gives the Son.

And therein lies the hope.

God has not left his people to rot in their darkness without hope.

He has promised his direct intervention by the birth of a baby boy.

Not by escaping their circumstances, but by giving the gift of a child.

Now, humanly speaking, there's a small problem with this particular promise.

When enemies are at your doorstep, looking for deliverance from a child yet to be born doesn't really help.

That's like telling somebody broken down between here and Fargo in the middle of a blizzard, hey, have hope.

You're gonna get a new car in six hundred years.

Thanks.

See, God did not promise to rescue his people from their immediate darkness.

That's not what the passage is about.

It is forward-looking beyond the immediate judgment for their sin.

He wanted them to look forward to his ultimate deliverance through a person in the future.

But God did not simply promise a normal everyday person.

The promised one was far more than a normal person.

We are told here that God also promised a leader.

It says, and the government shall be upon his shoulder.

Now that language is a bit strange to us.

Why would Isaiah speak of government being on the shoulders of a person?

Well, the word for government here speaks of rule, of dominion, of authority.

So God is promising that the child to be born, the son who is to be given by God Himself would bear the rule or the dominion over Israel.

That rule would rest on this child.

So this hope-filled statement is one that only people who have lived under an oppressive regime can really understand.

Back in verse 4, God described what the rule of those foreigners was going to be like.

For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor you have broken, as on the day of Midian.

The people lived under the yoke of their oppressors, carrying a heavy burden, and the staffs, the wooden staffs of their oppressors would be brought down in discipline upon the shoulders of his people, a rod that was painful and harsh.

That was to be the place of the Jewish people under the Assyrians and then the Babylonians.

So imagine your oppressors being angry and harsh and beating you with their staffs and their rods, bringing them down with quick, painful lashes upon your bare shoulders.

But God says, I will give you a son.

And the authority to rule and the power to rule will be upon him.

Ahaz was busy scurrying about, trying to find some allies to survive the wars, all the while bringing his people nearer to pain and darkness and gloom.

But the promised son would be a leader who would bear the rule of the people properly.

And he would bear it in a different way.

Perhaps it's appropriate to think about Psalm 23 here.

A staff and a and a rod in the hands of an enemy can be a painful, dangerous thing.

But when God brings a ruler to his people, he brings a staff and a rod that does what?

Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.

And when Jesus rules, his burden is light.

This is because the promised leader would be different than wicked Ahaz.

Because God was promising a very unique ruler.

God gives Isaiah four pairings of words, couplets that refer to this child to be born.

His name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and Prince of Peace.

Trying to put myself in Isaiah's shoes, I'm sure that Isaiah was a bit dumbfounded.

In the same sentence that God spoke of the birth of a child, he spoke of a son who would be a great leader.

But now God says he's going to be a wonderful counselor, a mighty God and everlasting Father, and a Prince of Peace.

How can those words describe an infant boy yet to be born?

Well, let's notice how unique this leader is.

Isaiah says that he will be called a wonderful counselor.

This is the first couplet, and that's just a fancy term that refers to two connected words forming a descriptive name in this case.

Now you may be using a translation that has five names.

And if that is the case, it's most likely splitting wonderful and counselor, giving two different names there, but grammatically it's better to have those two connected.

Wonderful, counselor.

But that doesn't really help us understand the terminology.

For that, we have to remember our context.

This verse is surrounded by political and governmental language.

War was at hand.

Soon there would be the loss of freedoms, the loss of Privilege, the loss of land, and the loss of national independence.

There would be raping and pillaging and murdering on the doorstep of the capital city of Judah.

But God promised the birth of a child who would lead his people, and he would be called the wonderful counselor.

The word wonderful here is adequate for a translation, but it's probably not best.

The reason I say that is because wonderful in English is an adjective.

But the word in Hebrew is a noun.

So our English Bibles have tended to translate the Hebrew with a different part of speech.

In other words, it's a wonder of a thing.

Therefore, this child to be born would be a wonder of a counselor.

He would be absolutely unique, amazing, beyond comprehension, one who is in every way a wonder of a person.

To give you a comparison as an example, in Judges chapter 13, we read of the promise of the birth of Samson, one of Israel's judges.

Judges 13 · chapter mention

God promised Samson's parents that they would give birth to a son.

And so Samson's father, speaking with the angel of the Lord, who was the Lord Jesus before his birth as a human being, Samson's father asked this angel of the Lord, What is your name?

And the angel of the Lord replied, Why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful?

The preincarnate Lord Jesus Christ says his name is incomprehensible, beyond understanding, and simply amazing.

Perhaps that is why the child is called a wonder.

Specifically, though, he is a wonder of a counselor.

Again, there's a governmental and military connection.

This child will be a wonder of a ruler, governing and leading and counseling, unlike any human king has ever been.

In fact, he wouldn't even need other counselors because he is a wonder of a counselor himself.

Ahaz, on the other hand, was a horrible king.

But a child would come, who would be a counselor unlike any they had ever seen.

At one point in their history, Israel desired a king in order to be like the other nations around them.

But there is a problem with human kings.

They are imperfect, sinful, and generally unwise.

But God's promise to his people was a son who would be a perfect leader.

He is a wonder, an extraordinarily amazing counselor.

Isaiah and his people were to be encouraged by that hope.

They were to have their faith in their God invigorated.

Their hope wasn't to rest in human alliances.

Enemies were coming.

Their brothers and their cousins wanted them wiped out.

But wait, God promised a wonder of a ruler.

And that child was coming.

In light of that, Assyria didn't matter much because they could hope in their God.

Friend, where is your hope in your darkness?

Do you get caught up wondering, worrying about what's happening in our world?

Do the actions of your country, your state, your society cause you to stress and worry?

Do family squabbles bother you?

Does your personal darkness and despair overwhelm you?

Remember, your king has come.

There's no need for worry because there is a child who was born for you, and he is far beyond your comprehension, far beyond your imagination.

He is perfectly wise and all-knowing.

He is the wonder child given for us, who will lead you with great wisdom and great counsel.

But then Isaiah makes another leap.

He says, This child to be born would be called the mighty God.

Throughout the centuries, many have questioned the deity of Christ.

Now, reasons for that vary, but the general thought is that God becoming man simply could not occur.

That doesn't make sense.

Does not fit with our thinking.

But Isaiah clearly spoke of a person, a human being, who was born and who will have the name mighty God.

Now some have tried to explain this away.

They've tried to explain it away by saying that the word for God here, which is the Hebrew word El, that it means man or even angel.

So it doesn't have to refer to deity, but there are problems with that thinking.

If Isaiah had written Elohim, then perhaps there would be some validity to that kind of argument, because Elohim can sometimes refer to some other being.

But that hasn't stopped some people.

The word mighty is used frequently in the Old Testament to refer to warriors in battle.

So it could be translated mighty or strong or valiant or even simply great.

And so some people have tried to combine these two words into something like he's a great hero.

A great hero.

That sounds like something the Hollywood would do.

But that is clearly stretching the meaning of these words beyond what Isaiah intended.

He is speaking of a child who would be called great and the mighty God.

Isaiah's people were facing an invasion.

Who better to fight for them than the mighty God?

Who better to lead them than the wonder of a counselor who is the mighty God?

You may be facing your own daunting challenge or insurmountable fear or heartbreak or loneliness or impossible situation.

And if so, you can appreciate the situation God's people faced.

But you are also able to experience the comfort and the grace and the courage and the boldness that comes with facing those difficulties with the mighty God at your side leading you.

This prophecy was given to Israel to give them hope for the future.

In other words, their Messiah had not yet come.

Their hope was still focused on a future fulfillment of the promise.

But for you and for me, he has already come.

It's no longer looking forward, it's looking back and seeing God did it.

The mighty God fulfilled his promise, and he has therefore promised to never leave you or forsake you.

He is the mighty God.

The Son who is given by the hand of God would then be called the everlasting Father.

A better translation might be Father of eternity, but either way it gives us the same idea.

This promised child is a father, and this child is eternal.

So you can see how each of these terms given to this child stretches our faith a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more.

He is a wonder of a counselor who is the mighty God, and this child is already a father over all of eternity.

As a father, this child would guard his people and supply their needs.

He would be the leader they desired and the God they needed.

He would lead his children, he would train his children, he would discipline his children, he would even make them into his own image.

He would guide them with love, with tenderness, with mercy, with grace, with compassion, and with strength.

And as the father of eternity, this child is beyond the boundaries of time.

He never began to exist.

As Micah said, his goings forth were from ancient times.

He always has been, he always will be.

He will never cease to exist.

Wherever one goes in eternity, whether past, present, or future, he is there.

That's why God will say later in Isaiah 57, 15, that he inhabits eternity.

Try to wrap your brain around that.

This child would be born, but he already was.

This child would be born, but he already is and will be a father.

The one born in time holds time together.

What a promise.

Israel was nearing the time of God's discipline for her sin.

They would be under the rule of the Assyrians.

Following that, they would fall under the dominion of the Babylonians, and then the Greeks, and then the Romans with their Caesars.

What hope was there?

Years and years and century after century of difficulty, of frustration, stress, death, faithlessness, disobedience.

What hope is there?

The hope is this.

There is a loving father who is not bound by time.

All things are in his control, and his children can trust him to care for them no matter the situation.

He will care for them, he will love them, and be gracious to them, and at the right time that same father of eternity would come as a child, as a son, who is the Prince of Peace.

This world is always looking for peace, isn't it?

It may not always be on the home front, but somewhere in our world there is always war.

There are always battles of many kinds.

There's often war of another type at home, among families and friends.

And there's war within our own hearts and souls and minds.

For them, peace was nowhere in sight, much less lasting peace.

And so this son from Bethlehem must have been music to Isaiah's ears.

A prince was coming who would be a wonder of a counselor, a magnificent, wise leader, who would be the all-powerful, mighty God, who is the eternal, loving Father, and he would bring peace because he is the prince of peace.

It's about here that the Jewish people became sidetracked.

And looking at this verse, among others, they began to see a Messiah who would bring national peace by means of military prowess.

But what they failed to grasp is what we must make sure that we grasp.

Simply terminating war does not bring about everlasting peace.

Removing the invader or the suppressor or the homebreaker does not usher in eternal love.

No, to have everlasting peace, we must first remove the cause of war, which is the sin that dwells in our hearts.

When sin is removed, there can be true lasting peace.

For peace to exist between human beings, sin must be gone.

For man to be reconciled to God, sin must be atoned for.

And they were at war with God in their own hearts.

When the enmity between God and mankind is removed, there can be true lasting peace.

That's why the promise of a child who was to be the prince of peace is so important.

Isaiah's people looked for a prince to rescue them from their brothers in the north, from the Syrians, and then from Babylon and Greece and Rome, but what they needed was to be rescued from God because of their sin.

We need to be rescued from the wrath of God.

I'm so thankful for the New Testament because it fills out this prophecy.

It tells us that Jesus is our peace.

And when we trust in the Son who was given, we are then justified.

We are made right by faith, and we have peace with God through the Lord Jesus.

As the Prince of Peace, Jesus paid the price to remove the cause of fighting and bickering and war between us.

That is why the angels proclaimed to the shepherds peace among those with whom he is pleased.

Now it's helpful to understand these four terms in their immediate context, but to fully grasp what God intended, we need to see them in the context of all of Scripture.

And what God intends for us to take from this text is that he has promised himself.

Not some run-of-the-mill sinful human king, but himself.

The leaders of Israel did not grasp that God's promise was not simply a human being from David's line and David's city.

But the full truth is that God promised himself.

The baby that Mary gave birth to began his earthly life at that moment.

But in reality, he is the mighty God, the Father of eternity, and to this very moment he inhabits eternity.

The fingers that gripped Mary's were the fingers that hung the stars in place.

The hands that she held created the universe and were holding it together.

That baby wrapped with strips of cloth against the cold night air is the mighty God who fashioned the sun and the moon and the stars.

Popular song asks, Mary, did you know?

Of course she didn't.

Did she understand some things?

Yes.

Her own song records that.

But she could not have fully grasped the significance of that promised son.

Neither could Isaiah or Micah.

But you can.

With the eyes of faith, you can look back through the lens of Scripture, through the lens of completed Scripture, and see God's hand at work.

The promised one shrouded his glory with flesh and bone and blood in order to be pierced and his blood shed so that we might have that peace with God.

Without the incarnation, without God becoming man, there is no Christian faith as we know it.

And without the promise of God, there would be no Christmas.

And without the mighty, eternal God taking the form of a man, there would be no hope.

But God knew his world needed hope.

That hope was not found in the rescue from circumstances, but it was found in him.

And so he gave himself so that you might find your hope in him.

Let's pray together.

Our great and awesome God.

Our minds are sort of blown, confounded when we really understand the depths of truth here.

Forgive us once again for normalizing Christmas.

And open our hearts and minds to trust in the Son who was given.

And that mighty God who came to bring us peace and to give us hope.

Thank you for your might.

And thank you for the privilege of praising you and worshiping you in this way.

Amen.