God is Good God is Great | Prince of Peace - Isaiah 9 | December 21

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Isaiah 9, 1-7 Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like

that of the former times when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali.

But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea,

to the land east of the Jordan, and to the Galilee of the nations.

The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. A light has dawned on

those living in the land of darkness.

You have enlarged the nation and increased its joy.

The people have rejoiced before you as they rejoiced at harvest time,

and as they rejoice when dividing the spoils.

For you have shattered their yoke, their oppressive yoke, and the rod on their

shoulders, the staff of their oppressor, just as you did on the day of Midian.

For every trampling boot of

battle and the bloody garments of war will be burned as fuel for the fire.

For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government

will be upon his shoulders.

He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

The dominion will be vast and its prosperity will never end.

He will reign on the throne of David and over its kingdom to establish and sustain

it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever.

The zeal of the Lord's armies will accomplish this. Amen.

Good morning. Good morning. Today, we get to finish out that passage of names,

of king names that describe the coming, let's see, the coming king.

And so today, we get to talk about Jesus as the Prince of Peace. But let's pray.

Father, would you illumine our minds?

Would our hearts be quickened and our thoughts be turned towards you.

Would the words of your scripture saturate everything that we are?

Would we reflect your glory and your beauty in this world?

May we learn more about who you are today and who we are meant to be in light of that. Amen.

So today, what we're gonna do is we're gonna look at, we're gonna ask a few questions.

We're gonna ask the question of what is peace? If Jesus is the Prince of Peace, What is peace?

And then we'll look at if we know and have a little bit deeper understanding

of what peace is, then we'll look at what does it mean that Jesus is the Prince of Peace?

And then after we look at that, we'll ask the question, how then shall we live?

How should we live in light of Jesus being the Prince of Peace?

And how should we live in light of the fact that there is not a lot of peace around us in this world?

So, we'll start with the question of what is peace? We see that Jesus is the

Prince of Peace, but our definitions of peace often are found in the negative.

We define peace as the absence of conflict. We can define peace as the absence of anxiety.

We will often use peace as something colloquial of saying, hey,

I'm going to peace out. It means like you are leaving, you are exiting that situation.

So is peace meant to be defined in the negative?

Well, I obviously, in the way that I set that up, don't think that is the only

thing that it can be defined as.

I think it can be, can be defined as the absence of conflict,

the absence of war, the absence of relational tension.

But I also think it's meant to be something more. And I think you guys know that as well.

I think we actually all know the, I think all of you probably do know the biblical

word for peace. Any, any takers?

Shalom. Yeah, that peace, the word peace is shalom.

In the ancient Hebrew context, it was a word that had a lot of meaning.

There's a lot of meaning behind that word shalom. And it actually is how people

say hello in the Middle East today.

In Israel, people will say shalom. Or in the Middle East, in Arab countries,

they'll say salem. And that means peace or my peace be upon you.

And that encapsulates actually a lot more that we'll explore today.

It encapsulates this idea of completion.

This idea of wholeness and fulfillment. So yes, it is the absence of conflict

and the absence of war, but it's also the presence of completion,

the presence of wholeness and the presence of fulfillment. And we'll look at

a few passages that explore that.

And the first one is in 1 Kings 9.25.

So Solomon has just, he's taken on the role as king of Israel.

The kingdoms are still united at this point. And Solomon, whose name Shalomen means bringer of peace.

He actually is the one who completes the temple.

And in 1 Kings 9.25, it says, Now three times a year, Solomon offered burnt

offerings and peace offerings on the altar, which he had built for the Lord,

burning incense with them on the altar, which was before the Lord,

so he finished the house.

You can tell with that bold underline italicized, that word finished is that

word shalom. It's the verb form.

He pieced the house. He fulfilled it. He finished it.

And then NIV actually says, and so he fulfilled the temple obligations.

This word peace is used in that context. The way that it's describing what Solomon

did is he's putting the temple in its right place. It's being used for exactly

what it was meant to be used for.

When it says that he did the burnt offerings and peace offerings,

that means he fulfilled the liturgical year for the temple.

So the temple has now, after he finished that year, it was already built,

but then it was used for what it was meant for.

It was operating how it was made to be.

So this biblical term peace, it has this shalom, it has this idea of fulfillment,

it has this idea of completion, of wholeness.

It also isn't just about completing buildings or operating with the material

in the way that it is meant to be operated with, but it also has this idea in

restitution with relationships.

And so in Exodus, after Moses, he goes on to Mount Sinai and receives the law

from God. He comes down and he shares the law with the people of Israel.

And one of the things that's a concern for the people of Israel is,

what do I do when my neighbor steals my sheep?

You and I don't have that same issue of maybe sheep stealing.

Maybe Eric one day will have someone in his farm that hopefully that doesn't

happen. But for us, sheep stealing is not common.

But back then that was actually a very live question.

What do I do if my friend kills my sheep or steals my oxen?

And this is what the law said. It said, if a man steals an ox or a sheep and

kills it or sells it, he shall repay five oxen for an ox and four sheep for a sheep.

The New King James says he shall restore that oxen and sheep.

As I was studying, it was fascinating to me. He doesn't just restore sheep for sheep or ox for ox.

He restores, for an ox, it's fourfold, or for an ox, it's fivefold,

and for a sheep, it's fourfold.

This idea of making peace, that word repay or restore is that word shalomen,

or the verb form of peace.

You are making peace. You are restoring the relationship that you had broken.

So then what does it mean that Jesus is the Prince of Peace?

What does it mean that Jesus has this, he's the ruler of rest.

He is the king of completion. What does that mean?

Well, at the birth of Jesus, we hear the angels announce that Jesus has come

and he's bringing peace on earth. Goodwill to men.

In Luke 2, 14, the shepherds are watching their flocks.

And then we remember this story. Behold, a multitude of heavenly hosts are shouting

and praising God saying, Peace on earth, glory to God in the highest,

peace on earth, goodwill to men.

So Jesus as the Prince of Peace, he's meant to bring peace on earth.

He's meant to bring completion or fulfillment or fullness to what the earth

is meant to be, what we as humans are meant to be.

Mark 4, verses 39. This is the story of Jesus on the waves when the disciples

Mark 4:39

are worried for their lives and Jesus is asleep and the waves are washing over

the boat and the wind is whipping the sails.

And the disciples say, we're going

to die. And they wake up Jesus and they say, Jesus, do you even care?

Do you even care that we're gonna die? And Jesus wakes up from his slumber and says, peace, be still.

This idea, this, when Jesus says peace, the wind and the waves obey him.

And what he's doing is he's putting them in their right place.

He is bringing fulfillment or completion to what the wind and the waves are meant to be.

They are meant to be under the dominion of the Prince of Peace.

And then Colossians, I want to read this one together. 19 or one, 19 through 23 says this.

For it pleased the Father that in him, being Jesus, all the fullness should

dwell, and by him to reconcile all things to himself,

by him whether things on earth or things in heaven, having made peace through the blood of his cross.

And you who were once alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works,

yet now he has reconciled in the body of his flesh through death,

to present you holy and blameless and above reproach in his sight.

If indeed you continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast,

and are not moved away from the hope of the gospel which you heard,

which was preached to every creature under heaven, of which I,

Paul, became a minister.

What Paul is saying is he's talking about the peace of God bringing repair to

the relationship with God.

We as humans have rebelled against God. We have chosen to take of the fruit

and say, I will not wait for the wisdom of God.

I will choose to make a way for myself.

Yet Jesus comes, he enters into humanity as we were just praising and singing.

He takes on the form of a child and he dies a gruesome death on a cross.

And what Paul says here in Colossians is that that is what makes peace.

It reconciles humanity to God. It fulfills the relationship the way it was meant to be in Christ.

So then the question is, if that's who Jesus is as the Prince of Peace, how should we live?

How do we live in light of Jesus being the Prince of Peace, the King of all

completion, the ruler of rest?

Well, I would boil it down to

one thing that I'll break into three things that I'll add another one to.

We are meant to be peacemakers. We are meant to be the ones who restore in the light of Christ.

And then the spirit that filled Christ, we are meant to make peace.

Now, peacemakers are not peacekeepers. You've heard this before.

Peacekeepers are the ones who either pretend that the world is not bad,

or they try and hide what doesn't make peace under the rug, or they have no

authority to approach the conflict and deal with it head on.

A peacemaker steps into the chaos, steps into the hurt, steps into the conflict

and makes peace, makes restoration or restitution and restores what is meant to be restored.

And so how do we be peacemakers in this world? I was at dinner with some friends

and he said that Christians are meant to do two things plus one.

Christians, if we want to know the will of God, here is the will of God for

our lives and being peacemakers.

We bear the image of God and we repair the image of God.

And I'll add, we restore God's creation. You can put that under one of them

if you want, maybe bear the image of God.

But as we bear the image of God, we are taking on in the power of the spirit,

who God is and who God has made us to be in Christ.

We are taking His design for humanity and we are walking out in His image of

being love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, selflessness,

self-control. You guys got it.

And then when we repair the image of God, we're seeing things that are broken

and we're restoring them to wholeness.

And that goes beyond just relationships with people, but that goes into how

do we engage with God's creation?

In the very beginning, we were called as humanity to be rulers and reigners

of this world. We were called to rule and reign it.

So how do we do that now in light of our relationships to others and our relationship

to God and our relationship to his creation?

We are meant to be peacemakers.

Tim Mackey, he defined it as this, that peacemaking is taking what is broken

and restoring it to wholeness.

But there's a problem. And there is a lot of hurt and a lot of violence in this world.

Jesus came and he was a bringer of peace.

He ushered in the kingdom of heaven, but that kingdom has not yet seen its fullness come to earth.

We know that there is still ongoing wars in Ukraine, in Israel.

We know that there is violence that wreaks havoc over our world across.

And we just saw this last week in Australia at Brown University.

We know that families are broken and there is a hurting people everywhere we go.

How do Christians engage with the data that does not seem to point to a world getting better?

How are Christians supposed to look at the world around us and be makers of peace?

Christian hope is not optimism. I want to be optimistic.

I want to look at the data and I want to say, things are looking up.

But that is not true. Sammy will tell you that I sometimes can have an unfettered

optimism that is detached from reality.

And as I grow and mature, I will get more and more realistic.

But I want to be optimistic, but that is not the world that we live in.

Cornel West has a great definition of what Christian hope is.

He says, optimism and hope are different.

Optimism tends to be based on the notion that there's enough evidence out there

that allows us to think that things are going to get better.

It's much more rational and it's deeply secular.

Whereas hope looks at the evidence and says, it doesn't look good at all,

but I'm going to make a leap of faith.

I'm going to go beyond the evidence in the attempt to dream new possibilities.

Hope is based on dreams that become contagious enough to allow us to engage

in the heroic actions against the odds.

That is hope. And our hope, Christian hope, is founded on the person of Jesus

Christ, that light has come and the darkness has not overcome it.

It cannot comprehend the light.

This whole chapter in Isaiah that we're talking about comes at a time of Israel's

history when the Assyrians who are evil, they are terrible.

I was looking into it and there's these puniform scripts and pictures that depict

these Assyrians as being brutal warlords. They are awful.

And this is who's coming to destroy Israel. They will wipe the Northern Kingdom of Israel off the map.

And so if you're Isaiah and you're sitting and you're prophesying in this time

and all of your contemporaries are seeing the reality that's coming this way,

how do you have hope in light of the darkness?

And what Isaiah says, and if you look in chapter eight of Isaiah,

it's talking about how all of the people are actually entering into darkness.

And because God is handing them over to the decisions and the choices that they've

made, allowing the Assyrians to come, but Isaiah comes with hope.

And he says, these people, the people who walked in darkness have seen a great light.

Those who dwell in the land of the shadow of death upon them, a light has shined.

And I think for some of us, we might be in the land of the shadow of death.

We might be experiencing times or moments or seasons or years or decades of darkness.

And we're asking the question, where is God and why is he silent?

And to those of us who are in that space, I would encourage you that hold on

to the hope that in Christ was life and the life was the light of men and the

darkness could not even think or comprehend.

It couldn't overcome it. And it tried the darkness tried. It tried so hard that

it killed light, that darkness killed light and still the light came three days

later and the resurrection of Jesus.

And so I think as we, as Christians, our lives are based on the resurrection of Jesus.

Everything that we do surrounds the idea of the resurrection.

It holds fast the hope that the one in whom all life is found was killed, but he resurrected.

That life is coming, that all things will be made new.

That God, the King of peace, the ruler of rest, he will be the one who restores all things.

So I want to end with a poem. I'm trying to get more into poetry.

And so you're going to join me in this process.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, if you know him, anybody know Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a few of us?

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow was a poet in the 1800s in the United States.

His grandparents fought in the American Revolution. And so he got married fairly

young And his first wife died of a miscarriage back when medical advances were

not where they are today.

His second wife, he got remarried. They had four kids, five kids.

And in 1961, she was writing a letter and sealing the letter.

And the candle fell on her dress and burned her dress.

And he tried to put out the burns, put out the fire. But the next day she died

from those burns from that candle.

And his face was actually, the reason he has a beard is because his face was

scarred from the burns that, from that experience where he was trying to put those out.

Two years later, the American Civil War is ongoing.

There is no peace in the United States at this point.

And Henry Wadsworth Longfellow gets a report just before Christmas that his

son was injured in the Civil War, fighting for the Union. And this is what he writes.

I heard the bells on Christmas Day, their old familiar carols play.

And wild and sweet the words repeat of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

And thought how, as the day had come, the belfries of all Christendom had rolled

along the unbroken song of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Then from each black accursed mouth the cannon thundered in the south,

and with the sound the carols drowned of peace on earth, goodwill to men,

and in despair I bowed my head.

There is no peace on earth, I said, for hate is strong and mocks the song of

peace on earth, goodwill to men.

So ringing singing on its way, the world revolved from night to day,

a voice, a chime, a chant sublime of peace on earth, goodwill to men.

Then pealed the bells more loud and deep. God is not dead, nor doth he sleep.

The wrong shall fail, the right prevail with peace on earth, goodwill to men.

As we go to Christmas this season, this is our hope. As we go into this time

of communion, we celebrate the body of Christ broken and the blood of Christ shed.

But we don't just celebrate the brokenness or the bloodshed of Christ.

We celebrate that God is not dead, that he is living, that the wrong shall fail

and the right will prevail.

As we make Eden spaces on earth, as we participate in the kingdom advances,

as peacemakers, as bearing the image of God and repairing the image of God.

We will participate and present the world in that moment when all things will be made right.

As we celebrate Advent, we're looking both to the first coming,

but also to the second coming of Jesus.

The second coming when He comes in glory, when He comes to judge in righteousness

and with equity, all the peoples and all the nations before This is our hope.

Our hope is in the birth of an infant child who will come as the ruling king.

This is our Prince of Peace. So let's go to sing and worship and sing.