His Kingdom Foretold - Part A

I've always found it interesting that the evangelical church has been very, very good at defending, as we should, the deity of Christ, that Jesus Christ is indeed God. And the Bible is filled with that language. But where we evangelicals fall a little bit short and we get a little bit uncomfortable is defending the absolute humanity of Jesus. He was fully God, but he was also fully man. Today on Connect with Skip Heitzig, Pastor Skip shares a message about Christ's humanity and a look at the kingdom Jesus came to establish. But first. Hi, this is Pastor Skip Heitzig and here we are ending 2023.

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That is connectwithskip.com or call 1-800-922-1888. Great, let's get started. We're turning to Isaiah 9 as we begin today. In New York City at the United Nations building, there's a wall just outside with an inscription on it that is an inscription from Isaiah chapter 2, which says, and they will beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation will not lift up sword against nation. Neither will they learn to make war anymore.

So when you go into the United Nations building, that is inscribed in stone just outside that building. That's their hope. Now can you imagine a world with no war? Can you imagine a world that is filled with peace? Can you imagine a utopia where there's no homeland security, where there's no color chart of hierarchy, of threat levels? Can you imagine a world where everything is fair and where politicians are all saints?

I know you have to really stretch your imagination here. A world that is ruled by one perfect mind, and every decision is always the right decision. Try to imagine a world where the health is such that if a person dies at age 100, he is said to have died as a child.

Imagine a world where children can play in snake pits and find the snakes friendly, and where the snakes can find the children friendly. Imagine a world where the food is overabundant and plentiful, even though the whole earth is filled with people. Well, actually, you don't have to imagine that, for that is exactly what the Bible predicts is coming under the title the kingdom, the kingdom, or the kingdom age, the Bible describes it as. Sometimes it is called the kingdom age. Sometimes it is referred to as the millennial reign of Christ. In the Gospel of Matthew chapter 19, it is called the regeneration. In Acts 3, the times of refreshing.

Also in Acts 3, the restoration of all things. It is the kingdom that the Jews thought of when they thought of the coming of the Messiah into their world. They were hoping that their king would come, their deliverer would come, to set up the kingdom that the prophets had anticipated and predicted in such graphic detail that I just outlined to you. And it is that kingdom that Jesus will come to establish at his second coming. When he comes to the earth, something that is also written about by the prophets. Over the last several weeks in this series, we looked at hope foretold, his birth foretold with Isaiah chapter 7, his life foretold, his death foretold in Isaiah 53.

We looked then on Christmas Eve as hope for all and the culmination of all that hope. But there is an element that we left out and it would be incomplete if we didn't at least mention the culmination of all the hope of every age, and that is the kingdom age. His kingdom is foretold. And in Isaiah chapter 9, we go back there once again and we see something in the text that goes beyond Bethlehem, beyond the cross, way into the future glory, the reign of Christ. Isaiah chapter 9 verse 6 and verse 7. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder. And his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end.

Upon the throne of David and over his kingdom, to order it and to establish it with judgment and justice, from that time forward, even forever, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. In the newspaper world, whenever a big headline breaks, they put it in enormous print at the top of the page. If a president is a senator, if a president is assassinated like JFK when he was killed, or when President Reagan, there was an attempted assassination on his life, when the Twin Towers fell on September 11th, when Bin Laden was killed, when we made it to the moon, the largest print available in typesetting is placed at the top of the newspaper, and it has a very interesting title. It's called Second Coming Type in the newspaper world.

Isn't that interesting? Second Coming Type. It is reserved for the biggest news events in the world.

Second Coming Type. Well, we're talking about the biggest event ever to hit the history of the world, the coming of Jesus Christ. As I mentioned, his kingdom is the culmination of all the hopes of all the saints of all the ages. Even Jesus taught us to pray, our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. That prayer is not answered yet.

That prayer will be answered on that day, but that is a theme that runs throughout all of the Scripture. It is a literal kingdom of Christ upon this earth, which will transcend this earth and take us all the way into eternity, into heaven. If you go back in the Old Testament, you remember that King Nebuchadnezzar had a dream that troubled him, and he brought everybody in to interpret the dream, and nobody could do it. So Daniel comes in, and he comes up. He's got the scoop, and he says, you are seeing in your dream, oh King, this huge image set before you in the plane of gold and silver and bronze and iron and iron and clay. And then you saw this great stone cut without hands that smashed that statue at the bottom, and it grew into a mountain that filled the whole earth. Then Daniel gave the interpretation. He said, at that time, God will set up a kingdom that will never be destroyed, and it will stand forever. Where would that kingdom be? Just as the king saw it on the earth in place of those other kingdoms that once stood there. And then the angel told Mary, when the angel visited Mary and told that a child would be born.

We usually Skip over this when it comes to reading this at the Christmas season, but listen to it carefully. You will conceive in your womb and bring forth the sun, and you will call his name Jesus. He will be great and will be called the son of the highest, and the Lord God will give him the throne of his father David, and he will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end. So all throughout the scripture, and we just touched on a couple, there's this message of the king is coming, and a kingdom is coming. Now we in the United States, we sort of are unfamiliar with the idea of a kingdom and a king. In fact, our nation was established rebelling against a kingdom and the king of England, and we wanted autonomy from that. And most of the world today does not have monarchies anymore. There are some that do, but largely those monarchies are symbolic. The idea of a kingdom then implies absolute total dominion and authority, sovereign control.

And I just want to make a quick distinction. Though yes, there is the idea of the kingdom fulfilled now in the present tense in a spiritual way. Jesus said, my kingdom is not of this world. He said the kingdom of heaven or the kingdom of God is among you or in your midst. The kingdom of God is at hand. So there is a present spiritual fulfillment of that. There will come a day when his kingdom is of this world.

Just at that time it wasn't, but one day it will be. And one day there will be a total complete fulfillment of his kingdom upon the earth. So in these two verses, Isaiah 9, 6, and 7, I want you to look with me at three aspects of this coming kingdom. First of all, a remarkable king.

A remarkable king. In verse 6, just the first part of verse 6 tells us about this king. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder. In one half of one verse we're told about his humanity, we're told about his deity, and we're told about his sovereignty.

So let's unpack that. For unto us a child is born. That is his humanity. That is Bethlehem. That is Christmas. That is the Nativity. That's what we celebrate God coming into the world as a baby. I've always found it interesting that the evangelical church has been very, very good at defending, as we should, the deity of Christ. That Jesus Christ is indeed God.

And the Bible is filled with that language. But where we evangelicals fall a little bit short and we get a little bit uncomfortable is defending the absolute humanity of Jesus. He was fully God, but he was also fully man. We must never forget that the first heresy in the early church was not an attack on the deity of Christ. It was an attack on the humanity of Christ. It was called Gnosticism. It was the denial that Jesus had a real human body. We must never forget that the Bible says, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

We're really great at that part, but keep going. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. So we're dealing with God in a womb. God with a placenta.

God with an umbilical cord as an embryo and a fetus and then born. As he grew up, on occasions he grew sleepy. Remember when he got into the boat with his disciples?

They were going from one side to the other, and he fell asleep. On another occasion, he became absolutely fatigued at the well at Samaria. He sat down because he was weary from the journey, the Bible says. On another occasion, he was hungry after he fasted 40 days and 40 nights. He was in the wilderness. The devil came and tempted him, it says, and in the old King James, he was an hungered.

I always like that translation. He was an hungered. He was very, very hungry. At the tomb of Lazarus in John 11, Jesus wept, and then finally Jesus died, and in dying he felt what all people who die feel, especially those who die excruciating deaths. So unto us a child is born.

That's his humanity. Next phrase, unto us a son is given. Now that's his deity.

Notice the construction is different. The wording is that now he's born, now he's given. He is given. This suggests pre-existent deity. In other words, he already existed as God, as the second person in the Trinity, and then he was given to the world as Savior.

A son is given. John 3 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son. Same idea. Have you ever thought of this before? Jesus is the only person who ever existed before he was born. It's an odd thought, isn't it?

It's weird to get your head around that. That's why Paul said great is the mystery of godliness. God was manifest in the flesh. But what you need to know is that Jesus never became God. He always was God. He was God pre-Bethlehem. He was God in heaven. He was God in the womb. He was God when he was born. He was God when he was a toddler, when he was in puberty, in adolescence, as a teenager, all through his life.

Jesus always was God. God and man. It's beautifully put in the old Christmas carol, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, written by Charles Wesley and set to music by none other than Mendelssohn himself. Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail incarnate deity.

Pleased as man with men to dwell. Jesus our Emmanuel. Hark the Herald Angels Sing. Glory to the newborn king. And so it was Isaiah in chapter 7, speaking of the virgin birth, and you will call his name Immanuel. Matthew said translated God with us. So unto us a child is born, humanity. Unto us a son is given, deity.

Deity coming in humanity. I remember one time when I was overseas on the mission field, and I was in a place of, I would call it suffering. I didn't have American food, and I didn't have air conditioning, and I didn't have ice in my soda. I mean, you know, for an American that was suffering. And I was there for a protracted period of time, and it just wasn't what I was used to. And if you've been on a mission field, and you have been there for a while, you know what it's like to be kind of pared down to just the essentials of life. But I remember sitting there thinking what it must have been like for Jesus to leave heaven.

Not New Mexico, not California, not Texas. Heaven surrounded by the anthems of the angels as the pre-incarnate second person of the Trinity, to be hailed by all the the worship experience of that environment, and then to come to this earth. And what that was like, the ultimate cross-cultural experience. But that was Jesus. He was what theologians call theanthropos, God-man, theanthropic. That is, he was undiminished deity, unprotected humanity. And then finally, in that one phrase of verse 6, and the government will be upon his shoulder. Now that speaks of his sovereignty. So in one half of one verse, we have his humanity, his deity, his sovereignty. Now when it says this, the government will be upon his shoulders, Isaiah is is peering into the future, way beyond Bethlehem, way beyond the cross, into the future kingdom. The government will be on his shoulder.

The Hebrew word misra means the rule of a monarch. And in ancient times it was always considered, government was considered a burden, I know it's considered a burden today, but it was considered a burden to be born on the shoulders of the king. And so they would represent that by placing a robe on the shoulders, or on the back of the king, representing that the government is way down upon the shoulder.

That's his burden of responsibility to bear. So one day the God who created the earth and came to live in the earth, will come back and rule the earth. That's why he's the only one fit to do the job, because he made it, he came to live in it as man, and then he will rule the world as monarch. There's an old story about a monarch who took off his robe of royalty, his kingly robe, twice a year to go out and hang out with the people of his kingdom. And he said, hang out with the people of his kingdom. He would dress as a peasant, he would walk amongst his people.

All of the courtiers and advisors never liked that because of security reasons. They told him not to do it, but he said, I cannot rule my people unless I know how they live. So think of Jesus walking the earth as God incognito, with the robe, the garb of a peasant, inhuman skin, from a manger, a poor humble birth, but the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Humanity, deity, sovereignty, that's a remarkable king.

The second aspect after the remarkable king is his royal character. Same verse, it goes on to say, and his name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Now I believe Isaiah, taking off from what he just said, the government will be upon his shoulders, is still reaching out and looking into the future rule and reign of Messiah during the kingdom age. Now these titles, these names that we have before us, it doesn't mean that this child will actually bear those names. We don't have a record of anybody walking up and saying, hey Wonderful, or hey Counselor, or hey Mighty God, or Prince of Peace. Really these are titles of his character as king.

This is the royal character of the king himself. And so he will be called Wonderful. Notice in your Bible it probably says Wonderful, Counselor. It's better to take the comma out.

There was no punctuation in the original Hebrew that was put there later on. Some person thought that's one of the titles. It seems to better fit as an adjective of the title Counselor. He's a Wonderful Counselor. He's an awesome, amazing Counselor.

He's Wonder Counselor. That's the idea of Wonderful Counselor. Now anybody can counsel, but it's not always wonderful when they do it. You can go to an analyst, or an astrologer, or a psychic, and you can get all sorts of advice. In fact, you can go to anybody and get advice.

That's the cheapest, easiest thing to get. Everybody has an idea of how you ought to live. It's not always good. It's not always good godly counsel. It's not Wonderful Counsel.

There's an old Danish proverb that says, he who builds according to every man's advice will have a crooked house. Jesus is different. He's a Wonderful Counselor. That's why crowds wanted to hear him. They came from beyond the Jordan. Even Nicodemus wanted a private meeting with him in Jerusalem. In the Bible we're told in Nazareth, they were all amazed by the gracious words which came from his lips.

And then in John chapter 7, the temple guards were sent to arrest him. They came back empty-handed, and when their bosses said, well where is he? You know what they said? They shook their heads and said, never a man spoke like this. Never a man spoke like this. It was wonderful what he had to say. That's Skip Heidzig with a message from the series Jesus Hope Foretold.

Find the full message as well as books, booklets, and full teaching series at connectwithskip.com. Now here's Skip with an invitation for you to join he and Lenya Heidzig on a Holy Land tour next year. Hey our 2024 Israel tour is coming up.

This is Pastor Skip, and we still have space on this trip that Lenya and I are hosting. We will be touring Israel from May 1st through May 12th. I hope that you'll join us firsthand to see some incredible sites like the Sea of Galilee.

I'm sure you've always wanted to see that. The Temple Mount in Jerusalem, and the Garden Tomb, the place many people believe is where Jesus rose from the dead. The final deadline for registration is December 31st, so there's still time to take action and join Lenya and I for the trip of a lifetime. Find full Israel information at connectwithskip.com. God works through the support of generous friends like you to change lives all around the world in some truly incredible ways. And when you give today, you can help grow the ministry of Connect with Skip Heidzig to broadcast into more cities in the U.S. and around the world, connecting more people to the life-changing message of Jesus Christ. To give today, go to connectwithskip.com slash donate. That's connectwithskip.com slash donate or call 800-922-1888.

Again, that's 800-922-1888. Thank you. We hope you'll join us again tomorrow for the conclusion of Skip's message and the series, Jesus Hope Foretold. He'll show you what Jesus, our counselor and mighty God can do for you that none other can. Connect with Skip Heidzig is a presentation of Connection Communications, connecting you to God's never changing truth in ever-changing times.