Well, this is a special night, and I'm so glad that you have joined us here to worship our incarnate Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. There's so many wonderful traditions during this season. One of the traditions that's often observed during the holiday season is the exchanging of Christmas cards. And you know, if you think about it, in our convenient world of digital communication, it's a wonder that a tradition like sending a Christmas card with a stamp in the mail has endured. But what an enjoyable and nostalgic tradition it is.
And what a fitting tradition for remembering and commemorating the coming of God to earth in the flesh. You know, you can't touch an email like you can a Christmas card. There's no transfer of glitter from an Instagram post to your hands as you walk back to your front door from the mailbox. But a Christmas card is something you can hold and touch and display in your home. It's something you can look at over and over again.
It's tactile, it's concrete, it's touchable in the flesh. But if Christmas cards had a weakness, a downside, I suppose it would have to be their brevity. You just can't say much on a four by six card. I mean, you can certainly say some meaningful things.
You can express your well wishes in a general sort of way, but you can't say everything you would want to say. You can fit a blurb about the Christ child or about peace on earth on a card, but you just can't tell the whole story. You know, it's possible that many of us have heard snippets of that story our whole lives without ever really discovering the depth and the breadth and the profundity of what happened in Bethlehem some 2,000 years ago. We've read the cards and seen the artwork portraying a manger and shepherds and night skies and silhouettes of wise men. It's possible that we've read a hundred four line poems about the miracle of the Christ child, but never stopped to think about the meaning behind the poem on the card. Never took the time maybe to read the Bible verses that are printed on Christmas cards in their historical and biblical context. I wonder sometimes if we don't have a sound bite sized grasp of Christmas because we've never taken the time to read and digest the epic tale of how God came to earth or thought deeply about why God came to earth.
So what I'd like for us to do for just a few moments is take one of the sound bites that often makes its way onto Christmas cards and ruminate on it. In the stillness of this time that we have together tonight. It's only one verse in the Bible. We call it Isaiah 9-6. I'm sure you've read it before or seen it on a sign or heard it in a song, but regardless of where you may have stumbled upon it, it comes to us from God. This is God's word. Isaiah 9-6 says, 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. Let me just stop and pray and ask God to help us understand the import and the weight of these words and understand what difference this ancient sentence should make in our lives.
Let's pray. God of heaven, thank you for gathering this group of your image bearers together on this night. Thank you for giving us the inspired truth of your word to contemplate.
Thank you that this word is alive and powerful and able to change us in the very depths of our soul. So Lord, what we know not, teach us. What we have not, give us. What we are not, make us. I pray in the blessed name of your Son and our Savior Jesus Christ.
Amen. The best starting place for understanding any given verse of scripture is to read the context in which the verse appears. In the case of Isaiah 9-6, this verse appears right in the middle of a larger section of the book of Isaiah that is describing a military threat to Israel. It's the 700s BC and the nation of Assyria is the uncontested superpower of the day. Israel has divided itself into two kingdoms, a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. Isaiah, the prophet writing Isaiah 9-6 belongs to the southern kingdom.
The northern kingdom is particularly vulnerable to invasion from the Assyrians because of their geographic location in the north. And so in a desperate ploy to protect themselves, the northern kingdom of Israel joins forces with pagan, unbelieving Damascus to give themselves a better chance of surviving an attack from the mighty Assyrians. This coalition between the northern kingdom of Israel and Damascus tries to get the southern kingdom of Israel to join in with them. But the southern kingdom righteously refuses to join knowing that God will not bless a political union with a nation that serves other gods, false gods. So in an unexpected turn of events, the northern alliance declares war on the southern kingdom. It's civil war in Israel.
And this is where chapter 9 of Isaiah begins. Isaiah's southern kingdom is under attack with very little chance of withstanding the onslaught from the north. They're vulnerable. They're helpless. They face the threat of defeat and possible exile.
What are they supposed to do? So Isaiah, under the inspiration of God himself, begins proclaiming a message of hope and peace in the midst of the uncertainties and fears of war. In the opening verses of chapter 9, Isaiah begins to describe a scenario in which Israel's invaders are stopped in their tracks. A scenario in which the threat of war is swiftly removed. Where there was panic and gloom, there will be peace and joy.
Where there's uncertainty and despair, that will be replaced with hope and happiness. Now how is this radical change of circumstances going to come about? Is the king of Israel going to suddenly become a military genius? Are Israel's troops going to double in number overnight and have a chance of defeating their opposition?
Well, no. This victory, this turn of events is not going to occur through conventional means. In fact, it will come about through a most unlikely source. It will come about, verse 6, through the birth of a child. What do we know about this child? Well, several statements are made in the surrounding verses that clue us in on the nature of this child. For one, we know that this child will be a king, a ruler, a leader of men. Isaiah says that the government shall be upon his shoulder.
That's just another way of saying that this child will bear authority at the highest level. He will be king. We also discover that this child is in the line of King David. Now David, of course, was kind of a quintessential king of the Old Testament, a man after God's own heart. In fact, David was so loved of God that God promised there would be a king on the throne from David's line forever and ever.
So this child, whoever he is, is from that line of prestigious preeminent kings. We also find out that the rule of this child will be without limit. Of the increase of his government, his rule and authority, Isaiah says, there will be no end.
But not only will his rule and authority ever increase, the good effect of his rule and authority will also increase. Isaiah says, of the increase of peace under the reign of this child, there will be no end. And then finally we discover that this child will be a just and righteous leader.
He is an effective king because he is a good king, a righteous king. Isaiah assures his audience that this child will come and will be everything he is promised to be because God himself will make sure that all of this happens exactly according to plan. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this, Isaiah says. So the context of this well-known Christmas verse is one in which Israel is under attack, God's prophet Isaiah promises a rescue, a deliverance through a child who will be a righteous king, an effective king, and an eternal king. So comprehensive, in fact, will be the rule of this child that there is no limit to his reign or to his jurisdiction. You see, as we continue to read about this promised king, we begin to realize that he's not just king over Israel, he's king over everyone. He's not merely rescuing his subjects from an Assyrian attack, he's actually rescuing his children from every enemy, whether it be physical, political, spiritual, personal. His rule and reign have no end, no boundaries, no borders, no term limits. What Isaiah is hinting at and what the rest of the Bible makes perfectly clear is that this child is an absolute and eternal king overall. Every knee will bow to this child and acknowledge his lordship, his preeminence, his sovereignty. This isn't just an Israel thing or an Old Testament thing or a religious people kind of thing.
No, it's nothing less than the universal rule of God's promised deliverer that encompasses all time and space forever. And this is really where this ancient story intersects with us today. This deliverer, whom God would raise up to help ancient Israel with her enemies, is the same deliverer who will help any and all who run to him for help. If you are this king's subject, you will be victorious. If you are this king's enemy, you will be defeated. Every knee will bow to this king one way or another. So the question is not whether you or I will bow to him, we will. The question is whether we will bow submissively or defiantly.
Whether we will yield to him gladly or come to him kicking and screaming. Now it's probably obvious to us at this point, but just in case we've missed it, we need to realize that this promised king is Jesus Christ. The child that Isaiah spoke of seven centuries earlier, this promised rescuer of God's people who would sit on David's throne forever is the Son of God, Jesus Christ. And this is where verse six becomes particularly helpful and beautiful. Verse six begins to list for us several titles or names that belong to this universal rescuer. And each of these names gives us a reason to bow submissively to him because each of these names represent a need that we have that Jesus Christ meets.
Why should I bow submissively to Jesus Christ? Well, first of all, because he is the wonderful counselor. Isaiah says, unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor. The word wonderful is the closest word the Hebrew language has to the English word supernatural. Every time it's used in the Old Testament, almost exclusively, it's used to describe the works that God himself performs. We read, for example, about how God delivered Israel from Egypt and how he performed wonder after wonder, miracle after miracle. He turned the Nile River into blood.
He sent utter darkness over the land. He parted the Red Sea. Moses describes these divine actions as wonders.
Wonderful supernatural miracles that only a deity could perform. So when Isaiah employs that same word to describe this child who will come to deliver God's people, it implies that this king is no mere human. He is God. He is a wonder, something divine, something to be marveled at.
Now what specific activity does this promised king do that is such a wonder, such a marvel? Well, he counsels. He is the Wonderful Counselor. A counselor is one who brings wisdom. And so if Christ is a Wonderful Counselor, he is the one who brings supernatural wisdom, divine wisdom. As our Wonderful Counselor, Jesus Christ brings a divine perspective into our circumstances. He makes sense of our lives. He enables us to see both the good things and the bad things from his vantage point.
Without this child king, we see only Assyrian armies and threatening foes. But through our Wonderful Counselor, we are enabled to see and understand the bigger picture. We might ask, how does Jesus Christ impart divine counsel to his subjects? How does he give us his supernatural wisdom? Well, he gives us his Wonderful Counsel through his written word, the Scriptures, the Bible. In this book, we have everything we need to be thoroughly equipped for every good work. Not only is this book without error, it is also a living, powerful book, a book that reads us and changes us even as we are reading it.
You know, life gets complicated, and we need wisdom to navigate this life. The child of Isaiah 9 gives divine wisdom, and so we should bow to this child. He is a Wonderful Counselor, and he is the king. Well, the second title Isaiah gives is that of mighty God. We should bow to this child king because he is the mighty God.
The deity of this child, which was implied in that first title, is now made explicitly clear. He is God, the mighty God. Now, in our English translation, the word mighty is the adjective, and the word God is the noun.
But in the Hebrew, these words are reversed. The word God is the adjective which describes the might of this child king. We could say he is godlike in his might. The word mighty refers to a hero. It's a description of someone who's able to come to the rescue of others and save the day. Think with me for a moment about the heroes in your life. Who are your heroes? Young children, maybe it's a parent or a teacher.
For adults, it might be a best friend, a mentor. We look up to our heroes. We depend on our heroes.
In the case of the child of Isaiah 9, he is a hero of divine proportion. Human heroes inevitably wear out. They get old.
They disappoint. They stop being heroic. But this hero, he never stops being the hero. He never grows weary of rescuing us, never gets exasperated and walks away. And so in utter dependence upon him, we should bow to him. He is a mighty God, a divine hero, and he's the king.
The third title Isaiah mentions is that of everlasting father. We should bow to this child king because he is the everlasting father. I don't know what kind of father you may have had growing up. Some fathers are wonderful providers, protectors, role models. Other fathers are failures at providing for and loving their families. But regardless of what kind of earthly father you may have had, I think what every person universally understands is that a father should be the most reliable, faithful, and caring person in a child's life. Even though fathers don't always live up to that ideal, that's what every child longs for in a father, someone they can count on, someone who will love them unconditionally, someone who will protect and provide for them no matter what. The promised king of Isaiah 9 is an everlasting father. He will fulfill that role of protector and provider because he is in his very essence a father.
He's an everlasting father, and so his fatherly instinct and role will persist forever. As parents, we want what's best for our children. We want to be able to give them provision and opportunity. We want to encourage them and give them motivation. We want our children to succeed and grow up to be happy, fulfilled adults. And yet so often in that noble endeavor of raising kids, we fail. We fall short of the ideal.
We don't live up to the expectation. But God's fatherly endeavors are not a flash in the pan. They're not temporary. They're not disappointing. They deliver.
They are divine. They are eternal because he is the everlasting father. He is the king. The last title that Isaiah gives to this promised child is Prince of Peace. And in a sense, this is really the climax of everything that this promised child is and does. He brings peace.
And so because he is the Prince of Peace, we should bow to this child. The original audience of this prophecy was facing the imminent threat of an ancient superpower, a superpower strong enough and brazen enough to destroy everything in its path. If I were to ask you tonight who your enemies are, you likely wouldn't identify a political superpower.
Maybe you would. You might point to certain selfish people in your life with whom you have to contend. You might point to certain injustices in the world, perhaps discrepancies of socioeconomic privilege or workplace inequities.
Your enemies might include neighbors or even family members who make your life difficult through their disregard of your needs or through just the sheer meanness that they possess. This world is a cruel world with cruel self-centered people in it. It's not an easy place in which to live and work and love and befriend. Have you ever stopped and asked yourself why this is so? Why is this world so broken? Somehow we have a concept in our imaginations of what a perfect world would be like. And human beings, for the most part, even want that perfect world. We long for that ideal of happiness and contentment and tranquility, of peace.
But it seems that no matter how much we long for it or how hard we work for it, which eludes us, what is wrong with this world? We actually find the answer to that question at the very beginning of the Bible. When God had first created Adam and Eve, He gave them a law, a rule to live by. And He told them that if they kept that law, they would enjoy a perfectly happy world, but if they broke the law, they would ruin the world. They would ruin their happiness. They would ruin their own souls.
Paradise would be lost. And when given the option to obey or disobey, Adam and Eve chose to disobey their Creator, their God. With that disobedience, everything began to crumble. Their ability to enjoy their work, their ability to raise good kids, their ability to be happy and good, it was all lost through their disobedience. Not only that, they also lost the relationship they had with their Creator, God, the one who had made them and given them everything they needed to be happy, became someone to be feared and to hide from, someone to be avoided. Peace with God was forfeited. And so for generations, the descendants of those first parents fought with each other and destroyed each other and they fought with God and sought to destroy Him. But all along, God had a plan to redeem mankind.
It would be dangerous and bloody. It would require suffering and death. But God saw to it that a rescuer would come, a child, a hero, a king, and this child would buy back the peace that had been lost through man's disobedience. This child would suffer the punishment that sinners deserve so that he could offer to sinners a way of forgiveness and restoration and peace. Jesus Christ died on a cross, not merely because the Roman Empire allowed it to happen, but because God the Father willed it to happen. He gave His only Son to die for the sins of wicked sinners like us, in order that those who trust in the sufficiency of this child and submit to the sovereign rule and reign of this King might regain the peace they had lost through sin and might experience salvation from sin and death, salvation that could have only been accomplished by one who is truly God and truly man.
So who is this child of Isaiah 9-6? This child is God Himself. And if He is God, then we must bow to Him. And we must acknowledge that He is King of Kings.
Our allegiance belongs to Him alone. But this child is not merely God. He is God come in the flesh. In fact, two chapters earlier, Isaiah mentions another name for this child.
It's the name Immanuel, which means God with us. If this child is God, then we must bow to Him. But if this child is also a God who sacrificially comes to be with His people, then we ought to also trust Him. We ought to believe that He is who He says He is and that He will do what He has promised to do, that He will give us divine and wise counsel, that He will rescue us in the way that only God can rescue, that He will forever be a loving and gracious Father, that He will bring us peace because He Himself is the Prince of Peace. Perhaps another shortcoming of Christmas cards is that they fail to capture the chaos of real life. They portray an idyllic world of clear, starry nights and happy families smiling and all getting along.
But our lives in reality are far from that ideal. Our lives are threatened by a hundred enemies, not the least of which is a powerful God who is too holy to look upon sin. The hope of Isaiah 9-6 is that this holy and powerful God has come to us as a humble child and in that coming has demonstrated an unfathomable love for mankind. He gives us wise counsel to fools.
He rescues the unrescuable. He fathers the fatherless. He brings peace to the guilty soul. The question that remains then is how do sinners avail themselves of this great peace?
And the answer is simple. We avail ourselves of God's peace by bowing to this child, by throwing ourselves upon His righteous rule and trusting Him to be the merciful king that He claims to be. The New Testament parallel to Isaiah 9-6 is Matthew 1-21 which really captures the whole message of the Incarnation.
It says that Mary will bear a son and you shall call His name Jesus for He will save His people from their sins. Do you need a rescuer? Jesus is that rescuer. So bow to Him tonight. Surrender your life to His rule and reign. He is a gracious and merciful king. Let's pray. Lord, if there is someone here tonight who has not tasted the sweet peace that can only come from Christ's atoning work, would you open their eyes of understanding now and enable them to see their sinfulness for what it is and enable them to see your solution for what it is. Thank you for the child of Bethlehem who is our counselor, our rescuer, our protector and provider and our peace. And it is in His name that we pray. Amen.
