Prince of Peace (Part 1 of 2)

The message of peace is everywhere at Christmas, from ornaments to porch signs.

But just because we see it doesn't mean we have it. And today on Truth for Life, Alistair Begg explains the predicament all of us are in and how peace can become a reality in our lives. I invite you to turn to Isaiah chapter 9, and I will read from verse 1 through to the end of verse 7. Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress.

In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the Gentiles by way of the sea along the Jordan. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light. On those living in the land of the shadow of death a light has dawned. You have enlarged the nation and increased their joy. They rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest, as men rejoice when dividing the plunder. For as in the day of Midian's defeat you have shattered the yoke that burdens them, the bar across their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor.

Every warrior's boot used in battle and every garment rolled in blood will be destined for burning, will be fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he 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. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this. Thanks be to God for his Word. We pray now, before we look at the Bible, we come humbly to you, living God, thanking you for your living Word, the Bible, and praying that the work of the Holy Spirit now will so take that which is of yourself and introduce it to us as we think about things in a way that is rational and life-changing. Only you can accomplish this, and to you alone we look, and we pray in Christ's name.

Amen. Well, each day, as some of you will know, the Wall Street Journal carries a summary of the news right on its front page, which is very helpful if you don't have much time at all. You can very quickly, in the course of about a third of a cup of coffee, find out exactly what's going on—at least according to the Wall Street—in terms of business and finance and then in terms of the world in general.

This is the half a cup of coffee's introduction to the world that was provided for us Friday, December 28, just a couple of days ago. If you sat down in the morning and took your paper, this is what you were confronted with. Pakistan's ex-premier, Bhutto, was assassinated, sparking riots. U.S. forces in Iraq seized two men, possibly linked to the capture of three American soldiers earlier this year, and they killed twenty-two in the process of doing so. Israeli and Palestinian leaders agreed to put aside a dispute over a certain kind of construction in a Jerusalem neighborhood, but at the same time an Israeli airstrike killed six militants in Gaza. North Korea continues to make a shambles of its nuclear arms program. That's not what it says. That's my interpretation, sorry.

I'm not supposed to editorialize. Two Russian officers were convicted by a military corps of killing three construction workers. Kenya's presidential vote went off fairly well, despite violence and allegations of vote rigging.

Sri Lanka's military said its jets destroyed a Tamil tagger. The infantry killed sixty-six rebels and fourteen government troops. Hindu extremists torched churches, and Christians set fire to the homes belonging to Hindus. France asked Chad to hand over six French workers because they were stealing little children from the Central African Republic, presumably involved in the sex trade.

In Indonesia, the toll grew to eighty-seven dead or missing as a result of the landslide, and the San Francisco Zoo's director said a tiger that killed a teenager and mauled two other men probably jumped over a wall of its pen that was below the recommended height. Just a routine Friday with your newspaper, allowing us to conclude that the Bible is very, very accurate when it lets us know that the world today knows no settled peace. The world today knows no settled peace. In fact, we would be pretty accurate in acknowledging that not a lot has changed since the time of Isaiah's prophecy, which we have just read from the ninth chapter. Because it is there in the fifth verse that Isaiah says he anticipates the boots of the warriors and the garments that are rolled in blood being destined for burning and being made as fuel for the fire. And in the context of war and oppression, he focuses on the coming Messiah.

All the bits and pieces of war, he says, will eventually be irrelevant, will be rolled up and put away, and then he tells us why. And it is an amazing statement. He says, For to us a child is born and a son is given. In other words, the answer to everything that is going on and will go on is directly tied to the birth of a baby.

Not just any baby, but this particular baby—the baby who has four names. Wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, and our name this morning, Prince of Peace. In fact, if we summarize what Isaiah provides us with in these verses, it is simply this. He says, A child is born, that child is the Prince of Peace, and if we would have peace, it is to that child we must go.

A child is born, he's the Prince of Peace, and there is no peace except that which is found in him. I say to you again, it is a quite staggering claim. I thought about it this week when I was listening to folks talking on one of the programs concerning the death of Benazir Bhutto. And the news that had come out at that point as I was listening to it, that the government of Pakistan were actually suggesting that she had not been killed by shrapnel or by a bullet, but she had actually died as a result of the explosion, causing her to fall and hit her head on the open roof of the vehicle in which she was traveling. And one of the commentators, who's particularly conservative, said, Actually, I believe that. And the reason I believe it, he says, is because it is so implausible.

Why would the government, of all the stories it could invent, invent a story such as that that people would say, Oh, come on? And in many ways, people who are on the fringes of Christianity, who are wondering about the Bible, who are not sure what it says, may feel the very same way about a claim like this. You're actually suggesting, is the Bible really saying that the answer to the dilemma of man, that the issues of our enmity with God and with one another, are found in the birth of a baby, albeit a baby who has been given four names? Well, this particular name, Prince of Peace, is our focus for this morning, and I think it has the most curbside appeal of the four. If you were putting something up to speak on, I think you may get more reaction from this than from any of the other three. Certainly, when I mentioned it to someone in Starbucks a couple of weeks ago, inviting them to come to the services this morning, and I told them that we would be addressing the question of the Prince of Peace, it had an immediate reaction. I'm not coming.

No. Their reaction was, Oh, that's very interesting. I don't know if they're here, but if they are, we can talk later. Because a desire for peace among the nations is more than matched by a sincere desire to live at peace with each other. Enmity is ugly, it's distasteful, it's not nice, it's not enjoyable, and nobody really likes being in a bad mood and aggravating everybody for the entire day.

That may hit a little too close to home for some of you enjoying the Christmas celebrations together. But the fact is, we know the importance of harmony amongst one another, and we know the absolute necessity of peace within ourselves. Peace within ourselves. In fact, tranquility on the outside may simply disguise the raging torment that is going within us. Because strife and disharmony and futility and decay are undeniably part of the fabric of our lives. It's not nice to observe, but it is honest to observe. And it is equally accurate that despite man's ability to accumulate stuff, despite his progress in knowledge both in the Psalms and since the Psalms, that sense of frustration and alienation, which men and women are forced to acknowledge, is not answered by a trip to the mall, is not answered by a master's degree, is not answered by anything that holds out hope to us.

Now, you don't have to read big books to figure this, do you? It comes at us in all kinds of ways. It comes to us in the monologues of the comedians, and in the little bits and pieces they write. George Carlin—whom I will surely get a letter for quoting from the pulpit—but George Carlin somewhat humorously and relatively sarcastically writes as follows, We've cleaned up the air but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom but not our prejudice. We write more but learn less. We plan more, we accomplish less. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships, the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses but broken homes, the days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window, nothing in the stock room, a time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight or just to hit Delete.

And then, of course, he's right, isn't he? Not particularly brilliant, it's just an observation of what each of us, if we're honest, has to face up to. David Wells, commenting on contemporary culture, describes the human spirit sagging beneath the burden of emptiness. Sagging beneath the burden of emptiness.

And again, this is not something that is unique to the twenty-first century. For all can see that wise men die, the foolish and the senseless alike perish. You can die as a PhD or you can die as a dimwit, but you will still die.

That's what he's saying. And you can die with a tremendous bank balance or you can die with zero, but you'll still die. And their tombs will remain their houses forever, and their dwellings for endless generations, though they had named lands after themselves. Rhodesia, Cecil Rhodes, as a result of his business and political acumen, has a nation named after him. Unfortunately, it's now, for his heritage, Zimbabwe. And he's long gone.

And we will be too. The preacher, who writes in the very heart of our Bibles in a book called Ecclesiastes, describes his own tortured search for peace and for contentment. And he's honest enough to say that he conducted it without reference to God. He tried to unscramble the riddle of life by simply looking under the sun. He took what was here and what was now and what was available, and he said, Now perhaps in these things I will be able to find peace.

And if you read it for yourselves, you will discover that wisdom left him frustrated and restless, work made him tired and angry, leisure caused him pain, and stuff just made him sick and sad. He lived the American dream long before there was an America and told us it was a dead-end street. But nobody wanted to believe that then. And frankly, nobody wants to believe it now. Because if we're honest about it, the living of our lives, even on our best days, is actually an attempt to make the best of a bad job.

I know that doesn't sound very positive, but I think it's true. Again, David Wells, in a purple passage, says, We face a relational disjuncture so substantial and complete as to leave us disoriented and caught in the coils of painful futility. Disoriented and caught. Let's just leave it there.

Not sure where we're going, not too happy about where we've been. That's why you see this name has such appeal, doesn't it? Who is this Prince of Peace? A Prince of Peace. Someone who is himself peace. Someone who has achieved peace.

Someone who, in knowing him, becomes our very peace. Now, I'd like to suggest to you, in the balance of our time, that there are essentially only two reactions—and I know this seems simplistic, but I think I could substantiate it—there are really only two honest reactions to the human predicament. And I want to summarize them both in a lyric from the grandfathers of rock and roll, Lennon and McCartney. Either men and women look around them at this relational disjuncture, this enmity, this fighting, this feuding, this internal psychological mayhem, and they say, We can work it out. Or they say, Help, I need somebody, not just anybody. First of all, then, the reaction of man that simply says, I know things are not the way they ought to be, but I can fix this myself. After all, I am an individual, I have intelligence, I have resources, or whatever it might be, and from this perspective, the individual doesn't usually want to deny that their life is not exactly a rose garden, picture perfect. At the same time, they're probably unprepared to admit that their lives are more like a jungle.

But they may be honest enough to say, I know that my life is often untidy, it's sometimes ugly, and it is frequently painful. But don't worry. I'll take care of it. Don't worry.

We can work it out. In 1985, a professor at Berkeley wrote a book which was phenomenally successful, entitled Habits of the Heart, Professor Robert Bellah. And in that book, he sought to chronicle the American experience in the eighties as a search for community and security and spirituality.

And I thought about it this week. I remembered it, and I went looking for a particular quote, which I was able to find. It concerns one of the characters he interviews in the book. Her name is Sheila Larson. She is a nurse. And in the course of talking with her, this is what Sheila says, I believe in God. I'm not a religious fanatic. I can't remember the last time I went to church.

My faith has carried me a long way. It's Sheilaism, just my own little voice. How perfect! You've got the whole thing without even leaving your bathroom.

All there for you. All you have to do is look inside, Sheila. What do you see? Says Bellah, commentating on this, we must consider how it came about that Sheilaism somehow seems a perfectly natural expression of current American religious life, and we need to examine what that tells us about the role of religion in the United States today. I'm not sure that even as bright as he is, he could have anticipated the development of Sheilaism so that you can meet people all the time and in the strangest places who will tell you that they're actually finding the answers, and all by looking within. They're finding the answers not as a result of discovering truth, which is objective and verifiable, but as a result of discovering truths—not as a result of disdaining the sacred and buying the secular, but of searching for the sacred and finding the sacred in the strangest of places and combining it and amalgamating it and putting it into a nice little pot of stew which is perfect for all the Sheilas of the world. And as long as this individual benefits from this kind of quest, has some kind of therapeutic or psychological value, makes them feel quotes at peace, then of course they're happy to continue looking within.

As soon as the value slides, then they look somewhere else. I don't want to belabor this. You can think it out for yourselves.

You can say, You're full of hot air, or you can say, I think you probably have a point there. I have noticed that if in others, if not in myself, there is a strong strain of, We are in a dreadful mess, but we can work it out. Life is very short, and there's no time for fussing and fighting, my friends.

I've always thought there is a crime. But we can work it out. The other alternative—and I think there are really only two—they all pour into these two vats. The other alternative is the person who finally says, Help, I need somebody, and not just anybody. I'm going to have to look beyond myself, because I've looked in, and frankly, the in that is in ought to be out, and I can't get it out. And I've read a lot, and I've thought a lot, and I know that I must be looking for someone.

I must be looking out and beyond myself. Instead of reaching in and reaching down, as it were, to search inside of me, I wonder, Is there someone who comes from outside of me and has the answer to my dilemma? Well, of course, that's the message of the Bible, isn't it? Instead of man finding God, it's the account of God finding man. For unto us, as a result of God's initiative, a child is born and a son is given, and this son is the prince of peace. Now, clearly, this peace is something more than just the absence of warfare, or even the presence of an inner sense of tranquility or well-being, or the enjoyment of harmony amongst those who were previously feuding.

All of those things are inevitably limited in their duration. There has been no lasting peace since the Garden of Eden. Is there someone?

Help! Is there somebody—not just anybody? Well, actually, this piece of which we read is an eternal peace. That's what it says in verse 7, of the increase of his government in peace, there will be no end. Well, if there is a peace that is eternal, and if that peace is found in this Messiah, this wonderful counselor, how does all that work? How do you get from a phrase, prince of peace, to the experience of peace within a life, within a home, within a nation, within a world, within a universe? If God has come in the person of this prince, we ought to expect that he has accomplished what he set out to do.

And that is exactly what the Bible tells us. Real peace, everlasting peace, is found in Jesus. You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth for Life.

Alistair will continue on this topic tomorrow. Here at Truth for Life, teaching God's Word is at the heart of everything we do, and Scripture regularly points us to Jesus. So our mission here is simple, to teach the Bible with clarity and relevance, so that those who listen will come to know Jesus as both friend and Savior.

Only in a personal relationship with him can our lives be transformed, and can we find the peace for which we hunger. If you listen to Truth for Life regularly, you know that in addition to teaching the Bible, we also love recommending great books that will encourage you to grow in your faith. The book we want to recommend to you today is a book that will help you in your prayer life. It's titled, Piercing Heaven, Prayers of the Puritans. This is a collection of prayers written by more than two dozen Puritan authors. The language in the book has been slightly updated to easily make the words of the authors your own.

Because the Puritans saw the value of praying God's Word back to him, many of these prayers contain Scripture verses, and as you read them and recite them, you'll be reminded of God's promises and his commands. Request your copy of Piercing Heaven when you give a gift to support the teaching you hear on this program. Online giving is easy.

It's quick. Visit our website, truthforlife.org slash donate, and then click the book image in the Truth for Life mobile app. If you'd like to hear more of our series titled, A Child is Born, you can own all seven messages in this study. In fact, they're available on a single USB titled, The Miracle of Christmas. This special collection includes eight of Alistair's Christmas series. Each short series examines a different aspect of the Christmas story. You'll find The Miracle of Christmas on our website, truthforlife.org slash store.

It's just $5 and the shipping is free. I'm Bob Lapine. The Bible tells us that, unto us, a child is born. These are words that are at the heart of Christmas. The question is, have those words penetrated and transformed your heart? Listen tomorrow to learn how following Jesus is what brings everlasting peace. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth for Life where the Learning is for Living.