Let's hear God's word from the book of Isaiah chapter 9, that's page 840 on the Pew Bibles, I believe. Isaiah chapter 9, and we'll read verses 1 through 7. Nevertheless, the gloom will not be upon her who is distressed, as when at first he lightly esteemed the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward more heavily oppressed her by the way of the sea beyond the Jordan in Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in the land of the shadow of death, upon them a light has shined. You have multiplied the nation and increased its joy. They rejoice before you. according to the joy of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. For you have broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every warrior's sandal from the noisy battle, and garments rolled in blood, will be used for burning and fuel of fire. 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 establish it with judgment and justice from that time forward. even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Amen. We'll end our reading there in verse seven of Isaiah chapter nine. Let's once again ask for God's help in a brief word of prayer. Our gracious God and heavenly father, we come to a tremendous, a well-known portion of your word, and yet one that speaks to us of such great things that however familiar we are with it, There is undoubtedly more light available to break out upon us. So Lord, we pray that whether we are reviewing old familiar truths, whether we are hearing something for the first time, may it come to us in freshness, in power, May it come to us to work in our hearts what is pleasing to you. May it come to us with so much clarity, with so much vigor that we see, we understand, we appreciate, we love our Lord Jesus Christ more than we ever have before. In his name we ask these things, amen. Whenever you begin reading a passage and your first word is nevertheless, that really ought to be a reminder that you're breaking in to something that is already being talked about. Nevertheless is a word of exception. It gives you a contrast to what came before. And so we have to do just a little bit of review or we're not really understanding this passage on its own terms. So what Isaiah had done at the end of chapter eight, Isaiah had drawn a difference between those who would receive the word of God, those who would hear it, preserve it, treasure it, and those who would reject it. And the people who rejected the word of God chose darkness. And if they persisted in rejecting the word of God, if they persisted in choosing darkness, well, even when circumstances got tough, they would look up and curse, they would look down and find no light. There would be the darkness of trouble, of anguish, of suffering added to the darkness of ignorance, of spiritual blindness. That's fair. If you reject God's word, what light do you expect to have from God? If you say no to everything God tells you, do you really expect things to work out well? You're acting against the creator of the universe. You're acting against the one who knows how things actually function. You're acting against the only source of blessing. Just take a moment and think, how is that going to work out for me? It's not hard to see it won't work out well. And that's where Isaiah left it at the end of chapter eight. But then you get to chapter nine and there's nevertheless. Where is this nevertheless coming from? Why is there such a thing as nevertheless? What more could you add? Receive the Word of God, everything will be fine. Reject the Word of God, everything will be horrible. That seems clear, that seems straightforward, that seems fair. There's only one reason that there's a nevertheless. There's only one reason that there's any kind of an exception to that pattern. And that reason is God's own grace. Why is there nevertheless? For people who have rejected the Word of God, because God is more merciful than we expect, because God renews the opportunity for repentance. Now, we need not to lose sight of the end of chapter eight. You don't know when it will be your last opportunity to hear the word of God. I was thinking this morning, remembering David Stube, I think he was here one Sunday morning and it was Wednesday or Thursday of that week. He had passed away. He didn't know, we didn't know. It was quite a surprise, very unexpected. There was one particular week he had his last opportunity ever to hear the word of God proclaimed. And then he was gone. Now, in his case, of course, we weren't worried. He was ready to depart and to be with the Lord, even though it was sudden. But he didn't know that was his last occasion. Well, neither do we. We don't know if we reject the word of God today, will there be another opportunity to receive it? Will it come to us again? Maybe. Maybe not. You don't know. So it's never safe to say, well, God is very gracious. God is very merciful. God is very kind. I'll continue to reject his word. I'll put him off until later. I'll postpone repentance. I'll postpone taking any of this seriously. That's insanity. That's a ridiculously high risk to take. But because God is gracious, If you find yourself here this morning and you think, yeah, I have hardened myself against God's word. I have refused to listen. I do know what God wants me to do and I continue not to do it. What a wonderful thing that there's a nevertheless. What a wonderful thing that Isaiah continues to prophesy. What a beautiful thing that God gives opportunity again. And he says, there will be a mitigation. of the gloom. People have walked in darkness, but light will come to them. So to understand this part, the regions that are mentioned there, the land of Zebulon, the land of Naphtali, the way of the sea, Galilee of the Gentiles, that's talking about the northern part of the nation of Israel. And since the foreign invaders were coming from the north, obviously the border territory suffered first, suffered before what you could call the heartland suffered. And they suffered in multiple ways. There was an ebb and flow. Sometimes there was a little bit of trouble with the other countries to the north, but then ultimately there was a lot of trouble. They invaded, they deported the Israelites, they replaced them with a different population. Lots of oppression. And of course, even carrying on then into New Testament times, this region of the land of Israel, there was a lot more mixing between the Jews who lived there and the Gentiles who also lived there. So that's one reason for that name, Galilee of the Gentiles. So this is an area that has been hard hit by suffering, but this is also an area that has been characterized by spiritual darkness. The other deported populations who were brought in to replace the Israelites didn't know how to serve God and ultimately they followed their own ways or they cobbled together a strange sort of hybrid religion. There was spiritual as well as circumstantial darkness there. But there, where there was so much darkness, where the Word of God had not been carefully bound up and sealed and preserved by disciples of Isaiah and their followers, their successors, there, a great light shone forth. Isn't that just like God? He does the unexpected because His mercy is more than we've learned to calculate. light shone in the middle of darkness. Now, we know when that was fulfilled. Matthew quotes these verses with reference to the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was in Galilee, he was in Capernaum, he was in Nazareth, he was in places like that, which are all in this region, and he began to preach, and he began to teach, he began to say, repent, because the kingdom of God has come near. And so the people who were walking in darkness There was light. Those who were in the land of the shadow of death without hope, not knowing what would happen to them after they died, not knowing how to come to God, not knowing how to receive the forgiveness of sins, not knowing how to deal with any of their spiritual problems, the Lord Jesus began his ministry there. Light shone forth in darkness. Now you can find out from the Gospel of John that he came unto his own and his own did not receive him, that men preferred darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. So even the ministry of Christ didn't have a universal response. Not everybody jumped on board. There were many who rejected him. But they didn't reject him because the light hadn't shined. They rejected him because they preferred the darkness to the light. But even so, it was a gift of tremendous grace for the light to shine forth just there, where there had been so much suffering and where there had been so much darkness. Well, in our own lives, in our own time, Sometimes we walk in darkness. Sometimes we do feel and sometimes we are living in the land of the shadow of death. Does that mean there's no hope? Does that mean everything is cut off? Does that mean that you're too far away from God and you can never return to him? Does that mean that God has given you up? If you're hearing these words, no, it doesn't mean that. Light shines again. because we have God's Word pronounced to us. We have again the opportunity to turn away from darkness and receive, embrace, welcome the light. That's one part, but there's another part. We need to keep moving. There's joy. If you look about the middle of verse three, It's talking about two kinds of joy, the joy of harvest and rejoicing when they divide the spoil. So the one is you've put in your labor of farming for the year, you've sowed, you've planted, perhaps with tears of stress, of anxiety, of all the rest, and now the rain has come, or irrigation has happened as the case may be, The crop has grown, it's not just grown, it's been gathered, it's safely been gathered, and that's a good feeling, right? That's a wonderful blessing every year. And it's a time of joy, that's why there's such a thing as harvest festivals, right? All of a sudden there's a certain abundance of food that you can enjoy eating. Or imagine that you've been at war. The conflict has been long, you've lost friends, brothers in arms, but now the battle is over, and in the ancient world, when the battle was over, you got to take the loser's stuff. That made people happy. Now you're recovering some of the expenses of the war. Now maybe you're going home better off than you were before. Now you have something to show your wife and kids for that time of absence and conflict and trouble. But you notice in both cases, there's some hard work or some danger that comes first, before the joy. Well, it's similar. Where there was darkness, there was light. Where there was this difficulty, now there's joy. The Lord is reversing things. He's turning things around. They have been under a burdensome yoke. A yoke, of course, is what you would use to fasten two animals together to help you pull a plow. So that rests on the animal's neck and shoulders, and they gotta pull. They gotta exert some energy to pull that. Well, if you had a yoke on, that would be a burden. You would notice that. That would be challenging. The yoke, the staff, the rod of the oppressors, of invaders have been broken. He mentions that they've been broken as in the day of Midian. That's an allusion to the story of Gideon. You remember the Midianites were oppressing the children of Israel, and God raised up Gideon to deliver them, but God made it very clear by reducing Gideon's army from 32,000 to just 300 men that it was really the Lord who was accomplishing this great promise. Well, once again, there will be something similar. The burdensome yoke, the rod of the oppressor, is going to be lifted. Now, you can understand this in historical terms. Assyria, Babylon, the Persian Empire, the Greek Empire, the Roman Empire, all oppressed this part of the world to one degree or another. Some were worse than others, but they all oppressed it to some degree. But beyond that, those political, those military oppressions, they were symbolic of something. They really represented the oppression of the devil. They really represented the yoke and burden of sin. And when God deals with that, when God breaks the way that we're in chains to sin where we can't stop, we can't make progress, no matter how bad we feel, we don't set it aside. That's a chain, that's a burden, that's enslavement. When God breaks that, what joy comes. There's nothing to compare to that. And Isaiah also gives us the explanation. Light shines in darkness, joy comes where there was oppression. Why, how does this happen? Well, that brings us to verses six and seven. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. All of these amazing things happen because a particular baby is born. Now, obviously, if it had just stayed there, that wouldn't have happened. That baby had to grow up. That baby had to live a perfect life. That baby had to keep God's law without any defect, without any falling short. That baby, grown up, had to teach and preach the kingdom of God. had to suffer unjustly in our place, had to die on the cross, had to be buried in a new tomb, and had to rise again the third day. The birth is the beginning, it's not the end. But all of that comes about because of the birth of this child. You know who the child is. This is a prophecy of the Lord Jesus Christ. The doctrine here is familiar, maybe, to many of us, but it's so deep, it's so necessary, it's worthwhile to go over this. Who is this child who is born? Well, just stop, first of all, with that word child. Who's born? A genuine human being. A baby in a baby-like condition with all the limitations of babyhood. No sin, but all the limitations of babyhood. He's a real child, but he's also a son. He's not just a son of Mary, he is God the Son entering into personal union with a human nature so he can be born, so he can be one of us. We never can become God. But God once became a human being. He became a little baby. How does that work? Well, only God could pull that off. We don't have a way to duplicate that. God can do it, we can't, and that's sort of where we have to leave it. But there's no question about his identity. He's born to rule. The government will be upon his shoulder. He'll take up that responsibility. But then notice, his name will be called. Now, his name will be called is not saying, this is what's gonna go on his birth certificate. What went on his birth certificate was Jesus, so to speak, was Jesus. They didn't really have birth certificates like we know them back there. But if you could look up his birth certificate, you would see Jesus of Nazareth, right? However, his name shall be called means this is who he is. And then there's four or five titles depending on how you break it up. We'll go with for for the sake of convenience and parallelism. Wonderful counselor. Now wonderful in the Bible is a word that relates to something that only God can do. So this is going to be a counselor, this is going to be a wise person who's wise with the wisdom of God. Just like in First Corinthians, Jesus Christ is called the wisdom of God. That's not something that's separate from God. That is God's own wisdom in the flesh now of a human being. Or his name is also called Mighty God. In other words, he has the power of God because he is God, and Paul says that too in 1 Corinthians. Christ, the wisdom of God, and the power of God. He's called Everlasting Father. Now that one sometimes trips us up a little bit because we understand, we're used to remembering that God is not like we are. There's one God, but in that one God there are three persons, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. So when we see the word Father, We're primed to think about the first person of the Holy Trinity. We're primed to think about God the Father. So sometimes we're a little rattled when we read here, everlasting father applied to the child, the son. Hold on a moment, what's happening here? Have we made some mistake? No, except to the degree that we're being too rigid in how we understand words. Many times in Scripture, Father is a personal name for the first person of the Trinity, God the Father. But that doesn't mean that that's the only way that Father can be used in Scripture. So what does everlasting Father or Father of Eternity mean when we apply it to the second person of the Trinity, when we apply it to God the Son, the Son who was given, the child who was born? Well, it definitely means that he is eternal. In other words, his existence did not begin with his conception in the womb of Mary. He existed long before that. He existed long before Mary. He existed before Adam and Eve. He is eternal. But it also speaks to part of the relationship that he has to us. You remember that Isaiah mentioned that he and the children whom God had given him were for signs and wonders. Well, in the New Testament, that verse is quoted with reference to Jesus. Hebrews puts in Jesus' mouth the words, behold, I and the children whom the Lord has given me. In other words, we can call Jesus Everlasting Father because he's eternal and because he brings us along as children. He incorporates us into the children of God. We are made children of God in him. So there is that fatherly role that he takes on, even though we're not confusing the persons of the Trinity. The father is not the son, and the son is not the father. But you can understand this in your own life. About half of you here are sons, and some of the people who are sons are also fathers. You can understand, depending on how you're being considered, with reference to whom you're being considered, one or the other term is more appropriate. That's all that's happening here. There's no confusion on the doctrine. And then the last thing that he's called is Prince of Peace. Now, here, too, sometimes we get a little bit confused. We think, well, you're a prince before you get to be a king. That's not the biblical idea. He's not in waiting. Prince of Peace means leader. It means the preeminent one with peace. So what does this say? It says that Jesus, is our peace, as we've seen from Ephesians chapter two, it means that he is the one who brings peace. It means that he's the only hope for peace in this world. There's all sorts of conflicts. There's local conflicts, there's larger scale conflicts, there's war, but there's a prince of peace who can bring an end to all of that. Obviously, it helps to receive him, it helps to welcome him, it helps to know him in this character. Now, then verse seven is gonna expand on the idea that the government will be upon his shoulder. It says, of the increase of his government and peace, there will be no end. In other words, there are so many kings, so many leaders in one way, shape, or form, and they come and go. Some of them cling to power for a very long time, but ultimately they still go. Not this king. Because he's everlasting, because he's not subject to these constraints, because having already died and risen again, death doesn't have anything more to say to him. Death has no more power over him. So his kingdom will never end. Now, this kingdom, it said, upon the throne of David and over his kingdom. That's not to limit our perspective. That's not to say, oh, Jesus will reign for a really long time from Jerusalem. That would be too small. That would not nearly get to what this passage is talking about. The reason David is mentioned there is not to localize Christ's kingdom within a particular geographical region. The reason David is mentioned there, the throne of David, is to say this is all going to happen in fulfillment of God's promises to David. This is about the covenant with David. And so we cannot limit Christ's reign to ultimately a small strip of territory in the Eastern Mediterranean. That's too little. God had bigger things in mind. Well, this kingdom that is in fulfillment of the promises to David is a kingdom of righteousness, to order and establish it with justice, or with judgment and justice, excuse me. It will be an eternal kingdom, that's been emphasized already, but he's got it again from that time forward, even forever. And then he adds this little phrase, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Zeal is a sort of a burning energy, intense vigor to get something done. Why is that added here? Well, think about the situation. Here are people currently suffering under a really bad king from the line of David. Here are people threatened by much bigger and more powerful countries around them. Here are people under threat by an alliance of some of the smaller countries that are also around them against them. In other words, they're feeling isolated. They're feeling lonely. They're feeling cut off. They're feeling like they don't have help. They're feeling like they have no visible means of support and no allies. And Isaiah comes along saying, don't worry, there will be light out of darkness. There will be joy out of oppression because a child is born. Sometimes we need a little bit of help. Sometimes we need a bit of encouragement to our faith. And so Isaiah grounds that where it needs to be grounded. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. If we were to look at probabilities, if we were just to say, well, what are some encouraging trends in the world today? Can we really believe that everything will work out for the best? If you're looking at statistics, if you're looking at newspapers, if you're looking at government reports, if you're looking at random people's opinions on social media, no, you're not going to find that. You're not going to find a reason for optimism in the potential of human beings or the potential of human beings assisted by technology. That's not going to bring an end to conflict. That's not going to bring an end to darkness. So where do we look? How do we believe a promise like this one? The zeal of the Lord of hosts. We put our faith in God's commitment to his purpose. We trust that God keeps his word. We don't limit God by the course of this world, by the way things usually go, by the powers and potential that are embedded in the world at large or more specifically in humanity. If all we had to look to was creation, despair makes total sense. but there's something more than creation. There is the creator. There is the God who intervenes. There is the God who graciously and patiently and faithfully intervenes, not once, not twice, but again and again and again. That's why we have optimism. That's why we have hope. That's why we have confidence, how exactly all of this will look in the future, I don't know. When will these things take place more fully? Obviously the birth of Christ has already happened, but the increase of his government, the judgment and justice, all of that, how does that all work out? I'm not going to pretend to be able to tell you. I can't tell you any dates, and there's a lot of specifics I can't tell you. God hasn't revealed that in his word. But will it happen? Yes. Is God in charge of how it happens? Yes. Is that enough for us? I hope so. It should be. God is at work, right? You know, the people who we're living in this time, the child hadn't been born yet, so we're better off than they were, because now we know the child's been born, so all the rest of this, is already underway. We've already gotten a huge down payment, so to speak, on the fulfillment of these promises. Well, with that confidence in mind, we can joy and rejoice in the tremendous salvation we've received, in the gift we've been given. To us, a child is born. To us, a son is given. Amen.