The Prince of Peace

I caught a clip of Craig Groeschel on Instagram this week.

I don’t always agree with everything he says and does, but he made a statement that I am finding to be true.

He said that Christmas acts as a magnifier for us.

If things are going well, the lights and presents and activities at Christmas fill us with excitement as we get to celebrate everything going on.

If things are going poorly, though, Christmas magnifies the loss, the heartache, the frustration, or whatever pain we are going through.

That’s why you and I need peace at Christmas.

Last week, Craig pointed us to how we can find that peace.

In addition to practical tips, he pointed us to the ultimate source of peace: Jesus.

This morning, we want to take some more time to talk about Jesus and the peace he brings.

To do that, we are going to open up to the Old Testament book of Isaiah. Turn over to Isaiah 9:6.

If you have been around church, this is going to be a familiar passage to you.

In fact, some of you have heard it in Handel’s Messiah enough that you can’t read it without singing it in your heads as we go through.

I want to take a look at it with fresh eyes this morning, though, and see what we can learn about the one called the Prince of Peace.

Let’s set the stage a bit.

God set apart the nation of Israel to be his special people.

By Isaiah’s day, though, a lot had gone wrong.

The kingdom was divided into the Northern Kingdom of Israel and the Southern Kingdom, called Judah.

They had turned from following God, and after patiently warning the Northern Kingdom for a long time, God was going to punish them by allowing the Assyrians to carry the Northern Kingdom into captivity.

It would be a terrible time for the nation as they were overrun, captured, and carried off in disgrace.

However, in chapter 9, God comforts his people by telling them that life won’t always be this way for them.

He tells of light and joy and an end to war, all of which will be brought about by the coming of a very special child.

This promise was fulfilled partly with the children of King Hezekiah.

However, God had more in store for these promises than what any human king would be able to accomplish.

The ultimate fulfillment of this promise comes in Jesus, who is the full and final Prince of Peace.

We have the privilege of knowing what they didn’t: The child God promised is the one who was born in a manger to lowly parents and who would be the Savior of the world.

Let’s read how God describes this incredible child...

As we take a closer look at each of the statements God makes here, my prayer is that you will either discover for the first time or be reminded of the incredible one who is our Prince of Peace.

As you see who he is, I am praying God will help you trust him in a real way today.

We are actually going to work backwards a bit to do this.

Before we can really understand Jesus as the Prince of Peace and experience the peace he offers, we need to understand a bit more about what the Bible talks about when it mentions peace.

You see, our picture of peace is too small.

We usually think of peace as no more war or of having inner tranquility.

That is certainly in view in Isaiah’s promise. He said that this child would come to end the wars and conflicts God’s people had been going through.

Jesus brought about a crucial part of this peace the first time he came. His death on the cross and resurrection from the dead opened the door for you and me to have peace with God.

Your sin and mine had separated us from God. When we do what we want instead of what God wants, we are rebelling against the God who made us and show that our hearts are selfish.

That makes us enemies of God and separates us from him.

When Jesus died on the cross, he was taking our sin upon himself and paying for it.

That peace with God is a gift he gives us. For those who have received that gift and turned to following him, there is now no separation in our relationship with God.

As the Prince of Peace, Jesus gives us peace with God.

We have peace; there isn’t anything separating us, so now we are good?

The biblical idea of peace is much bigger than that.

Yes, Jesus’s death forgives us and removes the enmity that exists between us and God.

However, peace isn’t just neutral—it’s the idea of flourishing or of thriving.

Jesus doesn’t just give us tranquility or remove the conflict.

No; the Prince of Peace makes us whole. [1]

The Prince of Peace came to give us life that was more than just tranquility; it was abundance, joy, happiness, purpose, and everything it means to live like God created us to live.

That doesn’t mean that life will be gentle and easy for us now. In fact, look at passages like Psalm 1 and Matthew 5 to get a picture of what God defines as the good life.

His picture of a good life is the kind of life we talked when we covered discipleship a few weeks ago—a life that is going through the process of living more like Jesus did.

That’s the peaceful life, even when tranquility may not be the first word we would use to describe it.

That’s what it looks like to thrive, to flourish—to look more like Jesus at this time next year than you do today.

He started showing us this peace during his life on earth as he taught and healed and loved and pushed back against injustice.

He laid the foundation for that peace by dying in our place and rising from the dead.

Our restored relationship to God forms the basis for our restored relationships with others.

We know what we are coming to the eternal God and serving him so what we do in life matters!

There is more to this Prince of Peace than a pretty picture of a still pond; he came so you and I would flourish.

One day, he is coming back to fully establish his kingdom, but we have the privilege of enjoying the beginnings of it now.

It takes a pretty incredible person to make that happen, doesn’t it?

For someone to not only bring us back into a right relationship with God but also to make us whole, to end all the conflict and bring about flourishing…that would have to be someone special.

And that’s exactly what God promised us.

With our remaining time, let’s look at the phrases God uses to describe this baby we celebrate who is our Prince of Peace.

Notice first that he would come as...

1) A child.

This seems to be an odd place to start, doesn’t it?

I mean, we are talking about someone needing to come and deliver us and conquer and fight wars…why do we care about a child?

Because this chapter of the story of God’s work throughout history begins with a baby.

As we will talk about more in a minute, he wasn’t just any baby.

However, let’s not move too quickly past the fact that Jesus really was a child.

When God sent the Prince of Peace into the world, he sent him as a baby.

He was a real child, made of flesh and bone like you and I.

He couldn’t walk or talk or sit up on his own.

The one who would one day bring peace would scrape his knee and need to eat.

God was sending a child.

How would that help him be our Prince of Peace?

Because he knows what it is like to be weak and cold and tired.

Although he didn’t have to, he experienced life in this often peace-less world.

He knows what it is to watched loved ones die and see relationships fall apart. He has felt every emotion you and I could ever experience, so he knows what we are going through when we experience a lack of peace.

However, that child was much more than just a human child.

We see that he was also...

2) The Son.

When Isaiah wrote these words, he was likely unaware of the full implications of what he was writing.

God led him to write using Hebrew parallelism, where they would repeat a similar phrase for effect.

As we said, he is writing directly about sons who would be born to King Hezekiah.

However, knowing what we know about how God fulfilled this promise, we see hints or traces of something incredible.

The ultimate Prince of Peace wasn’t just any son. Instead, we know that he is the Son of God.

The child God was sending was fully human, but he was also fully God.

John would write it this way:

John 1:14 CSB

The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

While we can’t unpack everything about this reality this morning, this doesn’t mean that Jesus is less than the Father or a created being.

He has existed from eternity past, just like the Father and the Holy Spirit.

However, the Bible refers to him as the Son because of the role he plays within the Godhead.

If that is confusing, it’s okay—remember that God is bigger than we are, so there are going to be times he confuses us.

However, looking at this in faith, we see this beautiful truth.

The child God was sending wasn’t just a really good guy; instead, this child that we celebrate is God himself.

He came to us, he took on flesh, he came himself to bring us peace.

He knew the pain of humanity first-hand, but he also knows the peace and flourishing of life in perfect harmony as God himself.

As the Son of God, he is also supremely qualified to be...

3) The leader.

The Bible goes on to say that this child will be a leader unlike any other: “The government will be on his shoulders.”

What government? Scripture makes it clear that Jesus will be the one ruling over all the world.

That’s why he can secure peace—both tranquility and flourishing—he is the one who is responsible for the world!

Some have suggested that the idea of the government on his shoulders is the image of a king’s robe.

Others believe that it signifies the way he is carrying the weight of the responsibility on his shoulders.

The next three descriptors help us see that this is a good thing.

These would have been terms that they applied to their normal kings, but again, they find their fullest expression in Jesus.

As we look through these, we see why he is the one fit to rule—to give us peace in its fullest sense.

We can trust him because he is...

A. Wise

Some translations break this into two different attributes (“wonderful” and “counselor”), but our translation puts them together.

He is the one who understands everything that has ever happened and will ever happen.

He knows when the war in Ukraine will end, what will happen with inflation next year, and every other detail that would unsettle us.

He knows everything that could be known, but he isn’t like a search engine that just spits out what it thinks you are looking for.

As the Wonderful Counselor, he is wise enough to connect everything correctly and actually understand what is best and what is happening why.

He is the one who is guiding history to its completion, and we can trust him because he is wise enough to do it!

How does that give us peace this Christmas?

Because that means God knows exactly what he is doing and what he is planning to do in 2023.

He knows what is going to happen with your relationships, your job, your career, your health, your finances, your family, your future—all of it, including things you haven’t even thought of yet!

That gives us that inner tranquility we talked about, but it also allows us to flourish because we know that he knows what he is doing when he asks us to do something that seems hard or scary.

When God calls us to give up a sinful habit, he knows that it is best for us and we can trust him.

When God calls us to make a change or to ride out a difficult season, we can get excited because our Wonderful Counselor is calling us to do it.

That doesn’t mean every moment is going to be easy and sunshine and roses; it means that every moment has purpose because we are being guided by a wonderful God.

We can flourish in the chaos of unknown futures because we are trusting a God who knows.

Beyond that, he is also...

B. Powerful

The text says he is the “Mighty God.”

We have talked about this before, but it is worth repeating.

God isn’t simply a passive observer who knows everything but is powerless to stop it.

He isn’t like the person watching cars coming and knowing they are about to collide but powerless to do anything about it.

He is the mighty God!

He is the one who is able to anything that needs to be done!

That gives us peace because nothing can stop him from building a kingdom that leads to us living to the fullest extent he created us to live.

We see glimpses of what he is building, and because he is the mighty God, we know he can finish what he has started.

That may leave you with a question, though: If God is so powerful, then why did this thing happen? Why didn’t God stop it?

First, let me just say that I may not know the details of whatever that is for you, but I want to say that I am sorry for the pain you have gone through. I do not want you to feel like I am being dismissive in any way.

However, I want to help you find true peace today.

You and I may never understand the answer to why God allowed this or didn’t stop that.

However, we can still trust that he knows best.

If you are a parent, has there ever been a time when you did something you couldn’t explain to your kids?

I think about a time when my parents switched me out of a class in school. At the time, I thought it was because they didn’t think I was smart enough to be in there.

I found out later that the reason they pulled me from that class was because they knew the teacher from the community and had been in conflict with her. They were concerned that she would not treat me fairly because of their conflict.

They couldn’t explain that to me, but they had a reason and they loved me enough to do what I couldn’t understand.

If earthly parents do that, then can’t we expect that the Wonderful Counselor who understands things far better than we do may do things we can’t understand?

Whatever the reason was for why worked in a certain way in your life, it wasn’t because he wasn’t strong enough to stop it. He is the mighty God.

As our Prince of Peace, then, we can trust him because he can accomplish everything we need to flourish and thrive.

The last attribute listed is even more great years.

In America, we get a new president every 4-8 years.

If you like someone, they are gone before you are ready. You feel like they are doing a great job, and then suddenly, they are gone.

However, our Prince of Peace isn’t like that. In fact, his rule, reign, and kingdom is...

C. Eternal

This title sounds a little trickier at first.

Keep in mind that although we see hints of the Trinity in the fact that Jesus is the Son, Isaiah is not making a Trinitarian statement here.

He is not saying that Jesus is the Father. Although they are co-equal, the Father and Son and Holy Spirit are all distinct persons that make up the godhead.

What this is pointing us to is that Jesus is the one who is the source of a kingdom that will never end.

Jerome, an early church father, translated this as “the Father of Age to Come”.

Through Jesus’ ministry, death, burial, and resurrection, he started a new chapter in bringing God’s kingdom to earth.

He is ruling and reigning right now, and one day, he is going to fully assert that rule and drive out everything that opposes him.

If his kingdom is everlasting, that also means that his reign over that kingdom will never end.

God promised that David would always have a descendant ruling and reigning on the throne.

As Jesus fulfills this promise, he is that “forever” king of the Davidic covenant (Psalm 2:7?)

The peace Jesus secures is one that will literally last forever.

He is the Prince of Peace.

So, if Christmas is a magnifier, how do we find peace?

One, we redefine it. We see that peace is about a thriving life following Jesus.

We rest in his promises, like this one:

John 16:33 CSB

I have told you these things so that in me you may have peace. You will have suffering in this world. Be courageous! I have conquered the world.”

You and I can thrive in suffering because the Prince of Peace, the Son of God who came as a child, has suffered, died, and overcome the world.

His kingdom is marked by wisdom, power, and eternality.

Are you searching for peace this Christmas? Then trust the One who is the Prince of Peace.

Endnote:

[1] Jonathan T. Pennington, The Sermon on the Mount and Human Flourishing: A Theological Commentary, (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2017), 72.