Wonderful, Mighty, Everlasting, Prince
Rev. Res Spears
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Isaiah 9:6–7 (NASB95)
6 For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us; And the government will rest on His shoulders; And His name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. 7 There will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace, On the throne of David and over his kingdom, To establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness From then on and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this.
SONG — I Heard the Bells (Amy)
When Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote the words to the song you just heard, he was a 57-year old widower and the father of five children. Just three weeks earlier, his eldest son, Charley, had been nearly paralyzed by a shot from a Confederate musket.
Longfellow was still grieving from the loss of his wife, who had died when her dress had caught fire two years previously. He had awakened to find her on fire, and he had tried to put out the flames, first with a rug and then with his own body. She died the next day, and his own burns were such that he was unable to attend her funeral.
As he watched his son’s slow recovery from a musket ball that had entered his left shoulder, traveled across his back, nicked his spine, and exited below his right shoulder-blade, Longfellow heard the bells ringing to mark Christmas morning in Cambridge, Mass.
He was a broken man, still grieving the loss of his wife, and wondering about the future his eldest son might have. And he was crushed by the dissonance of those bells proclaiming the coming of the Prince of Peace against the reality of the war between the states.
And the truth is that this dissonance was not unlike the dissonance that must have been felt this morning by the Christians of Ukraine. It was not unlike the dissonance felt by Christians during World War II. Or World War I.
Or by the people of the early church in Rome under the evil despot, Nero. Or even by those Jews of Bethlehem who held onto their faith in God, even in the face of the oppressive Roman occupation.
Just as they did, we see the Christmas promise of Isaiah 9:6-7, and then we look at the world around us, and perhaps we find ourselves wondering if something went wrong. Where is this Wonderful Counselor?
We search the throne rooms, the legislative buildings, and the halls of justice throughout the world, and we will not find even one who deserves such a title.
There are none whose counsel, whose advice, whose governance we could describe as marvelous. Instead, what we find are the same self-serving, petty, and evil-minded rulers we have known throughout history.
All that’s different is the way they have wielded their power, the means by which they consolidate that power, and the laws under which they operate.
But this Wonderful Counselor promised by God through the prophet Isaiah is something very different. So different, in fact, that on a quiet night outside of the backwater town of Bethlehem, the very angels of heaven announced His arrival.
SONG — O Little Town of Bethlehem (Congregation)
SONG — Silent Night (Congregation)
What makes God’s promise to us through the prophet Isaiah different is that this is the promise of Emmanuel — God With Us.
What happened in Bethlehem on the night that Jesus was born was that God stepped into human history to show us Himself in the person of His unique and eternal Son.
The Mighty God, who had eternally existed in Trinitarian unity and love, had taken upon Himself the flesh of humanity. The Creator had become as those He had created.
And, though He had every right to be born into a royal household, with servants and all the trappings of a king, He came to us as a baby born in a feeding trough for cattle.
The Apostle Paul tells us that one day “every knee shall bow” and that “every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
But that’s not how our Mighty God came to us in His first incarnation. In His first Advent, He came to us in the humblest of circumstances.
He would become the Suffering Servant, giving His very life so that all who follow Him in faith might be saved from the penalty we deserve for our sins against God.
As Jesus hung on a cross at Calvary 33 years after his humble birth, He suffered the ultimate humiliation.
He whose birth had been announced by a choir of angels suffered and died mostly in silence. He took upon Himself the sins of mankind and their just punishment, even though He had every right and reason to have called down a legion of avenging angels to bring judgment upon fallen and rebellious mankind.
In those dark hours, the Mighty God hung on a cross in the person of His sinless Son, offering Himself as the only sacrifice that could atone for our sins.
And I can only imagine the horror that must have been felt by the angels who had announced His birth as they watched Him bleed and die there at Calvary.
SONG — Angels from the Realms of Glory (Congregation)
It always feels a little inappropriate to me to talk about Jesus’ death on the cross during Christmas services. Folks come to Christmas Eve and Christmas services wanting to hear the message of hope that we see in the nativity.
They want to connect to the hope of a newborn child in the manger, and maybe they’d rather not spend too much of this day of joy thinking about the horror of the cross.
And the truth is that the cross IS inappropriate. “Come and worship.” That was the appropriate response to the appearance of God on earth. That was the appropriate response to the advent of Jesus here.
But the fact of the matter is that the manger without the cross offers us no hope at all. On its own, the manger simply shows us a humility we could never attain. On its own, the manger does nothing to solve the problem of sin that stands before each one of us.
It is the cross — and the empty tomb of the resurrected Christ — that gives us hope. It was at the cross that Jesus dealt with our sin problem once and for all.
And it was at the empty tomb that His Father declared Jesus’ sacrifice to be the satisfaction of the debt that we owe for our sins against God. It was FOR the cross that Jesus was born and laid in that manger in Bethlehem.
It was at the cross that Jesus became Eternal Father, the one of whom Isaiah wrote: “You, O Lord, are our Father, Our Redeemer from old is Your name.”
It was at the cross that Jesus paid the price we could never pay for our salvation. At the cross, He shed His own blood for the forgiveness of our sins. For those of us who have followed Him in faith, He bought us at the cost of His blood. He became our Redeemer.
As Jesus lay in that manger in Bethlehem, He began a journey that would lead inexorably, relentlessly, to the cross. The cross was always His destination. The cross was always His plan.
The cross was the only way that we who had been made in God’s image and to have fellowship with God could ever find forgiveness for our rebellion and redemption from our sins.
Our Creator would become our eternal Father by becoming our Redeemer. The High King of Heaven, the King of kings and Lord of lords, would humble Himself to be killed on a cross at Calvary. But first, He humbled Himself to be born in a stable in Bethlehem.
SONG — Away in a Manger (Congregation)
SONG — What Child Is This? (Congregation)
I began today’s message by talking about Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the crisis in which he found himself when he wrote the words to the song I Heard the Bells.
Longfellow was grieving his wife, and he was worried about his son, and he looked around and saw nothing but war and suffering.
The bells of Cambridge, Mass., on that Christmas morning in 1863, sounded forth the hope of the promises of God through the prophet Isaiah. They sounded the hope announced by angels to the shepherds at the birth of Jesus — the promise of peace and earth and goodwill toward men.
But the events of Longfellow’s day must have felt like a mockery of that promise. Perhaps the events of your own life feel that way, too.
Things on earth look bleak. Darkness often looks as if it will prevail.
But there IS hope in that manger. There IS hope, because the cross was there all along.
There is hope, because we know that God is good and that He keeps His promises.
And His promise in Isaiah, chapter 9, is that one day this child born into such humble circumstances will be the one upon whose shoulders the government of all earth will rest. He will be the Wonderful Counselor, because He is the Mighty God.
This Son who was given to us became the Eternal Father — the Redeemer from of old. And because of the empty tomb, we can be confident that we who have followed Him in faith will be there to see His return.
This time, He will not come as a helpless child, but as a conquering King, riding a white horse and vanquishing His enemies with the Word of His mouth.
And in the time that follows, we will experience this most wonderful promise of God through Isaiah, that “there will be no end to the increase of His government or of peace.”
He who is our Wonderful Counselor, He who is our Mighty God, He who is our Eternal Father, will then be the Prince of Peace.
Sin and death will reign no more.
These are the promises of the God who keeps every promise He makes. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this! And so, we can truly sing:
SONG — Joy to the World! (Congregation)