Prince of Peace
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Good morning church!
It is so good to se everyone this morning to Isaiah 9
For those of you who might not know where we are, we are in the midst of a mini-series from the names of this child that changed the world. It is called Hope Has a Name, and this prophecy in Isaiah was written some 7 centuries before the birth of Christ and it was about Christ Himself.
But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the latter time he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations.
The people who walked in darkness
have seen a great light;
those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness,
on them has light shone.
You have multiplied the nation;
you have increased its joy;
they rejoice before you
as with joy at the harvest,
as they are glad when they divide the spoil.
For the yoke of his burden,
and the staff for his shoulder,
the rod of his oppressor,
you have broken as on the day of Midian.
For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult
and every garment rolled in blood
will be burned as fuel for the fire.
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.
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
(Pray)
Well one of the things that we have certainly done in 2020 is look at the headlines of the news, there has been so much going on this year. To put it simply 2020 has been the year of mayhem and insanity. Funny enough one magazine I think it was rolling stone chose thier man of the year and it was Mayhem the character off the Allstate commercials.
If you were to read the headlines this week here are some of the headlines you may have been confronted with:
- GOP SENATOR LASHES OUT WITH NEW GRIEVANCES ON COVID RELIEF BILL, SAYS DEMS TRYING TO POLITICIZE FED
Authorities rescue girl from child abuser who once ran for congress
China tails Us warship as it sails through Taiwan strait
Foreign interferce in election
China may have been behind massive US Gov cyber attack
These are just headlines from yesterday, there are many many more. Just ONe look at the headlines and we see disunity, chaos, heartbtreak, corruption....
This lets us know that the Bible is very accurate when it tells us that the world today knows no settled peace. The world today has no settled peace. Not alot has changed since the time of Isaiahs prophecy. Bc it is there in the 5th verse that Isaiah says He anticipates the boots of the warriors and the garments that had been rolled in blood being destroyed and being used as fuel for the fire.
In the context of war and oppression He focuses on the birth of the Messiah. All the peices of war will one day be irrelevant and be rolled up and put away and then He tells us why.
He says FOR TO US A CHILD IS BORN AND A SON IS GIVEN
In other words the answer to everything happening in the world is tied to the birth of a baby. Not just any baby but this particualr baby has four names: WONDERFUL COUNSELOR, MIGHTY GOD, EVERLASTING FATHER, PRINCE OF PEACE.
If we summarize what Isaiah says in this passage he says
A child is born that child is the prince of peace and if were going to have peace, it is to this child we must go.
A child is born and if we want to have peace there is no place we can go to get it if we don’t go to the Prince of Peace.
The name Prince of Peace is the focus of this morning and it is the most attractive of all the names bc aint that what we all want? Peace, if you wanted to speak on something wouldn’t peace be the thing that you think would attract people the most?
We want peace in the world, we want peace in our homes, we want peace at our jobs, we want peace in our schools and we want inner peace to rescue us from the chaos within our own hearts.
A desire for peace in the world is well known, I remember watching the Miss America pageant when I was a kid and it seemed like every contestant wanted world peace.
When there is no peace its not nice its ugly its not enjoyable and nobody really like being in a bad mood and aggrivating everybody for the entire day. The fact is we know how important it is to live in harmony with one another. We also know how important it is to be at peace within, you know when you are not at peace within nothing in your world is right you seem to be walking around with a chip on your shoulder just waiting for someone to say or do the wrong thing and were gonna let them have it boy…
These things happen to all of us
Despite our our ability to accumulate stuff, despite our ability to learn adn gain wisdom those things can never bring about peace and calm.
You dont have to read big books to to figure this out:
George Carlin once said : “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”
“These are the times of fast food and slow digestion, Big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships, 2 incomes but more divorce, fancier houses but broken homes, the days of quick trips, disposable diapers, one night stands overwieght bodies and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill. It is the time when there is alot in the showroom window but nothing in the stock room. A time when technology can bring this letter to you and you can choose whether to share this insight or just to hit delete.”
Of course he is right isnt he?
David Wells describes the human soul as “sagging beneath the burden of emptiness”
This is not something unique to us
YOu can die with a huge bank balance or you can die poor but we will all die someday
The preacher who writes in the hearts of our Bibles called Ecclesiastes was on a search for peace and contentment, and he is honest enough to say that he searched for it without reference to God He tried to unscramble to riddle of life by looking for the answer under the sun he took what was here and what was now and what was available and he says now perhaps these things will be able to give me peace.
If you read it for yourselves you will find wisdom left him drained and frustrated, work left him tired and angry, pleasure caused him pain, and stuff made him sick he lived the AMeircan dream long before there was an America and told us it was a dead end street nobody wanted to believe that then and no one wants to believe it now.
Lets be honest with each other.
If were honest about it the living of our lives these days is alot about making the most of a bad situation. A bad job a bad bank account, a bad society I know that doesnt sound very positive but I think its true.
Thats why this name means so much because He is the prince of Peace, someone who is himself peace. Someone who has achieved Peace, someone who if we know Him becomes our peace.
I wanna suggest to you that there are two reactions to the human problem.
Either men and women look around them a this issue this fighting and fueding and disunity or internal 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 that says I know things are not the way they ought to be but I can fix this myself.
AfterallI am a big boy or a big girl I have smarts and resources whatever it might be and if they think this way the person might try to paint thier lives as a rose garden, but really their lives look more like a jungle. But they might be honest enough to say I kow my life is a little untidy and sometimes painful, but dont worry I’ll take care of it, dont worry we can work it out.
In 1985 a professor at Berkley wrote a book that was very successful that was called “Habits of the heart” in that book he tried to record life in the 80’s when it came to the search for community, security, and spirituality. I read part of it in school and in the book he interviews someone named Shiela Larson she is a nurse. IN the interview she says:
“I believe in God I am not a religious fanatic, I cant remember the last time I went to church, my faith has carried me a long way. Its sHielaism just my own little voice.
How perfect! You got the whole thing without leaving your bathroom!
All there for you all you have to do is look inside you what do you see?
“We must ask ourselves the question how is it that Shielaism somehow seems a perfectly natural expression of current American religious life, and we need to examine what that means in relation to the role of religion in the US today.”
You can meet people all over in our world today who will tell you they are finding the answers to life within, they are finding the answers not by finding the truth of Gods word but as a result of discovering truths.
As long as this person benefits from this quest or has some type of benefit from it and it makes them feel at peace, then they are happy to keep looking within.
There are many of us when we look at our lives we think we are in a total mess but WE CAN WORK IT OUT OURSELVES is their philosophy.
There is not time for fussing and fighting my friends.
The other alternative is the person who finally says
HELP I NEED SOMEBODY I am going to have to look beyond myself and quite frankly I need help
I have read alot and thought alot and I really know I need something greater than myself.
There has to be someone outside of me who has the answers to life
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.
This is more than just the end of warfare or the inner sense of peace or harmony between people.
There has been no lasting peace ever since the garden of Eden.
Is there someone who can help?
Not just somebody but somebody totally different than anyone we have ever met before?
This Peace this baby would bring is an eternal peace
Of the increase of his government and of peace
there will be no end,
on the throne of David and over his kingdom,
to establish it and to uphold it
with justice and with righteousness
from this time forth and forevermore.
The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.
We have never known peace like that...
At the end of the second world war Churchhill wanted to deal with the Russian problem but people didnt wanna hear it, he said there is a great bear out there and if we dont deal with it pretty soon it will swallow us up pretty soon, and they said oh go home churchill you a war mongerer he died in 65 and by that time Communism was pretty well entrenched and everything he talked about had come to pass.
Was He just pessimist?
No HE KNEW!
If there is a peace that is eternal and if this peace is found in Jesus and if this peace is eternal then how does all this work?
How do you get from this name prince of peace to the experience of peace within a life, within a marriage, 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 accomplished what He set out to do and that is exactly what the Bible tells us.
For that reason I want to end by looking at another portion of the bible which helps us see how he has worked out what we have been looking at.
For this I invite you to turn to Colossians 1
He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation.
For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
And you, who once were alienated and hostile in mind, doing evil deeds,
Now I want to look at 3 words there
ALIENATED
We were alienated in mind in what we believed, alienated in our behavior we behave wrongly because of our minds and our minds were darkened apart from Christ and so we behave wrongly.
The problem is that we are alienated from God, now you are not gonna find this in any other religion other than in Christianity,
Buddism tells you to look within yourself that you try and find the answers somewhere in there This is why it is so popular bc I can just believe whatever I create fro myself nobody out there is telling me what is right and wrong or anything like that.
But what we have to do is to say: do these offerings of peace knock off the throne this amazing story of God becoming man ans dying for His enemies and praying for thier forgiveness?
Thats the story of the gospel God takes the initiative and comes for us, the Prince of peace dies for those who are opposed to Him and prays for the forgiveness of His enemies.
The reason this matters and has great weight is bc we are alienated. Now again you can find alienation everwhere thats why so many of them appeal to us, the shadows of a God once known and we watch those things or read them and they tug at us and it pulls at us and we turn to the Bible and it tells us the reason you are feeling distant from God and everyone else the reason you feel so chaotic inside all of those things, are directly tied to Colossians 1 you are alienated from God and enemies in your mind...
Well if we are the enemies of God and we live this way, we turn to our own understanding what hope is there for peace then?
Unless God is the one taking initiative, pursuing us....
That is exactly the prophecy of Isaiah 9… God takes on human flesh, and provides for us the man who will stand in our place. He comes to deal with our separation by dealing with
2. Reconciliation
God was pleased to have all His fullness dwell in Jesus, AND THROUGH JESUS HE RECONCILED ALL THINGS UNTO HIMSELF
IN other words there is a barrier between God and man and that barrier is sin… our passive lazy indifference all of that stuuf that we understand offends God at least until we do it so many times that we flat out dont care.
All of that offends a Holy God bc He is just and He must punish sins bc He is loving He provides a solution i the midst of His judgment. It is here that Paul is making plain the phrase from Isaiah 9 HOW?
Well, He is the prince by which His sacrificial death atones for sin, takes on Himself the righteous response to sin, He doesnt burn us up in His anger like we do in our life when someone does something to us but instead He deals with the sin through Jesus death in our place.
The prince of peace walks the Hill to calvary’s cross and there he bears in his own body our sins...
In a very realistic sense we have to focus on the fact that what happened on the cross is a PAYMENT that Christ in Himself bore the wrath we deserve and payed for it in ful.
So that the story of the cross becomes something that we see as the single act was where Jesus stepped in the way of the frieght train of Gods rightesouenss
He was despised and rejected by men,
a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief;
and as one from whom men hide their faces
he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
Surely he has borne our griefs
and carried our sorrows;
yet we esteemed him stricken,
smitten by God, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions;
he was crushed for our iniquities;
upon him was the chastisement that brought us peace,
and with his wounds we are healed.
All we like sheep have gone astray;
we have turned—every one—to his own way;
and the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.
In His death is the answer to all of our lack of peace problems
This is crazy to think about, the anser to all of my life all of its fractures and failures its dissapointments and dirtiness all of its lost hopes and dreams can be traced back to a hill outside of Galilee
YES!!
This Christmas story that everyone can sit aside and dismantle with the Christmas lights is not the story we are shown in the Bible no you can go to Hallmark for that
The real question is ARE YOU RECONCILED TO GOD?
We can look at all the hate and all the violence we watvch it on tv and we see that things are really messed up, but we are not willing to fess us to whats really messed up, broken and dirty in our own lives.
Jesus is sufficient and He is the only Savior and on the cross He accomplished reconciliation so our goal is not to achieve eternal life but we have already possesed it bc JESUS ACHIEVED IT FOR US!!
As we go back out into our world it is completely unaware that there is somethign that has been done to provide for thier salvation....
If there was something right now that we could point to as being the end of COVID 19 do you think we could go back to normal?
SURE
but there is nothing
How about this
Do you think if something had ben done to make us right with GOd and give us meanign and purpose in life that it would change our world?
SURE
But many dont know the work has been done all of our sins have been laid on the back of the perosn the world hates the most Jesus Christ.
(Preach)
PEACE BETWEEN US AND GOD!!!