Isaiah 9:1-7; A Child Is Born: Prince of Peace

Jason Sterling December 21, 2025 Faith Presbyterian Church Birmingham, AL Bulletin

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Transcript

Advent Context And Isaiah 9

SPEAKER_00 0:23

If you have a copy of God's word, turn with me this morning, Isaiah chapter 9. It's in your bulletin. But you can turn there as well. We've been doing this Advent series on the royal titles of the Messiah from Isaiah chapter 9. Paul Tripp says, in these four names of Jesus, we have the complete content, a complete summary of the Christmas story. First, sin reduces us to fools. And the wonderful counselor comes and rescues us with his wisdom. Secondly, sin renders us unable to be who God has designed us to be. Mighty God comes, defeats sin, and empowers his people. Third, sin separates and isolates us, but everlasting Father welcomes us into his royal family. And this morning, lastly, sin makes us enemies with God. But the Prince of Peace brings peace with God, which is the only road to peace with other people. What a great summary of Christmas. What a great summary of this passage that we've been looking at over the last four weeks. This morning, we will look at this passage once more and look at the title, Prince of Peace. I won't read the entire passage. It is in your bulletin. I'll be referring to it. One verse again this morning, Isaiah 9, verse 6. This is God's word. 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 the word of the Lord. Let me pray once more for God's Spirit to help those that receive the word, but me as I preach the word. Let's pray. Father, show us Jesus. Open up our eyes. Help us to understand who this prince is and what he has done and how we were meant to live in this peace that he has secured for us. We have lots going on in our hearts. I pray that you would free us from those things, quiet our hearts, may we engage. You've brought us here. I pray that through your spirit we would encounter Jesus and that you would move us. We ask these things in Jesus' name. Amen. Want you to think about your favorite Christmas movie for a moment. And I want you to think about what they might have in common. They're all searching for peace. The McAllisters, they want just one peaceful family vacation. Clark Griswold dreams of just one peaceful gathering with his family around the Christmas tree. Walter Hobbs wants his carefully ordered life undisturbed by Buddy the Elf. And George Bailey, well, he wants peace in the midst of financial ruin and in the midst of crushing disappointment. There is a universal hunger for peace. And it shows up everywhere. It shows up in the Christmas movies that we watch and every carol we sing and every story, every culture across the world and across history. We have international peace treaties, we have labor negotiations, political compromises. We have hope for domestic peace within our homes that feel so chaotic on the inside. We have hope for peace in our souls that often feel very anxious and chaotic. Every human being is chasing the same thing. We are chasing after peace. And maybe you woke up this morning and you walked into this room without it. Maybe you are carrying the weight of broken relationships, inner turmoil within your own heart, or maybe some sort of unresolved conflict with someone around you, or maybe it's just the gnawing sense. I mean, think about the headlines just this week, and Dickie prayed for some of those things. Maybe it's just the gnawing sense that things are wrong. Something's off with the world, and something's also off within our own hearts. We know the reality of living in a world without peace with God, with other people. And when we feel that, what we often, we want to fix it. And we do everything in our power to fix it. And so we negotiate peace in our relationships, or we try to rearrange our circumstances just so that we can feel a moment or an hour of calm. Or deep within us, we think that we can manufacture and we try to manufacture some sense of quiet and calm on the inside. But what happens? It never really works. Sure, it yes, it might work for a moment, but it's only temporary. It's fragile and incomplete. This morning, I've got good news for all of us. There is one name and one person who can put an end to our restless pursuit. And his name is Jesus, the Prince of Peace. The main idea this morning, obviously, it's one word. The theme is peace. Three things I want us to look at. Why we need it, who can restore it, and so what? What does that mean for us today? So, why, who, and what? That's where we're headed this morning. Let's look at our first heading: why we need peace. Look at verses four and five with me. Pay close attention here because what Isaiah says here is shocking. Look at it. Wore your boots, blood-soaked garments, the instruments of war, but notice they are not picked up and used. What happens to those things? They're put in the fire and they are burned. And here's why that's shocking, because that's not the way peace is supposed to come. Every Israelite listening to Isaiah knew exactly what peace meant. A warrior king was going to come, and he was going to crush everyone around him, particularly his enemies. That's how the world has always secured peace by the sword. And Isaiah gives us a picture here of something radically different. Not just victory over enemies, but the end of war. Not just a better warrior, but no more war at all. And the time we get to Jesus when he was born, Rome thought they had achieved it. You might remember from your history, the Pax Romana, the Roman peace. It was declared at that time to be miraculous until you looked underneath the surface. And it was anything but peaceful. Because that peace was secured through violence and intimidation and through crucifying people along the roadside. We hear that and we think, but that's not us. It might look different, but we also pursue peace the exact same way. We pursue peace, do we not, through control? If I can just manage these circumstances, or we seek peace through achievement, if I can just accomplish enough, or if I can negotiate this relationship, I can avoid, maybe we just pretend and just avoid conflict, and we have this feeling of some sort of peace, or we try to manufacture some sort of calm and quiet in our soul and in our relationships. There's always the same assumption underneath all of those things. If I can just get everything right and get everything managed, then peace will be mine. But the peace we carry is only temporary. Yes, think about it, and you know this is true, but let's work it out. You might fix one relationship only to have another one completely fall apart. You might get your work life under control and have some sort of peace and low anxiety only to find it's coming off the rails in your home and there's no peace at all. Or you rearrange your life to feel peaceful, and then all of a sudden, sudden, there's a bomb that goes off somewhere else in your life and it completely disrupts it. That's our story, isn't it? On Christmas Eve of 1914, you might be familiar with this, but something remarkable happened in the trenches of World War I. British and German soldiers were exhausted out after a month of brutal fighting and killing. And across no man's land, they began to sing on this Christmas Eve Christmas carols. Silent night. And the next morning, something remarkable happened on Christmas Day. They climbed out of their trenches. They walked across No Man's Land and they shook hands and they shared family photos. They played soccer together, shared stories about life. For one beautiful day, the war had stopped. And it remains still in human history one of the most vivid reminders that even enemies longed for the same peace. What do you think happened the next day? They went back to killing each other. By the end of the war, 17 million people were dead. The point a truce is not peace. A ceasefire is not peace. You can pause the war, but you can't, they could not resolve the thing that caused it. And that's exactly our problem, too. Every anxious thought and broken relationship and circumstance that steals our peace, those things aren't the real problem. They're symptoms. We are trying to negotiate peace down here horizontally, but the real war is vertical. We as human beings and as humanity are at war with God. And we are the ones that started it. In the Garden of Eden in Genesis chapter 3, we said to God, our Creator, we do not want you. And we broke covenant and we broke peace with God. And we essentially said, I will be the king. You are not my king. I will rule my own life. And what happens when two people claim to be king? You've got war. You've got conflict and hostility. You've got a fundamental breach. That is why all of our efforts at peace fail. Because you cannot have peace with others when you're at war with your creator. You cannot have peace with self when you are rebelling against the one who made you. And so the application for point one, stop trying to be your own peacemaker. Stop exhausting yourself thinking if I can just work harder, if I can achieve more, if I can manage these circumstances and fix this relationship, finally I'll be able to take a deep breath and have peace. You cannot manufacture it. We need something. We need someone. We need a prince who can give us what we don't have and what we cannot get ourselves. And that leads us to the next point. Who can give us peace? Look at verse 6. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and he will be called Prince of Peace. This title, Prince of Peace, literally means and reads Prince of Shalom. And that's really significant. So to understand what Prince of Peace means, we need to understand shalom. And shalom is so much bigger than our English word for peace. It's not just an absence of conflict, it means completeness and wholeness and flourishing in every dimension of life. Everything is in right relationship with God, with others. You're in right relationship with self and with creation. It is comprehensive. It is the world, shalom, is the world functioning the way it was meant to function before sin broke everything. And that is what this prince in Isaiah chapter nine offers us. Not just a calm, peaceful, easy feeling, not just absence of war, but a complete restoration of everything that has been shattered by our rebellion. And seven hundred years later, after Isaiah spoke these words, that promise arrived at Christmas in the person of Jesus Christ. John chapter 14. You don't have to turn there, you can turn there later this week or this afternoon, write down the reference, but let me read this to you and give you the context. In John chapter 14, the disciples, they have no peace. They're in turmoil. They are full of fear and they are anxious and they are full of grief and completely overwhelmed by life. And into that moment, Jesus speaks and says, Peace I leave with you, and my peace I give to you. And then he says, I do not give to you as the world gives. Let's break that down. Where does peace come from? It comes from him. Peace is a gift. And I think that's important. It doesn't come from inside you, from managing all your thoughts and discovering your authentic self. Peace comes from the outside. It comes from someone who has it and gives it away to you. He is the giver. We are the receiver. Think about a prince giving possessions to his people. Jesus is saying here, I've got something. I've got peace that you desperately need, and I am giving it to you as a gift. So how does it come? Well, remember, Jesus says, I do not give it to you as the world gives. How does the world give peace? Sword. Intimidation, violence, domination. Jesus gives peace by falling under the sword, not by wielding the sword, by bearing the sword into himself. Think about Isaiah chapter nine. Here we have Isaiah saying, Jesus calling the Messiah the Prince of Peace. And if we were to keep reading Isaiah, the same Isaiah a few chapters later in Isaiah 53 calls this Prince of Peace what? The suffering servant. He says, listen, he was pierced for our transgression, crushed for our iniquities, and then here it is the punishment that brought us. Peace was put on him. And by his wounds, we are healed. In 2012, there was a tornado that ripped through her Indiana home. The mother's name was Stephanie Decker, and she had just a second to act. She grabbed her two young children, threw a blanket over them, and then covered her children with her body absorbing the impact of the house collapsing and moving her body back and forth to over her children to absorb the brick and debris that were falling onto her. And she was shielding them. And when it was all said and done, and when it was over, her legs were crushed and completely severed. What about her children? Not a scratch. That's the gospel. Think about this mother absorbing the fury of the storm in order to save her children. Jesus absorbed the fury of the storm of God's wrath into his body. He bore what we deserved. But unlike Stephanie Decker, he wasn't just injured. Jesus died. Why? For you, for his children. Think about the irony. The irony of the Pax Romana. The peacekeeping that they were trying to take throughout the Roman Empire. It came through crosses and through crucifixion. And little did they know that that would be the means, the cross would be the means by which Jesus would actually establish everlasting and real and eternal peace. It would not come through violence against others, but by violence against himself. Not through conquering his enemies, but through dying for his enemies. And think about Jesus, he doesn't just bear God's wrath, he does. But Jesus becomes in that moment hostility itself. Second Corinthians 5 21, God made Jesus who knew no sin to be sin for us, not just sinful, but sin itself. So God made Jesus the hostility between us and him. And all of our rebellion and warfare and refusal to let him be king, God put that on Jesus and killed it there. And here's what this means for you this morning. If you are a Christian, if you have embraced Jesus by faith, your record of hostility goes to him, and his record of peace goes to you. That's why Jesus isn't just the source of our peace, he is our peace. You cannot earn this, you don't deserve this, you cannot buy this. The prince has to give it to you. And friends, the Prince of Peace is offering it to you this morning. And so if you don't know Jesus this morning, will you receive the gift of peace that Jesus is offering you? Lastly, so what? What does this mean for us today? I want us to look at how this peace works itself out and what it means for your relationship with God, what it means for your relationship with others, and what it means as you think about your future. So let's look at those three applications with God. We need to understand Romans 5, 1. Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, listen to this. We have peace with God, not the peace of God. There's a distinction there. Don't miss it. Peace with God is different than the peace of God. The peace of God is subjective. It's this inner calm that you experience. It's what the Apostle Paul describes, the peace of God which transcends all understanding. That is real. That's something we desperately need. But peace with God is objective. And it's a fact. And it's a reality that happened to you if you're a Christian, whether or not you feel it. And Romans chapter 5, verse 1 makes the declaration that you have peace with God, present tense, accomplished, finished, done. Your war has ended because of the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. What does that mean for you as you wake up tomorrow morning? Well, it means that you don't have to start your day in a deficit, trying to earn your favor and earn the love of God. You have peace with God. That means that you are accepted when you wake up tomorrow morning. You're accepted now, but apply this to tomorrow. You already have peace with him. The war is over. You can stop trying to earn his acceptance and living like you're one mistake away from losing his love. You cannot lose what you did not earn. The Prince of Peace has given you that peace as a gift. And here's something else: you can be honest with God. If you have a secure relationship, you can confess freely. And so you can stop hiding and pretending that you're better than you really are, and you can bring it all to Jesus, and you can be honest. Tremendous freedom in being a Christian. What about with other people? How does this peace, if you have peace with God, uh that means that you can move and make peace with other people because think about Ephesians chapter 2. Jesus is our peace. He doesn't just reconcile us to God individually and leave you to be divided with everyone else around you. No, the gospel reconciles us and brings reconciliation. God makes uh enemies and to friends and family. And so, what if this morning, what if the greatest gift that you can give this Christmas is not something that you're getting ready to go out and buy? Not something that you're gonna put under the tree. What if the greatest gift you could give this Christmas is making peace with someone? Maybe it's a family member. Maybe it's someone in your own home, a spouse that you've been avoiding. Maybe it's someone that has hurt you that you need to forgive, or maybe you you're the one that's done the hurting. And you need to ask forgiveness. Or maybe there's just something with you and a friend, or someone else that's just odd and awkward and feels off, and you feel this tension, and someone needs to make the first move and break the ice and seek peace? What if you made the first move? You've been given peace that you did not deserve and that you did not earn. This Christmas, what if we gave that same kind of gift to someone else around us? And then lastly, this peace impacts the way we think about our future. John 16. Again, listen to what Jesus says. I've told you these things, so that in me you may have peace. In this world you will have trouble. And then Jesus says, but take heart. I have overcome the world. Really? I mean, let's hit that head on. Let's be honest about this. Because you look around, and it doesn't look like Jesus has overcome the world. It looks chaotic, and it looks like lots of division and suffering, and you think, really? It sure doesn't look like it. But here's what we need to understand, and this is very important for your worldview as a Christian. We live between the times. We live between the two advents. The first advent, Christmas, Jesus came and he won the victory, the decisive victory, the cross, the resurrection. He defeated death. Sin has been conquered, Satan has been crushed, the war is won. The second Advent, which we're waiting on, for Jesus to come again and establish the kingdom fully and finally, and that has not happened yet, and so we live in this tension. We have the confidence because the victory is certain, but we also have the reality because we know just by looking around that the battle continues. There is nothing in the news that confirms that God is on his throne. There is nothing in the headlines that proves that the prince reigns. They didn't have any better evidence than we do. Rome looked unbeatable. But what did they do? They kept worshiping, they kept living by faith, they kept believing, they kept preaching and proclaiming that Jesus is Lord. Why? Because they were convinced that by faith, that this kingdom, the kingdom of God, was real and final. Hebrews chapter 11, verse 1, faith is the assurance of things hoped for, confidence in the things that we do not see. We walk by faith. And when we hold on to the Prince of Peace, who is coming again by faith, we have a peace that transcends all understanding. Not because our circumstances and the world is peaceful, but because we know the king. We know who's on the throne. And the world, friends, cannot give you that peace. And here's the thing and the world cannot take away that peace. And you know what this Prince of Peace is bringing in the second advent? Shalom. Complete shalom. Every wrong righted, every tear wiped away, every broken relationship restored, the peace that we experience in fragments here, now will come in fullness. Hang on to that. That is the hope that keeps you going in a chaotic world. That is your peace in this world. And so we celebrate this Christmas, the Prince who has come. And he has given us peace and he has secured our peace, and we wait faithfully for him to return and bring it finally and fully. And so here's the question for all of us. Will you come this morning and receive the peace that this prince freely offers, whether it's for the first time or the thousandth time? Will you come and let that peace move out into your relationship with God and change the way you relate to him? And the way you relate to other people, and the way you think about the future. Let's pray. Father, thank you for sending the Prince of Peace. Thank you that he secured what we could not. Would you forgive us for trying to manufacture this peace on our own and exhausting ourselves, trying to be our own saviors? May we rest in you and what you have done. Holy Spirit, this week, would you help us to pursue reconciliation? Help us to live in confidence no matter what is going on in our lives. And there is a lot in this room. May we live in the hope and peace that you are coming again. In Jesus' name. Amen.