Isaiah 9
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.

This is what we do with this story of God coming in the form of a baby, God saving us.

1. Your King was born in the manger, not your homeboy

We come to Jesus and we think he’s one thing, and then when we get down to it, understand Him, understand why He’s come, understand what our King is asking of us, we’re like: MAN, THIS IS HARD. We find out and then it’s like we skip town.

Very similar to a blind date: We show up, we’ve heard some good things. We’re liking what we’ve heard. We’ve seen a view pictures, viewed his Instagram account, stalked his FB, and we’re like yeah, this is great. Then we drive up and it turns out to be a totally different person and we’re like SEE YA!

I think this is what we might do when we learn about Christ bringing peace, but then realize that peace is coming through the throne he is bringing, through his rule.

We need to see the language here in Isaiah 9 and all these words, Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Prince of Peace, Everlasting Father, all have political, governmental implications.

Let’s hit these quickly. Everlasting Father - since fathers were heads of tribes who wisely led the people, it is a fitting title for a ruler if one wants to avoid some negative connotations of kingship. Prince of Peace - all kings wanted to bring peace. Mighty God - this implies God is a mighty warrior. Wonderful Counselor - the king offers wise rule, wise leadership, counsel for the people.

Look at these passages from Paul in the New Testament speaking of the two kingdoms.

Colossians 1:13 - He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son

Ephesians 2:1-2 - And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience

He came to bring a kingdom of grace and peace. But notice that if he is bringing a kingdom, he’s gonna be a king. A nobody can’t bring a kingdom. I can’t go over to Smyrna and set up a kingdom. A king does this. And what does a king do? He rules. He governs. This is eternally. And this is personally. Here and now.

You see, Christ has come into history through the power of the Spirit to begin his rule and defeat of darkness, and to set up a throne in the lives of his people.

When we pray, asking Thy Kingdom come we’re asking God to come and rule over our soul and conscience. Sometimes we might pray that because we get excited about the future and what he’s going to do, and we forget what he’s going to do is already happening now in the lives of his children. At least it should be.

At Christmas, and in this season, we see the holidays, We see the baby. We hear mercy and grace and God sending his son to save us, and we think, yeah this feels good. This is warm. We sing of meekness and mildness. But God did not send a pushover. God sent a king, Himself, for governmental overthrow. He came to take up residence and rule. He came for a people, a kingdom, a population, a town, a spiritual polis. He’s bringing a new dominion. So that’s his government. But what about it?

“Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end...”

He says his government will not end, but what else? Isaiah says the peace of this king will not end and is attached to his government. Our peace is directly connected to and cannot be separated from His Government.

Peace, despite what we think, is connected to his rule, not ours. But a lot of times we don’t think peace is attached to governing/ruling/reigning. We draw the line, just like we do with love and discipline. Love can’t be tough. Peace can’t come from ruling.

We think peace comes from our ruling, our taking control. We try to build our own peace. Peace is when we are sitting on the throne. But that’s not real peace. That’s not peace that will not end. That peace will end as soon as you lose control, which you will.

Only from Christ’s rule do we gain true peace. This is not peace that comes every human rule and human governing and human presidency. We must realize his government is the only government, not ours, not someone else’s, that will bring eternal, everlasting peace.

The king knows what’s best for his people, better than they do. And because he knows, we can trust him. We can know that he is leading us in the best way and that the things he asks of us are for our good and for our life in the kingdom.

You see, peace can come from ruling when the one ruling cares for and loves us more than we do. Isn’t that crazy? The king, our King, loves us and cares for us more than we do ourselves.

It’s a great thing he came to be a king and not just our homeboy.

He is the true trust worthy politician. When we say Jesus come and rule, we’re asking him to come sit and take office in our oval office. Start your tenure as king.

2. We can’t have the joys of the kingdom without the laws of the King

This is us with Christ. We want to be in the kingdom, we want darkness defeated, we want sin eradicated, we want to be moral and good citizens, but we don’t want to change. We want to clean the house, but we only want to clean the part of the house that everyone sees. Am I right?

You ever do this at Community Group? You clean and you clean, but due to exhaustion, due to so much work, you throw all the stuff somewhere that no one will come into. You don’t need to clean that.

This is us with sin and with our choices and with our lives. We’re okay for Christ to come and be our house cleaner, there are just some areas in the house he doesn’t need to go to. But the problem is, when he comes in, he must clean everything.

See He came to make us new creation, not leave an arm off or a leg. Wholly new creation, not partially. A lot of times, we want Christ to save, we just don’t want him to sanctify. We want him to rescue, we don’t want him to cleanse. We want to grasp hold of our pardon, we just want to let go of the pruning.

But we need to understand today and everyday that this isn’t truly wanting the real thing. I want this but I don’t want this part of it. This would be like marriage. I want to be marriage but I don’t want to commit. Then you don’t want to be married. What we don’t want is intrinsically a part of what we want. That’s what it means to be THAT.

CS Lewis Quote – “We may wish, indeed, that we were of so little account to God that he left us alone to follow our natural impulses – that he would give over trying to train us into something so unlike our natural selves: but once again, we are asking not for more love, but for less...To ask that God’s love should be content with us as we are is to ask that God should cease to be God.”

When we come to God, we’re not ordering a happy meal.

Here’s the thing about God. He can’t be sliced up and put on a buffet. We can’t take one thing and leave another. God is not complex. He can’t be broken down. He is simple. He is all in one. We can’t have his love without his holiness. We can’t have his saving without his sanctifying.

We want the Savior, not the King.

To do that is to not truly want God. And that’s a dangerous thing because only holy love, only the Sanctifying Savior brings ultimate freedom from sin and brings us into the Kingdom.

Scripture tells us in Hebrews 1 that Christ is the radiance of God, all of God’s glory right there in Christ. Richard Sibbes explains that we love light as it shines, but hate it as it discovers and directs. We like Christ’s radiance, but we don’t like for that radiance to unveil sin and dirtiness.

1 Peter 2:9 - But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.

Holy nation. Own possession. Out of one kingdom, into another. For him. For Christ. Let’s bring it down practically.

We fight for our liberties, we want to do what we want. Don’t we? We want to celebrate the baby born in Bethlehem and still live however we choose. We want to keep lying at work, binge watching shows on Netflix that we know we shouldn’t spend our time on, going too far with our significant other who isn’t our spouse, being degrading with our speech.

Just let me call on Jesus when I need him. Christ didn’t come to sell life insurance that you never think about until you need it. He came to start a kingdom and to sit on the throne in our lives, not open up a branch of State Farm. Covering up our sin and cleansing us isn’t a one time thing.

Late pastor Adrian Rogers says:

You can’t have Christ as your Savior if he is not also your Lord.

Romans 10:9 - we confess and believe. We don’t just believe. We believe, and because we believe we confess. He is Lord. He has defeated the dominion of darkness, and because of that he is the rightful ruler of my life. So I confess him as King. Jesus, rule my life. Shine your light into all areas. Discover and reveal.

Cleanse me. Change me.

If you’re in the kingdom, you look like it. You look like you live there. If you’re a football player, you look like it. I am clearly not in the NFL. If you’re in the NFL, you look it.

In the same way, we show the king rules us and we show our citizenship by living like it. Hear this: This is the message of James 1. We don’t earn our place in the kingdom by our works, but our works do show the proof of our citizenship.

To quote Dr. Rogers again here, this is beautiful. He says:

“Christ doesn’t change you in order to love you. He loves you in order to change you.”

We ask for saving and then we expect and experience sanctifying. We celebrate the baby in the manger that came to rescue and then we bow down and surrender to the King who came to rule over us and our fears and our desires.

It’s been said like this, Hell will be filled with people who were avidly committed to Christian values.

Isn’t that sobering. Committed to values isn’t the same as committed to Lordship. We need to be committed to Christian Rule, not Christian living. And that means the personal rule and reign of Christ in our daily lives.

Take our thoughts, habits, activities, loves. We take them to the king and say rule over me. Cleanse me. Prune me. Discipline me. This is the process of sanctification. This is the process of making us fit for the kingdom that will never end.

The birth of Jesus, the reign and rule of Jesus, allows us to let go of fears and to cling to Christ. He’s making us fit for our wedding, for our eternity in the royal house. And preparation is hard. But if we know what the preparation is for, it can be a joy.

3. All is preparation for our Royal Wedding

Preparation for weddings. We lose weight. We get the haircut. We do things we don’t want to. We plan. We prepare. It’s hard. It’s restrictive. During our engagement, we claim faithfulness to our spouse. We, in a way, allow our spouse to restrict our behavior.

But it’s a joy, because we know what’s happening in the future and we know why we’re doing it.

This is a perfect picture. Our sanctification, the ruling of Christ’s government is

getting us ready for our wedding. This is when the kingdom is in full force.

We know, because we live in the right now, that this kingdom has begun, but it has not come in full. The inauguration of this kingdom for eternity will begin at the Royal Wedding, when the king takes his bride. and the kingdom of light vanquishes the dominion of sin and darkness for good. And when this happens, the King will take his Bride. His church. Us.

This is how to discover sanctification with joy because of why the Lord is doing it in us. He is preparing us for our wedding to him. And it’s a lifelong process because of his holiness and our sinfulness. His beauty and our ugliness. It’s going to be amazing.

BOY WILL THIS BE US.

We will not understand the truth of this statement until we get to our Royal Wedding with Christ. Take joy. Take heart. Get excited. And understand, like Proverbs, His discipline, his pruning, is a sign of his abundant love, not his lack of it.

Look, if you think weddings are awesome and just so emotional and you stayed up till 4AM to watch the Royal Wedding with William and Middleton, you ain’t seen nothing yet. This joy will be everlasting. This peace will never stop.

Most importantly, this marriage isn’t like ones we see so often here, those that pick up their marriage license one day and write in to request divorce months later. This established peace of and from the king will not end, it will be forevermore. And it is to our benefit that Christ desires to get us ready for that now so we can experience peace and joy with him forever.

God’s ruling comes through his people

Jude 24: “Now to him who is able to keep you from stumbling and to present you blameless before the presence of his glory with great joy.