We're going to look at Luke 2 as a little bit of a preface to our morning sermon. You'll see that I'm breaking stride and preaching an Old Testament text, which I usually do in the evening, but we're going to focus our attention on Isaiah 9 this morning. But before we do, we'll look at the New Testament counterpart, actually the fulfillment, Luke 2. A few verses from 21 to verse 40. Here God's holy and perfect word. When eight days had passed before his circumcision, that's Christ, his name was then called Jesus, the name given by the angel before he was conceived in the womb. And when the days for their purification, according to the law of Moses, were completed, they brought him up to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord. As it is written in the law of the Lord, every firstborn male that opens the womb shall be called holy to the Lord, to offer sacrifice according to what was said in the law of the Lord. A pair of turtle doves or two young pigeons. There was a man in Jerusalem whose name was Simeon. The man was righteous and devout, looking for the consolation of Israel. And the Holy Spirit was upon him. And it had been revealed to him by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death before he had seen the Lord's Christ. And when he came in the Spirit into the temple, when the parents brought in the child Jesus to carry out for him the custom of the law, he, Simeon, took him, Jesus, into his arms and blessed God and said, Now, Lord, you are releasing your bond servant to depart in peace according to your word. For my eyes have seen your salvation, which you have prepared in the presence of all people, a light of revelation to the Gentiles and the glory of your people Israel. And his father and mother were amazed at the things which were being said about him. And Simeon blessed them and said to Mary, his mother, behold, this child is appointed for the fall and the rise of many in Israel and for a sign to be opposed. And a sword will pierce even your own soul to the end of the thoughts from many hearts may be revealed. And there was a prophetess, Anna, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was advanced in years and had lived with her husband seven years after her marriage, and then as a widow to the age of 84. She never left the temple, serving night and day with fasting and prayers. At that very moment, she came up and began giving thanks to God and continued to speak of him to all those who were looking for the redemption of Jerusalem. When they had performed everything according to the law of the Lord, they returned to Galilee, to their own city of Nazareth, The child continued to grow and become strong, increasing in wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him. We're gonna go from that to the book of Isaiah. Isaiah chapter nine. I'm gonna read one through seven. There will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish. In earlier times, he treated the land of Zebulun, the land of Naphtali, with contempt. Later on, he'll she make it glorious by the way of the sea on the other side of Jordan, the Galilee of the Gentiles. The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. You shall multiply the nation. You shall increase their gladness. They will be glad in your presence. as with the gladness of harvest, and men, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil, you shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of their oppressor as at the battle of Midian, for every boot of the booted warrior in the battle tumult and cloak rolled in blood will be for burning, fuel for the fire. 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. 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, to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of Hosts will accomplish this. Amen. Let's pray. Oh, Lord God, how we stand upon holy ground, how we stand upon holy ground as we look at the Holy Gospel, even the Holy Christ, the good news, your grace, Lord God, towards sinners, that you will reconcile yourself to sinners, that you yourself will be the just one who justifies the unjust us. by Jesus Christ. A glory be to your holy name. I have pity upon me, Lord God. Fill me, Holy Spirit. May the words of my mouth, the meditation of my heart, Lord, be guided and governed by you, thou my great Jehovah, that the sermon would redound to your honor. It would be according to your word, and for all of us, Lord, that we would have the faith to receive it, to cherish it in our hearts, to practice it in our lives. Glorify your name in all the earth, we pray in Christ's name. Amen. Amen. I've changed, just so you know, the title The title is A Child Will Be Born to Us, obviously taken from the text. I've changed that. I've made it broader conceptually. And my new title is, it doesn't sound quite as nice, but it's Christ is Everything to Us. That's the title. Christ is Everything to Us that Believe. I mentioned last week when we concluded the Book of First Thessalonians, my practice is to preach through books just because I'm not, skilled enough to come up with a new topic every week. And I desired, when I finished First Thessalonians, to take a little bit of a break and do some topical messages, expository topicals, but topicals to pull out from a text, not hopscotch around so much, but from a text. And so that's why we're looking at the book of Isaiah this morning. How long we'll be in topicals? I don't know. I guess three, four, five, six weeks, if God gives me three, four, five, six weeks to labor. And since it's in the season that we're in, I thought it would be appropriate to look at this subject. which is really the incarnation of our Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ. That's what we're clearly looking in Isaiah 9. It's a prophecy concerning the coming of Jesus Christ. What we see, Isaiah writes in 800 BC, something like that, and God is stoking what I would refer to as the messianic hopes of Israel. Now, I want you to think of that. God is stoking the messianic hopes of Israel. Now, we live here in Pensacola, obviously. I'm from New England. Where I lived, there was a greater percentage of Jewish folks that I was raised with. Maybe not so much down here, but I was up there. And all this to say that this, that sometimes When you come across a modern, and I would say, I'm going to have to perfect it, a non-Jesus-believing Jewish commentator on the Old Testament, they will come here on our subject, on Messianic Hopes, and they'll say something like this. I'll get close. that, well, the concept that we have as New Testament Christians for Messiah, they will say that the Jews in the Old Testament and for the modern non-Jewish believing Jews, they held altogether a different view of Messiah. And what they'll say is, well, the Jews were expecting a mere human, just a human Messiah. He would be political. and he would save them from their Gentile enemies, and he would reestablish physical, national Israel to physical, national glory. Something like that. And so they'll say, that's what the Bible was teaching. You all Christians have come up with this strange view that the Old Testament teaches that the Lord Jesus Christ will be fully God. and fully man, and he won't come primarily to restore national Israel to glory, and I would argue not even, but he has come to save his people from their sins, to free us from the bondage of the devil, and to free us for God. So they're saying there are two different views of Messiah. Our view, and what they would say is the correct understanding of the Old Testament, just a mere sociopolitical savior. Now, in one sense, they're right. There are two different views. Now, some of you all are more political than other folks. There are some political pundits that, people that are political conservatives, like Jewish folks, that would agree with just what I said, that Jesus wasn't really a savior from sin, and he really failed. He wasn't the Messiah. He didn't even restore Israel. They are looking for a real Messiah to restore physical Israel. That's a fact. There are those two sides. So they're correct in that. However, they're incorrect that the Bible in the Old Testament doesn't teach that the Messiah will be fully man, which is why I took the original title, a child will be given to us, a son will be born to us. That is the full humanity of the Messiah. Jesus Christ, the Messiah, is real man. He has a real body, he has a real soul, real man, that he would represent real men and women and boys and girls. But the Bible also tells us what they would deny here in the Old Testament. This is why I'm preaching the Old Testament. I'm not preaching the New Testament text, which we will later on, Old Testament, 800 BC to Israel, Messiah's name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty what? Mighty God. I didn't make that up. New Testament born-again Christians didn't make that up. The Messiah will be a child born to us fully man. Messiah will be Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and I'll just clear that up. Everlasting Father here is in relationship to Jesus. It's not referring to the Father, who is Everlasting Father. It's talking about the Lord Jesus Christ. Everything. Wonderful Counselor is Christ. Mighty God is Christ. Everlasting Father is Christ. Christ is being called Father as he is the progenitor of his church. But he's everlasting. These are ascriptions of divinity. So the Old Testament teaches Christ will be man, Christ will be God. That's why we read our confession in one person. Mystery of mysteries, how it all comes together is beyond our full comprehension, but clearly it teaches. Now, why can some miss it and others like us in this little room say, of course, that's what Isaiah says, of course. What's the difference? What's the difference? Why can you look at Isaiah 9 and say, a son will be born, a child will be given to us, and he'll be mighty God, this is Jesus. Why can you believe that? And the better part of humanity has lived and died, and they see nothing in Jesus. Just a man, he really muffed it. Albert Schweitzer said there was lots of things that Jesus thought he was gonna restore Israel, and he just muffed it, he got it wrong. Why does the better part of humanity believe that and not you? What's the difference? We studied in the young people's theology class this morning. God the Holy Spirit gave you eyes to see. God the Holy Spirit gave you a circumcised heart. God the Holy Spirit gave faith in you in Jesus Christ. That's called grace. So we're looking at the promise of the coming God-man, Emmanuel. And I want to make a connection. That's here in the text, and I'm going to make it at the outset. So we're looking at the coming Christ, fully God, fully man, but I'm going to make this connection. The reason Jesus Christ must come into the world as a child, be a real human being, what's the ultimate reason that that must occur? Why can't he be an angel? Why does he have to be a man? Why couldn't he have just remained a deity without taking humanity? Why did he need humanity? Christ was born a child so that he would die. So that he would die. That's the implication of this text. A child will be born to us. Jesus Christ was born in a manger in Bethlehem for the purpose of going to a cross on Calvary. Most of y'all know that I do as the church, we have a church Facebook. And sometimes Facebook is frivolous, but our church Facebook is not frivolous. I consider it, I pray over the posts. I consider it to be an extension of my teaching arm, my ministry to you all and beyond. I put a post for this particular sermon and made what I just made, that connection. Jesus was born to die. and instantly I was befriended. That beloved, if you think you are celebrating the birth of the Lord Jesus Christ without acknowledging the death of the Lord Jesus Christ, can I say something? You're not a Christian. Christ was born to die. for me and you as sinners. That's all here. Now, what we're looking at in this text, which is actually bigger than maybe you would think, is that this God-man Christ is a number of things to and for us. If you walk through this passage, just kind of in a homiletical style from verse to verse to verse, you'll see Christ is gonna be our glory. Christ will be our light. Christ is our joy. Christ is, we'll see when it gets to verse four and five, Christ is our peace. Christ is our increase. Christ is our freedom. Christ is our life, and then when we get to six and seven, where the government will rest on his shoulders, we'll see that Christ is our Lord. This passage is what I would refer to as the benefits of the gospel of grace, or the privileges or the benefits of the grace of God. These are gifts. We've been looking at moral exhortations from the book of 1 Thessalonians. Since Christ has died for you, live like this. And that Bible does talk like that. Can you find any exhortation imperative in our passage? Look, no. It's all indicative. This is what God will do for you. This is what God has done for you. This is what he will do. This is what God will do. This is what Christ is. I left the study of this passage, and even though I'm a Presbyterian, I wanted to run around and start jumping and shouting. Christ is our life. Christ is our glory. He does it. Sometimes when we look at ourselves and our response to the Lord Jesus Christ, we think, I am the most pitiful Christian in the entire world. But we don't feel this way when we look at Christ. He is the most glorious Savior. in all the world. This is why I say when you come to the end of the brief section, it just in summary, Christ is everything to us. How does Paul put it in Philippians 1? To live is Christ. And what's the next statement? And to die is gain. Why is it gain? Because we go from seeing Christ dimly now to the moment that we die, we don't fear it. When R.C. Sproul went from grace to glory, and I read a little post that R.C. said, after I'm dead, don't cry for me. I'm gonna be leaping over fire hydrants as I'm running down the street in glory. And he said the only thing that made him sad thinking about his own death was to leave behind his dear wife. But he wasn't sad to go to glory because of this, because Christ is everything to me. into you, into our sea. So this is just, this is just gospel benefit, grace benefit. Let's just walk through those various benefits. Christ is our glory. We're told in verse one, there'll be no more gloom for her who is in anguish. And it talks about the people living in the promised land and then the Galilee of the Gentiles. Here God, through the prophet Isaiah, announces, or what I would call promises, future good. There will be future good. No more gloom, no more anguish. And what that means is the people of God actually at this particular time were experiencing gloom and experiencing anguish. And that means the people of God, in their anguish, we're going to have to live on the promise of future good. If you take notes, take that one down. Me and you. Sometimes we walk through the valley of the shadow of death. Sometimes we have an evening of weeping. We, In this room, as Christian people, live like this. God has promised good to you and me. God has said to every single believer, every single one, it doesn't matter where, you say, well, I'm in Marianas Trench. It's the lowest point, I think, of the ocean, I think. I'm in Marianas Trench. But God has promised good to you. God has promised. He is going to take away all gloom, all anguish. Can God lie? No. God is not a man that he should lie. Every promise of God will come true. Now God says, I'm going to take away your anguish. And the interesting thing from the passage, and because I'm not walking, because it's not a series, actually at the end of chapter 8 in Isaiah, God promises in chapter 8, I'm going to send gloom and I'm going to send anguish in our passage. Now he says, I promise to take it away. And if you look at later this afternoon, if you get some time, in chapter eight, at the end of it, he says, I'm gonna send you, Israel, gloom and anguish because you've forsaken me. And you have taken yourself to spiritists and mediums. You don't want my word. You wanna hang out with necromancers. We talked to the dead. And when I was a kid, we played with Ouija boards. Ouija board's an abomination to God. You're necromancing. You're talking to the dead. And God said to the people, since you have forsaken me, the living one, the living Lord, the fount of every blessing, I'm going to give you over to gloom and anguish. You think talking to the dead, you think renouncing my word in favor of their word will bring you happiness and hope. I'm going to send the opposite. Is that just of God to do? You see, the devil, when he says to you and me, you should enjoy some sin, he never says like this. Listen, see this sin? It's gonna be a big hook in your mouth. And when you sin, it's gonna hurt, and it's gonna defile your body and your soul, and then God will damn you at the last. The devil doesn't do that. When God comes and tempts with sin, he does the exact opposite. If you do this thing, It will be pure delight, pure happiness. And God says, you thought it was going to bring you happiness, but it brought you doom. And in our passage, he says, I will, I promise, take away all of your doom, all of your spiritual anguish, and I will bring your glory. What do we call that? What does every sin deserve? Every sin deserves God's curse and wrath, both in this life and that which is to come. But when then God turns around and says, now sinner, you have forsaken me. But I've not forsaken you. They're not worthy. They're not the good ones. Jesus Christ did not come to call the righteous. God promises, I will restore you sinner. You turned your back on me, but I didn't turn my back on you. I'm gonna restore you. We call that grace. We call that unmerited mercy. God says to the woman that ran away from her husband, I'm gonna bring you back. You are Gomer and I am a good and a loving husband. I'm going to restore you to myself. And he's going to restore us to himself and be our glory in the coming child, in the coming Christ. This is a grace passage. I am going to seek you even because you forsook me. Now, He promises to bring glory to these people, and he says that, I will bring glory to you. The only one, the only being that has essential glory, which is majesty or honor, is God. God only, ultimately, essentially, in an uncreated way, is glorious. God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. When God says, I'm going to take away your darkness, your spiritual gloom, your spiritual anguish, and I'm going to make you glorious, he is promising to dwell with his people. God will be with us in his glory. He will dwell with his people. The Bible puts it this way, and I will tabernacle with his people. The Shekinah glory was upon the people of God because God was with the people of God. This is Immanuel. The church is glorious not because we ourselves are inherently glorious. We are glorious corporately and individually because Christ is glorious. Because Christ dwells in you and walks here in the church. He is promising to a wayward wife, I'm gonna come and get you back. and I'm going to live with you, and I will share my glory with you." God is promising to live and dwell among his people. What does the psalmist say? But thou, O Lord, art a shield for me, my glory and the lifter of my head. And we are told that the first people that will see this glory of the Lord, they dwell in the Galilee of the Gentiles. These will be the first human beings that will see the glory of the Lord come in their midst. Again, promised in 800 B.C., fulfilled in A.D. 30. I don't know. I'm looking around the room. I used to know the oldest lady in the church. I want to say I officiated her funeral last year, the year before. She was 101 years old. 101 is old, 101. I don't know who the oldest person here in the church is. From 800 to 30, they had to live on the promise. That's longer than 100 years, 200 years. Me and you, we're way impatient. Oh God, I want what I want when I want and how I want it. We walk by faith and not by sight. We walk by faith in the word of God, in the living word of God. God will do what he said he will do in his own good time. God promised his people. I'm going to, I'm going to dwell with you. My glory will be your glory. I will be with you a hundred years, 200 years, 300 years. He's not coming 400 years, 500 years, 600 years, 800 years. He's not coming. God will do what he said he will do. whether we will live to see it, our children will live to see it, our grandchildren will live to see it, or their grandchildren will live to see it, there will be a generation when the trumpet's gonna sound and Christ will descend because he promised. And we see that these things have been fulfilled. Matthew chapter four. Now, when Jesus heard that John had been taken into custody, he withdrew into Galilee and leaving Nazareth, he came and settled in Capernaum. which is by the sea in the region of Zebulun and Nephtali. This was to fulfill that which was spoken through Isaiah the prophet, the land of Zebulun, the land of Nephtali, by the way of the sea, beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles. The people were sitting in darkness, saw a great light, and those were sitting in the land of the shadow of death, upon them light dawned." That word came true. Beloved, when you walk through the Bible and you see God's promises, I'm going to take away your spiritual doom, and I will be your glory. I will be the lifter of your head. I guess the wrestling match for all of us is, Lord, I believe. Mark 9, help thou my unbelief. Labor by God's grace. You pray to the Holy Spirit. Holy Spirit, help me believe this word. that Jesus Christ is my glory, is my glory, and will be my glory, and the lifter of my head. And the next thing that we're promised by way of just kind of a macro overview of what we're looking at, the people who walk in darkness will see a great light. Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine upon them. The Bible tells us, Jesus tells us himself, I am the light of the world. And he who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have light. Luke chapter one says this, Zechariah is prophesying by the power of the Holy Spirit concerning his son's ministry, John the Baptist, concerning his ministry to Jesus Christ. Zechariah says this by the spirit, and you child, his son, will be called the prophet of the most high. You will go before the Lord to prepare his ways, to give to his people the knowledge of salvation, that's the light, by the forgiveness of their sins, because of the tender mercy of our God, with which the sun, rise from on high, will visit us. to shine upon those who sit in darkness and the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. Jesus Christ, the people who walk in darkness will see a great light. Jesus Christ is that great light. There's no darkness in Jesus. There's no shadow. There's no turning. There's no blemish. He's all truth. Jesus says, I am the way. I am the truth. I am the light. I am the life. for us. He is truth personified for us. He takes away our believing of the lie that we can be like God that our first mother and father fell for. In Christ is all purity, all goodness. Now the immediate audience that saw this great light were told they were the Galilee of the Gentiles, That is the generation of the Jews and the Gentiles that lived during the time of Christ. But not everybody saw the light when Jesus Christ was walking around. When Jesus Christ walked among them in the flesh, what did they see? Most of the people. Just a Jew. Just a Jew. They didn't see this. They couldn't see the light. They didn't see that Jesus was Emmanuel, God come in the flesh, to take away our gloom, to take away our spiritual darkness, to bring us into the light of knowing who he is. They couldn't see that. They couldn't see it. Back when I was a different kind of a Christian, a Christian, a younger Christian, I used to think you could talk people into the kingdom. If you just got the right evangelistic technique down, and you could answer all their objections, and I was trained to try to box them off over here, and box them off over here, and then run them to the, would you like to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior? I was gonna talk you into the kingdom. Have you ever tried to do that? How's that work? I mean, that's just like trying to grab a grease, I don't know, grease something. It doesn't work. You answer their million objections, what do they come up with after that one? You know what? You can't talk someone into the kingdom because they're all spiritual darkness. They're dead. It's the illumination of the Holy Spirit that illuminates our minds as to our state of misery and illuminates our minds and our hearts as to who Jesus is and renews our wills that we could do what the Puritans would say, close with Jesus, that we could see Jesus as the light. He is the one that takes away our blindness. We see the face of God in the face of Jesus. So many, beloved, live and die in spiritual darkness. You and me can see the light of Jesus Christ. Christ is that light to us. This was the true light which coming into every world, into the world. And the ones that see Jesus, the Bible says this, but as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who are born not of blood or the will of the flesh, nor the will of man, but of God. We were darkness, even as the rest, and now we're not. And we come to see the light of Christ by the preaching of the gospel, by the preaching of the gospel, by the application of it, by the Holy Spirit. We who lived, if you lived as an unbeliever, you were not converted as a little one, as I was not converted as a little one, lived in spiritual darkness. Have some of you not been converted later in life? Have you not been converted later in life? If you were converted later in life and I ask you, do you remember what it was like when you were an unbeliever? What was your life like? Happy, hopeful, were you filled with hope, filled with light? I remember it. Darkness, depression, despondency, despair. And then the light of Christ shines in your soul. And now we know we're reconciled back to God. It's glorious. God promises he will be our light. And the next thing we're told in the text is, God, you shall multiply the nation, you shall increase their gladness, they will be glad in your presence, as with the gladness of harvest and so on. God promises to take away from his people in Christ Jesus, all of our sadness, all of our smallness, all of our poverty, all of our lack, and God promises to give us joy, increase, prosperity. You think, wait a minute, Pastor, did you just leave the reservation? Are you now preaching a prosperity gospel? Hold on, is the tape running? We don't do tapes. Yes, I'm preaching a prosperity gospel, but not the kind that most people mean. This is spiritual joy, spiritual increase, spiritual prosperity. God's people are alien people. We're pilgrims, we're sojourners. There are some rich folks that love the Lord Jesus Christ. Abraham, David was rich. There have been plenty of rich folks that love the Lord in the spirit and truth. But the Holy Spirit says through the New Testament Apostle James, not many of the New Testament Christians are rich. God did not choose the rich and the powerful. God chose what? Poor people, physically poor, materially poor, intellectually poor, and he's our riches. Jesus Christ promises to take away the poverty of His people, the sadness of His people. He will be our joy. He will give us gladness. This is a promise. This is a future promise. This is a promise in Jesus Christ. Many of us try to conjure up, well, how do I do the six easy steps to have joy in my life? Believe upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. and he will be your joy. What does the Bible say in the Psalms? At the right hand of God, in the presence of God is our what? Joy. Joy is at the presence of God. Before we were converted, before you were converted, did you find joy in the presence of God? Did you? Did you want to be near God when you were an unbeliever? No. We were bobbing and weaving, ducking and hiding from God. So the last person we wanted to see, why did I, an unrighteous, wicked sinner, want to be in the presence of a holy God? Why did I want to hear His holy law? I didn't. And what goodness did I find from His holy gospel? None. I thought it was foolish. I wanted my sin. But now God says, I'm taking away all of your sadness, and I will give you gladness and joy in me. And Christ will be the source of our joy. He shall multiply the nation in your presence. They will be glad in your presence with the gladness of harvest as men who rejoice." So the God that we once ran from and we thought he was altogether mean, and sorrowful is now our joy. They will find gladness in the presence of God. If you have unbelieving family members or friends and you talk to them about Jesus and say, honey, I wish you would believe in Jesus. He's glorious, he's good, he's merciful, he's kind, he's forgiving, and you have joy in him. What do they say when you say that to them? So I have to go to church? Do I have to read the Bible? Do I have to pray? And can I not do D, E, and F that I really want to do? They don't find any beauty in Jesus. No form, no comeliness, but for you and me. When God the Holy Spirit does heart circumcision on you, you look at the world's things. The world's things are the world's things. The world's things are the world's things. You may get a beautiful truck and tomorrow it won't be beautiful. Or you may get a beautiful this or a beautiful that and tomorrow it's not going to be beautiful. But for Christ, the more like Christ you grow, the more beautiful He is to you, the closer you get to being with the Lord Jesus Christ in His immediate presence, the more he becomes our source of joy. He takes away their sin and their misery. Our brother said it in our catechism class this morning. The first Adam plunged all of us into the estate of sin and misery, and the second Adam is gonna take us out of it and give us glory. What does the Psalmist say? Or maybe even Job, we're sitting on a ash heap, but now God promises to be our joy. The Bible also tells us that this one, this Christ, this child that will be given to us, will break the yoke and he will He will break the rod of the oppressor, and he will bring an end to all wars. Christ is our freedom. Christ is our peace, and Christ is our life. There are two men, kinds of men, vocations. There will always be this kind of a vocation in the world. My vocation, until Jesus comes back, and this fellow's vocation. It will always be military. was Corrie. We're always going to have Corrie. There'll always be military. There'll always be Corrie. There'll always be cops until Jesus comes back. And there's always going to be ministers until Jesus comes back. Those two vocations. Why? When you study the history of man after the fall of man, the history of man has been the history of what? War. Thank you. Yes, ma'am. Amen. The history of man has been the history of war. War with God and war with other nations, war with wife, war with husband, war with kids, war with parents, and war with self. This one will be our peace. In Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus is the only peace. The gospel is the gospel of peace. He is the prince of peace. The church is the new Jerusalem. It is the place of peace. He makes peace. with God. God is no longer angry with you as a believer. He's not angry with you. He's not looking to beat you up with a stick. He loves you. All of the condemnation in Jesus Christ is gone. There's no more war between God and you in Christ. It's over. He disciplines, but there's no wrath. And that's out of love. If you think God is looking to find you with a stick because he hates you, you're misguided, beloved. There's all peace in Christ and there's freedom. And when he talks away, talks about that he's going to bring an end to war. I know this one is going to do that. And this one, and then, then we're going to do this. And then there's going to be an end to no war. I think before world war one, people were optimistic. There's going to be no more wars where we're getting better and better and better. And then world war one, put an end to that. What was it? 6 million people died in world war one and 60 million died in world war two, something like that. And the further and further and further we get advanced in our technology of how to kill people, the number will go from 60 to 600. When will men study war no more? When will men beat their spears into plowshares? This one. But beloved, right now you have spiritual peace. And when Christ comes back, there will be peace on earth. Throughout the earth, Christ is our life. And the last thing I want us to see when he's being called, a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, he'll be called wonderful counselor, government will rest upon his shoulders. We're being told this last point, Jesus Christ is our Lord. Our Lord will come, our King will come. I want you to think of this. I just mentioned that God chooses the foolish things of the world, which he does. 1 Corinthians chapter 1. But being in Christ Jesus, you are his royal son, royal daughter, member of his royal kingdom. He is your Lord. He is your master. He is your king. You may say, well, I have other people that I'm answerable to. Maybe two, maybe so for a time. The government of the world, the government of the church, rests upon Christ's shoulders. Fully man, fully God. And you belong to him. And you call him Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father. Beloved, I want us this morning to think of these two things. I don't ever want any one of us to think Well, Pastor, I am in such a valley. There are no good things for me as a Christian. There are no blessings for me as a Christian. Beloved, don't believe that. I want you to go through, if you think that, you take this passage out. God is your glory. God is your light, God is your peace, God is your freedom, God is your prosperity, God is your life, and God is your Lord. He is those things for you. You belong to him. And one other thing, the season that we're enjoying now, we're gonna meet lots of family and eat lots of food and all that good stuff. It's often an occasion where we meet friends and family that are unbelievers. And as believers, we're thinking, oh, what do I talk about after the first two seconds of saying that we have grass in Florida and it's blue skies? What do I talk about with them so I don't have a fight? Sometimes we despair that God really will save our unbelieving family members and friends. Beloved, I'm going to talk to myself. Do not ever think that there is any human being beyond the saving arm of this God. God says to a wayward people, I will be, I will be, I will be. You pray, oh God, as you are my glory, as you are my lifter of my head, for my mother, for my father, for my son, for my daughter, for my neighbor. Please, oh God, take away their blindness. Give them life. And pray that, believing, it brings God the glory. May God be pleased with the preaching of his word.