I think most of us in this room probably have had a birthday before. That's obvious, obviously. There may be a few that are under one year old, maybe still in here, but most of us have had a birthday. And many times at this time of year, sometimes with children, we explain that Christmas is Jesus' birthday. And there's truth to that. That's true. We're remembering the birth of Christ. Whether it's the exact day historically is December 25th, that's probably unlikely. But the fact is it's the time we set aside to remember the anniversary of the birth of Christ. But there's something that I want to consider here that's different than every other birthday. For example, there are probably hundreds if not thousands of people in the greater Orlando area who have had a birthday today. Most of them you don't know. And you didn't get them a card or a gift. Are they offended? No, because you don't know them. They don't know you, right? Now if your wife has a birthday and you forget it, you're gonna be in trouble. All right? If there's a close friend, a child, you know, a spouse, a parent, and you forget their birthday, then there's gonna be hurt feelings there. Okay, so birthdays have to do very much with relationships and valuing the person, but here, what I want us to see is that there is a lot more significance to this than merely a birthday. All right, let's look at Isaiah 9, 6. For unto us a child is born, Unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it into establishment with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. This was read as well during the Christmas concert. But I want to consider this verse six especially. And what we find here is this promise of a child being born and a son being given. In other words, when we talk about someone being born into us, I have three sons and I can talk about them being born into our family, being born to us in that sense. In other words, they were a gift from God, right? Your children are a gift from God. We thank the Lord for our children. And so, when you have grandchildren, you thank the Lord for your grandchildren. Some of you in here have great-grandchildren. You thank the Lord for your great-grandchildren. And we thank God for these gifts to us. But what I want us to see here is that this birth of Christ was a gift for all of us. This isn't just a birthday of a friend, this isn't just celebrating the anniversary of the fact that Christ was born, but this is a recognition of the fact that He was given for us. The best known verse in the New Testament, John 3.16 says, for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. That word only begotten means one of a kind, unique. There's no Son of God like Jesus. He's the Son eternally with the Father, the one who has been at the right hand of the Father in all eternity, and the Father, according to the same author, John wrote John's Gospel, he also wrote a few letters in the New Testament, and one of them, 1 John, says that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. You see, the Father, God the Father, sent His Son to come and be our Savior. He took on our humanity, being very God, a very God in all eternity, He took on our humanity. He came to this earth and He became human, just like you and I. You see, He did that because all of us have a need, and that is, we are sinners. The Bible teaches that we have all sinned against God, and that's not a word we use really commonly anymore, but that word means that we've rebelled against God. we've wanted our own autonomy. In other words, we've looked at our life and said, God, I don't care what you say, I'm gonna do it my way, I'm gonna go my own direction in life, and you don't understand, and we may not have overtly said that, but in our actions we've said it. God has told us to do one thing, we do something different, because we think we know better. All right, we've all seen this with our children, maybe, when we were, you know, if you're raising children, if you raise children, you see this where you tell them, okay, here is how you do this. And then they do it their own way. And it doesn't turn out so well. Okay? Or you give them instructions about something. Okay, this is how you use the glue. Well, if the glue doesn't get used the right way, it usually is disastrous. Okay? Or as I mentioned before, one of my sons, here's how you use scissors to cut construction paper for your craft project. You only cut things that your teacher or your mom or dad said you should cut. Well, it got real quiet in his bedroom one day. And I go in there, and the comforter has been cut the length of the comforter with a pair of scissors. He was practicing his scissors. All right? But why was it so quiet? He knew he wasn't supposed to be doing it. Mom and Dad said, only use this on things that your teacher or your parents have said to use it on. But instead, he decided he'd do it his own way, right? And when I say that, I did those kind of things as well. I remember My dad had one of those burn somatic torches that you use for sweating plumbing joints and stuff. And when I was like 14, that was the coolest thing. I'd go light that thing up, melt metal, do all kinds of stuff. I was dangerous as a child. And one day I was melting this piece of metal. I made up my mind I was going to make my own coins. I had no idea what I was doing. I didn't know how coins were made. I just thought, I'm going to get some metal that will melt. And I started to melt it. I'm trying to melt this metal and make my own coins, but while I'm doing this, I turn with the torch, and it catches some paper in the trash can on fire. I'm in the basement of the house. Well, I was smart, though. I kept a bucket of water nearby. I tossed it on, and the fire smoldered, and then it burst back to life. So I ran over to the slop sink in the basement and filled the bucket with water again, doused it on it. Seemed to go out, so I got another bucket, doused it on it, make sure it was good and wet. But the whole basement was full of smoke. Nobody was home but me. And I opened all the doors and windows, turned on fans. But my dad came home like, why does it smell like smoke in the house? What is on fire? Why? Because I thought I was clever, but the fact was, you know, I decided dad doesn't know what he's talking about. You can play with a torch at 14. That sounds like a good idea. And it wasn't a good idea. But this is what we've done. We've said, God, I know you're my creator, you're my father in heaven, but you don't understand. I had to lie in that situation because otherwise I would have got caught. You don't understand. I had to steal from my employer because he's got more than me. He can give up some of it. Whatever it is, we rationalize. And we've all gone our own way in life. And what has it brought? The Bible says that the wages of sin, the cost of sin, is death. The reason there's death in the world is because there's sin in the world. That from the very beginning, our first parents, Adam and Eve, were told not to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And when they did, death came upon them and has passed upon all of their children ever since. All of their offspring ever since. And all of us are sinners. We've all sinned against God. Tried to go our own way, but the good news of the gospel is this, that God gave his son unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. That is, this one was sent to come and take on our humanity, and unlike us, to obey God, to live a righteous life, and then to go to the cross. Our sins were laid on him. As was read this morning, he humbled himself even to the point of death on a cross. We're not people who naturally like to humble ourselves. But the very God of heaven who took on our humanity humbled himself and he became obedient even to the point of death on the cross. And because of that, God has highly exalted him and given him a name that is above every name. And what we find here is that this verse is pointing to that. He is the child that's going to be given. He's the son who is going to be born. In Isaiah's day, he was looking forward to the birth of Christ. He was about 700 years before it. and the government shall be upon his shoulders. See, one of the promises here is that the time is coming that Christ will reign. Yes, He came to come and die for our sins on the cross, but He didn't come just to save us from the penalty of sin, but to remake the world because it has been tainted by sin. And He is going to govern. The weight of that government shall be upon His shoulder. He will take the responsibility of it. But He alone is uniquely worthy of this. Why? Because He is called the Wonderful Counselor. This word wonderful is used in other places in the Old Testament. On one occasion in the Old Testament, The angel of the Lord, who is Christ before the incarnation, appears to the parents of Samson and says that Samson is going to be born. And they say, well, what is your name? And he says, why do you ask my name, seeing it is wonderful? And it's the exact same word here. He's the wonderful counselor. All right? He's this divine counselor. That is, you can trust Jesus. You can trust what he has to say. He is the divine counselor, the one that has been sent by the Father, and ultimately, he is the one who will reign. In other words, who would you want in charge of things? You want the person who knows what they're doing, right? So if you go into the hospital and you need to have a surgery, and they say, well, we're sorry, the surgeon's not here today, but the janitor has watched him do it a couple times. And it's, you know, janitorial work's noble work, that's good, but I don't want somebody who's untrained, even if he's, you know, you know, this technician has watched him do it a couple times. You're not a surgeon. I don't really want to volunteer for that. All right, you get on the airplane. The pilot didn't show up today, but I've got a flight simulator on my PC at home. I'm going to give this 737 a try. You wouldn't be very happy with that, would you? But you see here, the point is, although we're sinners, God has sent his son, Jesus Christ, to come and die on the cross to pay the penalty of our sins, to destroy the power of sin and death, and he is the wonderful counselor. He is the one, ultimately, that the government is gonna be upon his shoulder. And notice who he is. He's not only a wonderful counselor, he's not only the one who has all that wisdom, but he is the mighty God. You see what, this is consistent in the Old Testament. Isaiah mentions this in chapter 7 verse 14 as well, that a sign would be given, and therefore the Lord himself shall give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son and shall call his name, what? Immanuel, God with us. He's the God-man. Alright? In other words, what better, we can get frustrated by our government here, we can get frustrated by, you know, the fact that Things are sometimes unjust and unequal in our society, but the fact is, if the mighty God were to come and rule, He knows everything. He holds all power. You see, the problem that we have in government is that government's not always good. The people in charge sometimes are bad people. Sometimes they're powerless. That is, they don't have enough power to deal with some of the things they have to deal with. And sometimes they don't have enough knowledge. They don't know the things that people are doing wrong. There's corruption, and it's hidden from them. But imagine if you had somebody who was perfect in goodness, perfect in knowledge, and perfect in power. You see, that's why this is a promise. In other words, God sent the Son to be the Savior of the world, and He's the one who's coming to be the Savior, but He's also coming to be the King of kings and Lord of lords. He's the everlasting Father, in other words, the eternal Father. Here's a reference again to His being God, His divinity, and He's the Prince of Peace. And what do we see here? He's the one, the Prince of Peace. He's the Prince who brings peace. He's the Prince through whom peace is possible. There are many places in this world that there's not physical peace. War is going on. Right? I mean, there are places that would be very dangerous to be. today in this world, because there's bullets flying. But not only that, there are people out there who, you know, you might be living, generally there aren't bullets flying in Winter Garden that often, thank the Lord for that. But even if you're living in a fairly safe place in that regard, there are many people who know no peace in their life. In other words, there's chaos, there's emotional pain, there's all kinds of problems like that, and they know no peace. in their life, and I can say this, Jesus is the one who not only will bring peace in the sense of resolution of conflict, but peace in the sense that he is the one who takes care of sin, and therefore sin is what brings conflict, sin is what brings a lack of peace. And because he has conquered sin and death, he is the Prince of Peace, and he is the one that when you come to him, even when there's chaos all around you, This is why someone like the Apostle Paul could sit in a jail and sing praises to God. Right? That's not a very easy thing to do. I don't know about you, I'm not really, like, kind of looking to try to go to jail. And American jails are nice compared to a lot of places in the world. They're there sitting in a jail singing. Why? Because there was peace there. Because Jesus had given them peace. That is, we know who the ultimate King of Kings and Lord of Lords is. We know who the ultimate mighty God wonderful counselor is. And God sent his son, Jesus, this one, this son was given unto us. Yes, to someday rule and reign and have this perfect government. And we're looking forward to that. But his first coming, what did he do? He died on the cross for our sins. And the scriptures tell us that although we're all sinners, Jesus died for us. And that if we come in repentance and faith to Christ, we'll have our sins forgiven. As Acts 20, 21 says, the Apostle Paul was preaching repentance toward God in faith in our Lord Jesus Christ, or as the Apostle Paul said in Romans, whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. If we will come in repentant faith to Jesus Christ, we can have eternal life, everlasting life. And the point of Christmas, yes, is this wonderful incarnation that Jesus would humble himself and take on our humanity, but he did that for a reason. He took on our humanity to obey God and to die on the cross to pay for our sins and then to rise again. And so every time we think of Christmas, the real meaning of Christmas always has to point to the gospel, to the good news that God sent his son to die for us. And I wanted to bring our attention to that this morning. I do want to say this, if you're here with us today and you've never come to saving faith in Jesus Christ, you've never believed in Christ, and you can sense the spirit of God working in your heart, as you've heard the word of God today sung, as I've read it, as I've tried to proclaim it this morning, If you would like to know how you can know Christ, whom to know is life eternal. Please, after this service, please come find me. You can find Pastor Jed. He led our singing. Most of our church members could point you to somebody who could show you from the Word of God how you can know Christ, whom to know is life eternal. We'd love to show you from the Word of God how you can have a certainty of eternal life. If you're a lady, we'll have a lady council with you. If it's a child, parents, we'd love for you to come with your children and be involved in their spiritual lives. And we thank God for the opportunity that we have to worship the Lord in this way. We're going to have a few moments just to bow our heads and we'll pray and thank the Lord for what we've heard from his word this morning.