Amen. Our Savior Jesus Christ, he did it all for us. What a wonderful, mighty, powerful God we serve. And this morning we're looking at not just his death, as my wife just sang about, we're looking at his birth, but as it was prophesied a long time prior. So Isaiah chapter nine, really Isaiah chapters eight and nine is where we're going to be this morning. So if you'll begin turning there with me, we're gonna read in Isaiah chapter eight to start with. kind of see some context for where chapter 9 is going and then we will get down to what will be our main thought this morning out of Isaiah chapter 9 verses 6 and 7. And so that's the rough roadmap we are on. At this time, I'll ask if you'll stand and we'll read the word of the Lord together. Isaiah chapter 8, we'll begin in verse 19 and read down through chapter 9 and verse 7. Again, Isaiah chapter 8, verse 19. It says this, and when they shall say unto you, seek unto them that have familiar spirits, and unto wizards that peep, and that mutter, should not a people seek unto their God? for the living to the dead. To the law and to the testimony, if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them. If they shall pass through it, hardly be stead and hungry, and it shall come to pass that when they shall be hungry, they shall fret themselves and curse their king and their God and look upward. And they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness. Nevertheless, the dimness shall not be such as was in her vexation, when at the first he lightly afflicted the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, and afterward did more grievously afflict her by the way of the sea beyond Jordan in Galilee of the nations. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. Thou hast multiplied the nation, and not increased the joy. They joy before thee according to the joy in the harvest, and as men rejoice when they shall divide the spoil. For thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian. For every battle of the warrior is with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. 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 and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this. Let's pray. Father, thank you for the wonderful text before us, Lord God. And I just ask now that you would help me through your Holy Spirit to say only the things that you would have and nothing more and nothing less, Lord God. And Lord, we ask that your Holy Spirit would speak to each person and just direct the thing that you have for us to us and help us to pay attention to it, to take hold of it, and let it change us. We thank you for all you do for us. In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Please be seated. So the text before us, it contains a prophecy of the coming Messiah, a foretelling of sorts of the Christmas story, if we would want to call it that. In fact, as we study the text here, we find a wonderful picture of what happened when Jesus Christ was born. We see how that when Jesus came, he provided light for all who live in darkness. And so with that, the title of this morning's message is this, Christmas, a light for those in darkness. Christmas, a light for those in darkness. With that thought, I wanna look at this text, but I wanna first go to the context and the background that is given for us. If you'll notice there in chapter nine and verse one, it says, nevertheless, and that would be an awkward way to start out a conversation. If I just walked up to brother Ron this morning and I was like, nevertheless, I mean, he would kind of wonder what that was there for, right? What did he miss that I had already been saying for a while? And so it's something that lets us know that it's referring back to something else and it's referring back to chapter eight, I just really wanna focus on verse 19 of chapter eight and forward, because that seems to be what it is talking about. And so what's immediately prior there at the end of chapter eight, is a question and a response. And you see the question there in verse 19. It says, seek unto them that have familiar spirits and unto wizards that peep and that mutter, and then it says this, should not a people seek unto their God for the living to the dead? And so there's this question. It's asking, essentially, if someone wants you, tries to talk you into pursuing familiar spirits, speaking of, trying to get you to follow the devil perhaps, seeking to get you to live a life of sin, a life that is away from God. How should you respond? And the answer that's given is this, you shouldn't. It says if a person doesn't seek God alone, then there is no light in them. That's basically what verse 20 says to the law and to the testimony. If they speak not according to this word, it is because there's no light in them. So that rhetorical question at the end, should not a people seek unto their God? Yes, they should. And if not, it's because there is no light in them. So a person who wants God can only have God by seeking Him alone. That's, again, the implication of the question. Should they seek God alone or should they pursue these familiar spirits and these wizards? Should they look at a different way of living? And it is only a person who will follow God alone that will enjoy the light that is intended for people. Otherwise, a person who wants God but tries to mix that with anything else, they will be hungry, it tells us, they will fret, they will curse their God, and they will curse their king. And so, we see a person who will not pursue God alone starts to be missing something in their life. When a person does not serve God alone, it tells us that they walk in darkness. Verse 22 is very explicit about this. And they shall look unto the earth and behold trouble and darkness, dimness of anguish, and they shall be driven to darkness. So, in three different ways, he says it's like you're living in the dark. You're missing something. You can't even see where you're going. It's a life where one struggles just to go forward. And this is what's leading into chapter nine. Are you struggling with a life of darkness? Are you in a place in your life that you really just don't know how to proceed? And with that we get to chapter nine and it says, And so, Now we enter into chapter nine and we find that. The darkness that a person expects isn't exactly what we get. So here he is, I believe, speaking to the lost, right? Would a person just seek for spirits? Would they seek for something else? They want a life and they're trying to figure out how to get through it, but they're not looking to God and they're going to be living in darkness. And the truth is a person living in darkness understands that something's off. When you don't have Jesus Christ, before you are saved, or at least for me, before I was saved, I understood something was off in my life. I wanted direction, I wanted to know what I was here for, I wanted purpose, I wanted peace, I wanted lots of things, and I could just never have it, I could never get it settled. And because of that, it's a very good, apt application here, or a very good, apt description here, of feeling like you're living in darkness. And that's the way that we live without Jesus Christ. But he expresses here, it's not the darkness that you would expect. It's not darkness in the way that God afflicted Zebulun and Naphtali. Zebulun and Naphtali are two of the tribes that were of God's chosen people, the Israelites, and they had faced physical attacks. They had been plundered perhaps by Assyria and some others as Israel would get into sin. And so they would have faced a lot of difficulties. It was a dark hour for the people of these two neighboring tribes. But we're told that that's not the type of vexation we get. Without God, it's not just that God is going to punish you because you don't have him. Not in this life anyway. Right, we go to Hebrews in chapter 12 in verse eight, it says, And so God tells us this very simple truth in that verse. If you're not saved, if you've never put your faith in Jesus Christ, then on this earth, he leaves you alone. You're not his, you're not his child. He is not judging and chastising you on this earth if you are not his child. And that's what chapter nine and verse one is saying. God is not thumping those on the head who are not his. We know that as children of God, the verse prior to that in Hebrews in chapter 12, it would tell us that we are partakers of his chastisement because we are his children and we should expect that as children of God and he will direct us in this life and he may chastise us, he may punish us. But for a lost person, a person who doesn't have God, for a person who doesn't even want God, he says, I'm not going to vex you in that way. You can live life exactly as you want, and God will basically just let you live. But verse two goes further, though, and talks about what he will do. Verse two offers more. It says, though a person may refuse God and not face immediate judgment, such a person walks in darkness. Look at what it says. It says, the people that walk in darkness, so there's those who are like in verse 19 of chapter eight, some have seen a great light. They that dwell in the land of the shadow of death, upon them hath the light shined. And so we see two ways of life in this verse. We see the ones who have seen this light and ones who remain in darkness. As you think about verse 1 saying, nevertheless, it's not like I'm going to punish you physically, but you will live in darkness. So without God, there's something there. There's like a veil upon our life. We can't see plainly all that God wants for us, and so we miss something inside. There's not this immediate judgment, but we don't have what God intended us to have to be happy, and so instead of living in complete, true, unfeigned joy, we live in darkness. We live a life that is devoid of the greatest joy that we can have in life. But we don't ever really understand it, because we don't have the one that's to direct us to the way. When a person's eyes are open to God though, when they turn to him, when they see that light, when they take note of the great light that he offers, verse three tells us that they can have joy before thee according to the joy of harvest, and as men rejoice when they divide the spoil. And so we see that if you will accept Christ, there's something that is spectacular that happens, you receive a deep-seated joy. Verse four then, it speaks of a person, who is, in a different way, it says, So, verse 4 speaks of a person who has God that breaks off this oppression. And it's, again, a comparison between the physical and the spiritual. It's a picture of having a burden upon you. But when you put your faith in God, a burden is relieved. And what is that burden? That burden is the burden of sin. Now, again, before I was saved, I understood very clearly that there was a burden on me. Something was off. Right, and sin was not perhaps expressed at all times, but it weighed on me. Not everyone understands why or even understands what's going on because they live in sin, but there is an oppression, that there's a burden that weighs upon us because God does place this thing of conviction upon us. And I think all the world really sees this because as people grow older and closer to the time when they will pass away, you'll see that a lot of people, unsaved people especially, they will start to try to make amends for the way they live their life. Right, if they were a, especially a vile person, or a wicked person, or an evil person, or a mean person, whatever the case may be, you'll start to see that they're trying to go to people that they once did something to, and it's like they feel like they need to make it right. And I don't believe understand why they are doing this, but there's something within us that is a burden when we live a sinful life. But we see in verse four, if we will serve God, that burden will be broken, that yoke will be taken off our shoulders. Verse five gives us one more picture of this. I love that God is just giving us these like physical, spiritual pictures. Physical in how we visualize them, but spiritual applications. In verse five it says, for every battle of the warrior is with confused noise and garments rolled in blood, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. And so here we see one more comparison again between the physical and spiritual, and we have a battle. We think of a soldier or somebody in the military, and they're in a battle, and the battle is going to contain confusion and chaos. There are awful things that happen. It gives this picture of the garments being rolled in blood. A person is bloody, and they are confused, and they are going through all of this. And there's a day coming when those who do not put their faith in Christ will suffer a fate that is worse than this. Right, it says, but this shall be with burning and fuel of fire. And we start to see a picture of the eternal judgment of God in a place of hell. And so we have these verses painting this picture before us indicating that there is two options in life. There is a way of darkness. If we reject God, there is nothing. There's just confusion of face. There is a lack of joy. We don't have the peace that we would desire. We don't have the things of life like we want. Or a life in God characterized by victory, characterized by a relief of burden, characterized by joy and peace. And you might say, well, this all sounds like it's just talking about a physical problem that Israel is facing, or perhaps just Naphtali and Zebulun here. Maybe that's what it's talking about. Well, we know it's not because this text is quoted in Matthew in chapter 4 and verses 12 through 16 in the life of Jesus Christ. So in Matthew in chapter 4 and verse 12, It says this, now when Jesus had heard that John was cast into prison, he departed into Galilee and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the seacoast and the borders of Zebulon and Naphtalem. that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaias the prophet, that's the Greek word for Isaiah, so we know it's talking about Isaiah here, saying, the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtalem by the way of the sea, and Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people which sat in darkness saw great light, and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death is light, our light is sprung up. And so here we see that God is telling us in the book of Matthew, Isaiah chapter 9 is not speaking just of a physical judgment to Naphtali and Zebulun or to Israel. No, it's speaking of something spiritual. The people which sat in darkness saw a great light. And to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up. And so we know this text is teaching us something. It's teaching us that we can go from darkness to light. It's teaching us that we can go from oppression to freedom, that we can go from confusion of faith to peace. We can have a good life. And the beauty of Isaiah chapter nine is the revelation that there is a light that can bring any person out of darkness. Again, verse two of chapter nine. The people that walked in darkness have seen a great light. This morning, I wanna ask you that question. Have you seen a great light? Do you have the light of Jesus Christ? Because there is a light for you if you are in darkness this morning. And this morning, if you are unsaved, if you have never turned to Jesus Christ, would you consider who he is this morning? Would you consider who this Messiah is and think about how he came for you? For those of us who are believers this morning, let's use this time to worship our God for who He is and use it to remind us of the continual light that He offers in our lives. And so with that, as a very long introduction, let's focus on verses six and seven. Let's read those together again one more time. It says, 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, and upon the throne of David and upon his kingdom to order it and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even forever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." So we have this long promise, this long introduction of a promise for those who are in darkness to have a way of light. And we can have it. There is a light for those who live in darkness. As we think about that, we see three main points in these two verses this morning. And the first one is this, his appearing. We see his appearing. For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. The first thing we read about the one who will provide light to all is that he would be born. In the rest of this passage, we see much about what he has promised to do, and we see of his name, but before any of that, we see that he will be born. We think about the government will be upon his shoulder, and we think about perhaps a physical government, and we may assume it's a man. But then we read of one who is called the Everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace and the Mighty God, and we would assume that he is God. Which is it? It's a thing that confuses many people today. But according to our text, God was sending this one so that he might bring light to those who sit in darkness. So the one who was promised then has this great responsibility. He had a job unlike any other. And God tells us about this in many places, but I think about Galatians in chapter four and verses four and five where it says this, and when the fullness of time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons. And so we see here Jesus Christ is both. He is both man and he is God because God sent forth his son, making him all God, made of woman. So we see a truth here that we find all the way back in Isaiah chapter nine that tells us that Jesus Christ is God, but he would be born of woman. God Almighty, he saw us. He saw us as a people groaning in sin, suffering under the weight of sin, stumbling as in darkness. those whom he would judge for our sins. And God wanted to do something about it. God in his love and God in his mercy, God in his grace, designed a way whereby the sinfulness of man could be forgiven. But in God's judgment, it was a life for a life. Had to be the price of blood to cover the cost of our sins. Hebrews 9.22 makes this clear, and almost all things are purged with blood, and without the shedding of blood is no remission. So we see that we sin, we incur the wrath of God, and God's judgment is death, meaning a separation from God for all eternity, a continual destruction by God. But God in his goodness made it possible that our sins could be forgiven and a new life obtained. But the cost is blood. Animals were not sufficient though. The blood of goats and bulls, we know they were sacrificed in the Old Testament, but they were not sufficient. Hebrews chapter 10 verse four tells us this. It says, That blood didn't do anything. It was just a picture of something more. Verse 12 of Hebrews 10 says this though, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till his enemies be made his footstool, for by one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified." And so we see that in this text the Messiah, the one spoken of about here in the book of Isaiah, Jesus Christ, he came and he was born as a human with the express purpose of dying for our sins. Jesus had to be born. He was God Almighty. God Almighty is immortal. God could not die, but he took on the form of flesh so that he could die. And as God He came, He lived, He laid aside His immortal power and He allowed Himself to take our sin upon Him. He took our judgment and He died on our behalf. That's what God did, but He had to be born. And so we see the first thing about Him this morning is that He is born. The second thing we see is His names. As you continue to read the Bible through, who the Messiah is becomes abundantly clear. When you think about the Christmas accounts there and the book of Luke and how that Jesus was born of a virgin. He was born unlike any other. A clear miracle just in his birth. And then he lives a sinless, perfect life. He expounds God's word perfectly and he performs miracles that none can deny. And then after this sinless and perfect life, he is accused of a crime he never committed so that he could take our guilt upon him. And he does so willingly. He stands in our place. He is beaten, and he is scourged, and he is tormented, and he is mocked, and he is abused, and eventually he is hung on a cross to hang to die. And he did it for us, to take our punishment. And then after three days, he takes his life back and he ascends to live forever on high. But despite the vivid details in and out of the Bible about who Jesus is, even though we can see his expressed deity in his life, even though we can see it in his birth, even though we see it in his resurrection, many people want to use the Bible to question who he is. Many claim that he was just a prophet, some that he was a good man, some that he was a son of God and not the son of God. But I love these verses here because they refute all of that. These are, to me, some of the most beautiful descriptions of God in the Bible. So I just wanna think about these names this morning. The first one, wonderful. Jesus is wonderful. The Hebrew here is pele, and it just means a marvelous thing, wonderful. Wonderful, extraordinary, hard to be understood. And this is an apt description of Jesus. He is wonderful and He is marvelous. So much so that I don't think any one of us could actually use words to really describe how incredible and how perfect and how holy and how righteous and how powerful He is. He is wonderful. But you think about His wonder, what's the most wonderful thing about Jesus? That He loves us. That God Almighty loves us. It's impossible for me to understand why Jesus would leave His Father and come to this earth. the angels that we sang about this morning, Brother Byron. It's hard for me to imagine why Jesus Christ would leave those in constant worship of himself that he deserved. You think about the beauty of heaven and the perfection of heaven and the atmosphere of heaven, and he said, I'll leave it all for you. It's not just that, he knew what he would face on this earth. Jesus Christ is omniscient, he knows all things. He knows the sinful earth he was coming to. He knew the vials of sin that we constantly live in. He knew the constant perverseness that pervaded the world. He knew that when he came here, people were rejecting the Father already and he knew that they would reject him. He knew that he would be despised. He knew the death he would die. And I think about all that, and I think Jesus is wonderful for many reasons, but the most wonderful thing about Him is that He loves us enough to come and die for us. The fact that Jesus came and was born so that He could die for us in the most horrific way imaginable demonstrates the true wonder of who He is. His love's unlike anything else. Jesus is wonderful. The second thing we see is He is counselor. Jesus Christ does not just offer us the chance of having our sins forgiven. That is more than we ever deserve. When Jesus Christ came and he said, I will live for you and I will die for you, that's more than I ever deserve. But in this life, he offers us more. We struggle. I mean, we are frail, finite creatures who are able to take something that anyone says and feel awful about our lives because of it. You know what I mean? Like somebody walks up to you and they say one off-the-cuff comment, and all of a sudden, you're thinking about it for days, and you're like, man, I am, you know, just, I'm not everything. Do people really think this of me, right? And we cry ourselves to sleep at night. We struggle, we have problems, we have difficulties in living this life. We don't always know what to do. We don't know where to go. We don't know what's next. We don't know a whole lot of things. How do I get through this problem? Unbelievers struggle with this because they don't even know where to look. How do I get through this? Believers, we struggle with it because we're afraid to ask. But Jesus is counselor. The reason we struggle in this life though is because we weren't meant to live life alone. We're not meant to impose our will on our life, right? We're not to be ones, I'm just gonna decide everything and it's gonna be awesome. It sounds good, but that's not what God wants. God created us to follow Him. And if we want a life that can have the maximum potential for joy and peace and all the goodness of God, we simply have to put our faith in Jesus Christ and seek to follow Him, and He will lead us. I mean, one of the greatest promises in the Bible, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, trust in the Lord with all thine heart, and lean not unto thine own understanding, in all thy ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct thy paths. I don't have to worry about if there is a guide to this life. No, God has told me, He shall direct my paths. All I gotta do is follow. God is willing to guide us. He simply wants us to look to Him. We often try our ways. We use our philosophies, we use our logic, we use whatever. But God wants to be your counselor. Listen to what James 1, 5, and 6 says about it. If you don't know what to do, what should you do? Ask God. Get him, get his attention, pray to God, ask nothing wavering, don't doubt, just trust that God wants to leave you. And the incredible thing is God will. God leads you and if you will just listen to him, what's even better is you can act and not worry about it. The greatest thing about the Christian life is if you will truly follow God, the lack of responsibility. Right, because if God tells me to do it and I do it, I know it works out well. I mean, that is a, I mean, my responsibility is to find what he wants, but, you know, I'm making a decision for our family. If God speaks, I don't have to worry about the consequences because I know I'm doing what he wants and he'll work everything else out. It's a guilt-free, wonderful life that you can live in Jesus Christ. He is counselor. The third thing it tells us is he is the mighty God. This one name of the coming Messiah lets us know that he's not just another son of God. Again, many would take us to various verses in the Bible that would tell us different things, but this verse says he's the mighty God. The word mighty comes from Gebor, which means powerful by implication, warrior, tyrant, champion. The indication is that he's not just powerful God, it's that he is all-powerful God. Not that he's just mighty God. The implication is that he is almighty God. He is above all. None can defeat him. He is king of kings and he is lord of lords. And Jesus was God in heaven. He was king before we even existed. I mean, we just think about John 1, 1 and 2, right? In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. And we know it's Jesus Christ, why? Because in verse 14 it says, Jesus is the Word, Jesus is God. Jesus has always been with God. He was in the beginning, he was there in creation because he is God. He is eternal, the only begotten Son of God, and He is unlike any of us. He is God Almighty, and He is highly exalted. Many don't recognize it, but one day they will. Philippians 2, 9 through 11 says, Jesus is not just a special man or a prophet. Jesus is the mighty God. He is all God. The fourth one, I grouped the last two together, and I'll explain why in a moment, but he is the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. The everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. I almost had a message just based on these two names this morning, and I was gonna call it Deniers Denied. Because you think about all the people who want to deny the deity of Jesus Christ, and the fact that he is almighty, all-powerful God, and these two names simply refute it. You think about Jesus as the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace. The everlasting Father, we may be tempted to think of We know there's three persons of God, right? We have God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit, but we know they are three in one. But sometimes people want to separate them just completely. And so you may read John 3, 16, for God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. And people may want to say, well, Jesus is the Son of God, but he's not quite God. But when we read this verse, we can see something different. We see that In our finite minds we, let me back up, in our finite minds we struggle to get this, right? Even though the Bible indicates there is a very clear Trinity, right? 1 John 5, 7, for there are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one. That's abundantly clear. But sometimes we struggle with it. People wanna use verses like Colossians 1.15, where it says, who is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature? And they wanna use that to say, well, we'll see he was born. But you go back and you read the full thing in context, and it's talking about him coming and dying on the cross for our sins and giving his life and a physical birth for us. But this verse, when we go back to Jesus Christ is the everlasting Father and the Prince of Peace, think with me about it. Who is king, father or son if both are living? Father, right? Everybody on the same page, right? We have, what's the king's name right now? Charles, we have King Charles, that's right, King Charles. It is Prince William King. When will he become king? When Charles is under the ground, right? Okay, but now we think about Jesus Christ and what's it say of him? It says He is the everlasting Father, and it says He is the Prince of Peace. Well, if He's just a Son, then He can only be the Prince, because the Father is the King. We on the same page now? He is the King of Kings, He is the everlasting Father, and He is the Prince of Peace. And when you combine those two, you completely understand why Jesus says, I and my Father are one. Because He is the King of Kings, He is the Lord of Lords, He is God Almighty, there is no denying it. It's been prophesied since the beginning of the Bible, but here in Isaiah, in chapter nine, it cannot possibly get any more clear. Jesus Christ is the everlasting Father, He is the Prince of Peace, meaning He is God, and He is God alone. And so we see, first of all, His appearing, now we see His names, and lastly, we see His government. His government. Verse seven. Government, rule, empire, those are kind of the implications you get there. His government is what? One of increase and one of peace. And so you think about Him and how He came to die for our sins so that we can be saved and we see that He will rule in a life that is different than any other. Of the increase of His government, there shall be no end, right? Of the peace of His government, there shall be no end. In your life, you can have peace and you can have increase. All who call upon His name can have that. We get peace in our souls, we get the blessings that He gives. And all who will call upon the name of the Lord will be delivered from the darkness that's within. The darkness is what stops us from having this peace. It's the sin in our lives, it eats away at us and it makes us feel so burdened. But if we'll see the light of Jesus Christ, His government affords peace. His rule affords peace. And if you're here today and you've never called upon the name of Jesus Christ, this morning, if you will simply see that your sin has separated you from Him, if you will believe that He came and He was born as God to live and die for your sins, and if you will then repent of those sins and ask Him to save you, He will. You can have a truly different life. The Bible calls it a new life. It says we can be adopted into his family. We can become the children of God. You'll have peace that you've never known. This morning, in just a few moments, we'll have a verse of invitation, and we do. If you would do that, if you would just come forward, somebody would love to take a Bible and just walk you through a few verses to show you exactly how you can be saved this morning. Most here today profess salvation already. But even though we may be saved, we can still walk in darkness. We can leave the glorious light. We don't lose our salvation, but we do begin to fall under the oppression of sin as we turn to it more and more. And it eats away at us and it takes our happiness and it can begin to destroy the joy that we have. But notice again in verse seven, of the increase of his government and peace, there shall be no end. Right, that doesn't mean we as believers, we lose it, we can't come back. No, it says there shall be no end. If you'll look back to Jesus Christ, if you will go to him and confess the sin in your life, if you will just look to him again, he will restore your peace. This morning as we think about the wonder of Christmas, during this beautiful time of year, remember that when Jesus came, he came to bring light to this world. Today if you're living in darkness, would you just look to his light? Perhaps this morning just worship Him for His glorious light. Because we serve a God who is unlike any other.