Ever since the fall of Adam and Eve into sin, the question has been asked again, and again, and again, and again. It's literally asked thousands of times a day. It's asked by young people; it's asked by older people; it's asked by men and women, boys and girls; it's asked by people of every language, every place on the globe, every economic or social circumstance. Perhaps it's one of those fundamentally human things to ask. Sometimes it's asked philosophically; often it's asked in a time of personal pain and loss.
Where Can Hope Be Found?
It is the question we've been considering over the last few months. Where? Where? Where can hope be found? This time of year, we consider this amazing reality that there was a moment in time where the hope of the universe rested in one place, in one rather unremarkable town in Palestine. It didn't rest on the shoulders of some great known king; it didn't rest in a palace. It rested on the shoulders of a baby in a stable on one night in Bethlehem. The thing that Christianity declares that is shocking, but important to understand, is that hope is a Person.
Look in your 'Order of Worship' or in your church Bible, page 73, at Isaiah 9. I want us to focus just on verse six this evening...this amazing reality, this radical claim that there's nowhere else where hope can be found. You can't actually be serious, knowing yourself as you do, and believe that you can find hope in yourself. You can't be serious and know the reality of the fact that you live amongst flawed people, to think that hope can be found in another person. Hope can't be found in situations; hope can't be found in locations; hope can't be found in situations.
Hope really does rest on the shoulders of one Person. Without this Person, there is no such thing as hope. Let me read verse six again: 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. These words were spoken in a dark day for God's people, a time of political, and cultural, and moral, and social, and spiritual decay. God railed against His people because, although they continued to follow some kind of external religious observance, their hearts were far from God.
God wasn't satisfied with their religiosity. Their leaders were corrupt; social decay was everywhere around them, and in that moment of darkness, a moment where you would wonder, "Will God's people survive? Will the promises of God actually come true? Will the line of David exist? Maybe it's over. Maybe this is it. Maybe it'll just crush and pass away into decay. Maybe it's over. How could it get any worse than this?" These are God's people, and they are utterly corrupt, almost hard to recognize from the nations around them.
Maybe this is it! Maybe it's over! In that dark moment, these glorious words are spoken, words that are not meant just to give hope to those people in that moment, but to give hope to anyone, eternal hope to anyone who has ever cried, "Where in the world can hope be found?" The prophecy of a child that would be born, a child unlike any other child because this child, although He would come in human flesh, He would actually be a human baby who would also be the Son of God. It's very clear if you look at the titles here that this is a prophecy of the Messiah that was to come.
God would do something amazing. The way God would deal with the hopelessness of the world as the result of sin was not to send an answer, and not to send a theology, and not to send some kind of system of redemption. God would actually come Himself, because He alone is the hope for this broken world. God comes! God comes! That's why the angels; that's why the star; that's why years, and years, and years of celebration. It's right for us to celebrate this amazing thing that God came; God came; God came because there was no other way for hope to be found!
That says something amazing here, "And the government shall be upon his shoulder." This passage should exegete and explain the Christmas Story to you. In that manger was a King; in a manger, in that manger was One who would shoulder government. His rule would be over all things; everything would be under His feet. Now, this is why this is important to you, it's because all of His promises are only as good as the extent of His power. If this one isn't sovereign, if He doesn't rule over everything, then how will I know, in every situation, and every location, and every circumstance I'm in, that there's hope to be found?
There's hope to be found because every place you will ever go, this King rules. And because He has power, He has the authority to deliver to you in those situations exactly what He's promised. I love the story of Corrie Ten Boom and her sister in that horrible prison camp where it looked like life had gotten as dark as it could be. That inhumanity there is hard to grasp and hard to describe. It seemed like they were in a pit so deep that there could be no hope, and sister looked at sister, and sister said to sister these beautiful words, "There is no pit so deep that Jesus isn't deeper," because you can't run too far and get outside of His rule.
It All Rests on His Shoulders
You can't dig too deep and get outside of His rule. You can't go too high to get outside of His rule. It all rests on His shoulders. The answer was a King, and so there's always hope to be found because it rests in the hands of the One who rules every location you will ever be in. How's that for hope? And then, the prophet names this King that was to come, "Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of peace." Can you hear the music? I always can when I read this passage. Now, consider these titles.
There was an amazing way which each of these titles corresponds to the damage that sin does to us. Why would we be excited about a Wonderful Counselor? Hear this; this is humbling to consider, but here it is: Sin reduces all of us to fools. It's one of the tragic results of sin that, in our sin, we see the world inside out and upside down. Go back with me, if you would, in your mind, to the simple days of Genesis 1. Think about those simple days when there only was one voice of moral authority...the voice of God alone.
You didn't have to question what was true; you didn't have to exegete all the statements that you heard; you didn't have to wonder if you believed the right thing, because there was only One Counselor. And in that dark moment when the serpent spoke words of evil deceit, the flood gate opened, and now we live in a world where there are a thousand voices vying for the thoughts and allegiance of our hearts. Living in human culture is sort of like sitting in a high school gymnasium before the assembly begins, and everybody is talking at once.
It almost seems impossible not to be confused. And so the passage is actually teaching what Paul will later talk about, is that wisdom isn't first an outline, and wisdom isn't first a book. Wisdom is a Person; the One who came would be the ultimate source of everything that's wise, and good, and true, and He would be faithful to guide you in His truth; He will be faithful through His Spirit to give you discernment so that you can be sure of what is true. Luella and I rode home from New York Monday night on the Chinatown bus.
We love the Chinatown bus; it's a half a block from our house; $20 round-trip. Thank you, Lord, for the Chinatown bus. And we sat next to a young man whom I would describe as being in a state of deep, abiding, metaphysical confusion. He was a bit of an armchair theologian, but his theology made no sense whatsoever. And the more he talked, the more fallacious it all got, and yet, he was persuaded. And any time that you would say to him, "But that doesn't make sense," he would respond, "But that's your perception."
I sat at the back of the Chinatown bus deeply thankful for Jesus, deeply thankful for the Wonderful Counselor, deeply thankful that, although I deserve nothing more than that confused young man, I have met truth, and I'm sure. Praise God for that! That's what this One brought to the world. Mighty God. What does sin do to us? Sin cripples us; sin makes us weak and unable, and we aren't all weak in the same way, but we're all weak. Oh, there are moments when you intend to do what is right, and you end up doing what is wrong.
There are times when you tell yourself you're not going to say something, and it comes bursting out of your mouth. There are moments when you commit yourself not to getting angry, and you can feel the emotional temperature change, and you can feel the irritation grow, and before long, you're steaming, and you're determined that you wouldn't be. There are times when you say, "I will not lust," and your mind begins to develop pictures that you should not have in your mind. There are times when you know you shouldn't envy, but deep in your heart is envy.
We Need a Mighty God
There are times when you're shockingly proud, scarily self-focused. There are times when, although you claim to be a worshiper of God, you pursue idols. You see, we need a mighty God because we need to be rescued from us. I need help! As I've listened the past couple months to Phil, to preach from I Corinthians 13, on love, I've thought again and again, I don't know how to love. My love is often so weak, so temporary, shifting with the winds of other desires and other emotions. And, as I sat up in the balcony where Luella and I normally sit, again and again, in the middle of a sermon I've prayed, "Oh God, come to me in Your strength.
Help me to love as you love; you've called me to love." If you're at all honest, you know that your life is a testimony of the need for strength that you do not have. This One is a Mighty God. Everlasting Father. What does sin do? Sin does this disastrous thing; it's the disaster of disasters; sin alienates me from God. I think one of the saddest moments in Scripture was there in the garden when God comes down in the cool of the day to walk with Adam and Eve, and they're hiding from Him. That moment should be like a thousand fingernails on a blackboard; it should upset you because these were creatures that were made for relationship with God.
Their very identity as image bearers connects them to God. Everything they do and everything they say was meant to be connected to love and worship of God. They were made for God. That's not just about their spirituality, that's about their very humanity and finds them in a situation where they're hiding from God in fear of Him. You know something horrible has taken place! Sin alienates me from God. And what an amazing thought it is that this One who was to come, would come to make us His children, come to wrap us in His arms, come to Father us in all the beautiful sense of what that means, to protect us, and to provide for us, and to correct us, and to mature us, that we would know that if everyone would forsake us, yet we would not be alone because our Heavenly Father loves us, that it would be possible because of His love to ever be loveless.
What a thought! Prince of Peace. The result of sin is massive confusion, massive conflict, massive brokenness; the universe doesn't operate the way it's meant to operate; that brokenness is inside of me, and that brokenness is outside me. The word, "shalom," in Scripture means much more than just peace, the way that we think of it as an absence of conflict or absence of war...it really means, shalom means everything operating the way it was intended to operate, everything being in the right place, everything operating according to the designed order, things doing what they were meant to do inside of us and outside of us.
The coming of the Prince of Peace really is a promise that everything that was damaged by sin will be restored. And you can't help but hear the words of Revelation, "Behold I come to make all things new." Now here's what hope is about: Hope is not some dreamy wish that something good would happen maybe. For the Christian, here's what hope is: Hope is a confident expectation of a guaranteed result. It's a confident expectation of a guaranteed result because this One came; He actually did come. He came as Wonderful Counselor; He came as Mighty God; He came as Eternal Father; He came as the Prince of Peace.
There is hope to be found! I love the coda at the end of this passage. It's set in two parts. His kingdom will have no end; this reliable hope will never end. And then, it says this: "The zeal of the Lord will accomplish this." That's God's saying, "And, oh, by the way, I will make this happen!" What is the message here? ...That that child came to meet your deepest area of need. You see, the place where you need hope the most doesn't actually exist outside of you. The place you need hope the most actually exists inside of you.
It's the terrible damage that sin has done to all of us. The real question of hope is not, is there hope for that, or is there hope for that, or is there hope for that? The real question of hope is, is there any hope for me? That's the question, and the answer of Isaiah is, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" because, in your foolishness, wisdom has come; in your weakness, power has come; in your alienation, love has come; in your brokenness, shalom has come. Get up! Believe! There's hope! 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.
His government will never end, and the zeal of the Lord will accomplish this! Let's pray: Lord, thank you that there's hope to be found, hope in your taking on flesh, suffering the brokenness of our world, willing to hang on a cross, willing to die, rising again so that hope would be a reality. May we quit looking for hope anywhere else. May we find our hope in You. In Jesus name, Amen.
