Sunday Morning, December 27, 2020 AM

To worship together this morning. Welcome to Sunnyside Baptist Church. We're glad to have you here. Hopefully everyone has had a really good week of Christmas celebrating with friends and family. A few announcements as we get started this morning.

As far as the upcoming week looks, come back this evening for our evening service. That's at 530 and then 630 Bible study and prayer meeting on Wednesday, this Wednesday. Also regarding TAG, not this week but next week.

TAG is going to be resuming. We would love to see TAG kids come back on Wednesday, January 6th. And then also in conjunction with that, the meal I believe is going to be starting back up for those TAG families on January 6th as well.

Before that, next Sunday morning there'll be a brief meeting for those that are working in TAG on January 3rd right after the morning worship service. Yes sir. Churchwide evening meal. Okay great. So even if you don't have kids in TAG, you are more than welcome to come and share in that meal with us on Wednesday.

That starts at 545 on Wednesdays. Okay. Alright. Our fighter verse for this week comes from the book of Revelation. Revelation chapter 21 verses 5 and 6. And he who is seated on the throne said, behold I am making all things new.

Also he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true. And he said to me, it is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment.

The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be his God and he will be my son. So good verse to meditate and memorize this week. Again at the back if you have any Christmas cards that you maybe haven't picked up yet, do that.

There's also maybe a few Sunnyside 2021 calendars. That's a church Christmas gift to you and your family. So pick those up as well. Any budgetary changes for the upcoming year, try and get those to Jerry or Patty Hines as quickly as you can.

Alright any other announcements this morning? Okay it's good to be here to worship together. We're gonna have a time of prayer and preparation and then.

After Michael will open us in prayer. Father we come before you this morning.

And we confess that we are needy and you are bountiful. That we are weak and you are strong. That we are fretting and you are faithful. We are distracted and you are true and right and holy and glorious.

We thank you for the countless providences that have brought us here today. The way that you have met our needs time and again whether we knew we had them or not. You have shepherded us to this moment, to this place.

I pray that you would greatly now grace us with even more mercies for we desire to worship you. We desire to give you praise and so we confess that we if we want to worship you as you deserve in spirit and in truth we need you.

We are not here because we are proficient. We are not here because we have figured it out. We're here because of you. Because of your son Jesus Christ. Because of your Holy Spirit bringing us to this place to receive food from your word and to offer you worship.

So we pray that you would help us to do that today. That you would be honored and glorified in our lives. We thank you for your son Jesus Christ. We thank you that he is King. We thank you that he now reigns and in his light I pray that you would make us to feel hope.

This for the rest of this year and going into the next that we would live in courage and in hope in the light of who Christ is for his sake that we pray. Amen.

This morning earlier when I saw Brother Red walk in I was glad that him and Paul were able to return to us after some time of illness. But to make sure and wish Brother Red a happy birthday today. So happy birthday Brother Red.

If you would stand with our for our call to worship. Our passage this morning is found in Psalms chapter 56. We'll be reading verses 8 through 10. Read with me together. You have kept count of my blessings.

Put my tears in your bottle. Are they not in your book? Then my enemies will turn back in the day when I call. This I know that God is for me. In God whose word I praise. In the Lord whose word I praise.

Last Sunday evening we had the privilege of singing Christmas songs to the Lord and as this month is the season of Advent we're going to continue that singing Christmas songs this morning. So if you would turn to.

Page 145 and we'll sing Oh Come All Ye Faithful. Reading this morning is from.

Deuteronomy chapter 29 verses 1 through 13 from the Word of God. I just read yesterday, maybe the day before, when Solomon dedicated the new temple. They brought the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in the most holy place and the Word said there was only one thing inside the Ark.

One thing inside the Ark. You know what it was? The Word of God. The two tablets with the Ten Commandments. The center of the temple. The Word of God. Not just words. Not just a book. The Word of God.

These are the words of the covenant that the Lord commanded Moses to make with the people of Israel in the land of Moab besides the covenant that he had made with them at Horeb. And Moses summoned all Israel and said to them, you have seen all that the Lord did before your eyes in the land of Egypt to Pharaoh and to all his servants and to all his land.

The great trials that your eyes saw. The signs and those great wonders. But to this day the Lord has not given you a heart to understand or eyes to see or ears to hear. I have led you 40 years in the wilderness.

Your clothes have not worn out on you and your sandals have not worn off your feet. You have not eaten bread and you have not drunk wine or strong drink that you may know that I am the Lord your God. And when you come to this place, Sihon the king of Heshbon and Og the king of Bashan came out against us to battle.

But we defeated them. We took their land and gave it for an inheritance to the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half tribe of the Manasites. Therefore keep the words of this covenant and do them that you may prosper in all that you do.

You are standing today, all of you, before the Lord your God, the heads of your tribes, your elders, and your officers, all the men of Israel, your little ones, your wives, and the sojourner who is in your camp, from the one who chops your wood to the one who draws your water, so that you may enter into the sworn covenant of the Lord your God, which the Lord your God is making with you today, that he may establish you today as his people, and that he may be your God as he promised you and as he swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

May the Lord bless the reading of his word. Father, I thank you and I praise you for your goodness, your grace, your mercy, your love, and your covenant. You are a covenant-making God and you have covenanted with us by the blood of your Son, the Lord Jesus, to bring us to yourself.

We thank you and praise you for that fact, and I pray that as we gather this morning, that our hearts may desire to worship you with grateful hearts, to offer up to you the sacrifices of thanksgiving, to sing your praises, and as our pastor comes to preach your word, Father, may we be nourished by it and grow in the grace and knowledge of your Son, the Lord Jesus.

In his name I pray,.

Amen. You may be seated. This time of year, we think of gifts. The greatest gift that was ever given was the gift of the Lord Jesus Christ as a little baby in the manger, and he came that he might save that which was lost and he might restore, reconcile us to God, that we might have salvation, eternal life, and victory over.

Sin. Let's sing together, Who is He in yonder stall. Two days after, but as we.

Said before, we got snowed out a week, so we cannot allow that to deter us from celebrating Christ together. So I invite you to open your Bibles to 2nd Samuel chapter 12. 2nd Samuel chapter 12. Let me pray for us.

Father, again we come before you and we confess our need, our need for you, for your grace, for your mercy, for your light that you reveal in your Son Jesus Christ. We know that he is the light of the world, coming into the world that he enlightens every man, and in his light is the life of men, and that everything in this world only makes sense when seen from the perspective of Christ and his exaltation.

Father, help us to do that here this morning. We pray that you would fill us with your joy and that your joy, the joy of the Lord, will indeed be our strength now and in the coming days. We pray these things for the sake of Christ.

Amen. I suppose one question that we have at this point is how do we move on from the Christmas season? It's been a whirlwind of gatherings and phone calls and gifts, decorations. What do we do when the flurry of the celebrations finally settles softly into a quiet blanket of calm?

What then? So we clean our houses and tuck away the decorations and settle the bills. What are we going to reflect on concerning this Advent season? What will be our reflections? What will we consider?

Will we think about those that we missed seeing? Will we think about the generosity of our loved ones? Will we think about the resilience of our church? Perhaps about the uncertainty which looms. We can lay aside our Christmas cards and find new places for the gifts and move on from the annual celebration, but we must not move on from rejoicing in the Beloved.

We can't move on from that. The crux of history must remain the centerpiece of our lives. And so we are to rejoice in the Beloved as God does. Rejoice in the Beloved as we're called to do here in the Word, so that his every glorying stroke in Scripture will guide our praise.

Now this text, 2nd Samuel 12, 24 through 25, comes just after David's sin with Bathsheba against Uriah. Nathan the prophet has confronted David with his parable and thou art the man. God has declared many consequences due to David's sin, and one of those consequences is that their child, Bathsheba's and David's first child, will die.

And though David fasts and he humbles himself for an entire week, the child still dies. So David rises from his humbled position and he proclaims in faith that he will see his son again. And then we come to our passage.

2nd Samuel chapter 12, verses 24 to 25, I invite you to stand as I read the text. Verses 24 and 25 of 2nd Samuel 12. These are the words of the Lord. Then David comforted his wife Bathsheba, and went into her and lay with her, and she gave birth to a son, and he named him Solomon.

Now the Lord loved him, and sent word through Nathan the prophet, and he named him Jedidiah for the Lord's sake. This is the word of the Lord. Praised be to God. You may be seated. I might be mistaken, but I think that most of us are glad to see 2020 coming to a close.

It is a pity, I believe, that we, and I include myself, that we were not more thankful for freedoms and blessings of which we are no longer stewards. Only appreciate something after it's gone, you know.

And I think that many are comforting themselves with the notion that this will blow over, whatever that this is. Or thinking of, but I hope we spent enough time in Jeremiah to remember that there are those who cry, peace, peace, when there is no peace.

I think more losses and further judgment are the biblical expectation, a biblical expectation, if we see anything in the patterns of Scripture. I return to normalcy, or a reset to socialism, both compete.

They both compete with a repentance unto God. The solution is not to go back, or to go forward, but to get down on our knees and repent. That's the solution. Whatever affections we have for the past, or anxieties we have about the future, our attention should be upon Jesus Christ, who is the author and the finisher of our faith.

And in this moment of the historical relay race, when 2020 is stumbling and falling and passing the baton off to 2021, we are to reflect upon the old and ponder the new, in light of the Son of David, the beloved of God.

So what do we do with 2 Samuel 12 verses 24 and 25? Well, as we noted last week, this is a passage that declares the fulfillment of the promises God made to David in chapter 7. That God, through the prophet Nathan, made some wonderful promises to David about the nature of his lineage, his seed would reign upon a throne that would be everlasting, that his son would build the temple.

All sorts of wonderful, gracious promises given to David by God. And David responded in worship. He responded in thanksgiving. He responded by humbly confessing that he was unworthy to receive any element of these wonderful promises, and concludes this prayer of thanksgiving and praise to God in 2 Samuel chapter 7 verse 29.

And I'll read that again, as we did last week. Now therefore may it please you, David is praying to God, now therefore may it please you to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever before you.

For you, O Lord God, have spoken, and with your blessing may the house of your servant be blessed forever. So what do we do with 2 Samuel 12 verses 24 and 25? Well, let us be in agreement with the Lord's will.

What did he want to do but bless the house of David, to bless the seed of David, to bless the son of David, to bless the throne of David forever. We are to join in with that blessing, with that rejoicing, with that declaring of praise and agreement with God.

Yes indeed, blessed be the son of David, blessed be his everlasting throne, blessed be the house that he builds for God. We are to rejoice in the beloved, the one ultimately spoken of here in our brief text.

We are to do this in response to the birth of Jedidiah, which means beloved, the son of David. And we looked at some of those reasons to rejoice last week, and we're going to look at the rest of them this week.

Birthday blessings to offer up to Christ, in reflection of who he is and why we are thankful for him. And we looked at four of them already, now number five. Number five, a fifth reason why we ought to give thanks for the beloved is that he builds a permanent temple.

Now according to God's providential timing, David and Bathsheba have a second son, after the first one died. The second son, he was the one promised by God to David through the prophet Nathan, the one who would reign in David's stead.

When David got old and was in his latter days, then this is the seed, this is the son who would come and take the throne, ensuring a succession from David to his son. Because that wasn't the case with Saul, you remember.

And that this succession would would prove God's promises that this would be an everlasting throne, and this would be the son, this would be the seed of David, who would build the temple, rather than David himself.

And this son is Solomon, a man of peace who would reign in his father's place, who was a man of war. So this is the son, and he will build a permanent temple. Now let's look back at chapter 7, because here is the bulk of the meaning behind our passage in chapter 12.

So look back at chapter 7. I'm going to read verses 1 through 5, talk a little bit about verses 6 through 11, and I'm going to read verses 12 and 13, so that we all can hear for ourselves what it is that God said to David, and why these two verses in chapter 12 are so significant.

Verse 1 of chapter 7. Now it came about when the king lived in his house, and the Lord had given him rest on every side from all his enemies. The king said to Nathan the prophet, see now I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of God dwells within tent curtains.

Nathan said to the king, go do all that is in your mind, for the Lord is with you. But in the same night the word of the Lord came to Nathan, saying, go and say to my servant David, thus says the Lord, are you the one who should build me a house to dwell in?

For I have not dwelt in a house since the day I brought up the sons of Israel from Egypt. And he goes on to talk about how it is that God has always been faithful and true to his people, but why is it that David should be the one to change the wandering status of the ark of the covenant, of the tabernacle, into a permanent house?

David certainly wants to do this. David says, look, I've been given permanent residence. Why is the throne of God not in a permanent residence? Why do I have a palace with walls of cedar? And God's throne, the ark of the covenant, you know, the mercy seat, the throne of God on earth.

Why is that in a temporary dwelling place? This should not be. David knows he is not as glorious as the Lord. The Lord should have a better place than David. He wants to rectify this, but God says, you're not the one who is going to do it.

Your son is going to do it. He says that in verses 12 and 13. When your days are complete and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. So why is the building of a temple, a permanent temple, to replace the temporary tabernacle? Why is that so important?

Well, it has to do with why the tabernacle or the temple is important at all. Why is that important? Because the tabernacle in the Old Covenant was the center for reconciliation of God and man. And you'll notice the reconciliation of man to man.

Where was the tabernacle located in the wilderness? In the middle of all of the tribes. And they all encamped around it. They were all focused on it, so they were all to be reconciled to one another. And if they weren't, they had to get it right before they came to be reconciled to God.

The pattern was the tabernacle was the centerpiece where God and man and man to man were to be reconciled and things unified. And so, building a temple in Jerusalem would mean that that would be the centerpiece.

On Mount Zion, that would be the centerpiece where all of Israel would gather to have their special feasts where they would go to offer up sacrifices in faith that one day God would bring them his lamb.

How long did the temple that Solomon built, how long did the house that Solomon built stand in Jerusalem? 410 years. 410 years. And it was destroyed by the Babylonians. When the exiles returned from Persia and they came to Jerusalem and they eventually got their act together and rebuilt the temple, the second temple, the one that was remodeled by Herod into a wonder of the ancient world, how long did that temple stand?

585 years. Do you know that a mosque has stood longer in Jerusalem than a temple unto God has ever stood? So let me ask you, where is this permanent temple? Where is the house of God? Shall we look to brick and mortar?

Shall we look to cinderblock? No. You see, the desire for a permanent temple, an unfailing place for God and man to be reconciled, for sin to be paid for, for peace to be achieved, would not be realized in stone and mortar.

This is why 1st Chronicles chapter 29 is so important. If you haven't read it in a while, go read it. What David prepared and organized, Solomon took and accomplished. David wasn't allowed to build the temple, but boy did he prepare for it.

And then Solomon took everything that his father prepared and then he completed it. When Jesus Christ, the son of David came, the beloved of God, he took and accomplished in the new covenant all that had been prepared and organized under the old covenant.

This was good news. In chapter 2 of John, the Jews said to him, verse 18, what sign do you show us as your authority for doing these things? What was he doing? He was cleaning out the earthly temple, saying this place is a den of thieves.

This place is rotten to the core. And they said, what authority do you have for doing these things? Verse 19, Jesus answered them, destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it up. The Jews said, it took us 46 years to build this temple, meaning since Herod the Great started the remodeling project.

It's been 46 years. And will you raise it up in three days? But he was speaking of the temple of his body. So when he was raised from the dead, his disciples remembered that he said this and they believed the scripture and the word which Jesus had spoken.

When did it become clear that Jesus was the temple? When did it become clear that Jesus, that God the Son incarnate in human flesh, that he was the centerpiece of reconciliation between God and man and man and man?

When did that become clear? After the resurrection. After the resurrection. You want to read the Bible rightly? Read it with a post-resurrection hermeneutic. Read the Bible in light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

And we rejoice in the beloved. We offer him birthday blessings. Why? Because Christ achieves his peace-filled task, his bringing of Shalom through what? The building of the temple. He's the Son of David.

He builds the temple. He's the Son of David. He builds the house of God. It is in Christ that his people are reconciled to God. And we are living stones of this temple. He brings us together into one house.

Well, it's a permanent temple in Christ, but also a preferential treatment of the beloved, of the Son of David. When we read this, we read that the Lord loved him. It's in word, Nathan, this is the son that I love of David's.

Now, out of all the 20 sons of David, 20 sons David had, it was Solomon whom the Lord loved. Didn't say that about the others. Not even, not even Nathan, the son of David. Not the prophet, but the son of David named Nathan, who was the ancestor of Mary.

Not even him. It was Solomon that it says the Lord loved him. What does that mean? It means that there was a special love that God had for Solomon. The same thing we read about Israel. Of all the nations, only Israel God had known.

That didn't mean that God only knew about one nation in the world and was ignorant of all the rest. But there's only one nation whom he had specially loved. And out of all the sons of David, there's preferential treatment for Solomon.

Now the Lord loved him. What does that mean? It means that God favored him. Read the stories. God favored him. God treated Solomon unequally to that of the others. It means that God privileged him. The other sons were born of David's previous wives.

Other sons were born after Solomon. Many of, some of them tried for the throne illegitimately, but only upon Solomon did the Lord set his love. And how often does that happen in the story of redemption?

How often does that happen in the biblical story? Abel, Seth, Shem, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah, David, Solomon, all had brothers who could have, should have, would have been picked first, but God favored these.

There's preferential treatment throughout the entire lineage of the seed of the Messiah till we come to Christ. The story of redemption, you see, is not about making things fair and equitable. It is about how God loved his son more than anything and everything else.

It is the Father's delight in the Son that is the Spirit's declaration throughout all of Holy Scripture. Again and again, the Father's delight in his Son, the declaration of the Spirit. Hebrews 1, 5 through 6, for to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you.

And again, I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me. These are quotes out of 2 Samuel 7. Oh, I thought God said that through Nathan to David of David's son Solomon. The writer of Hebrews has a post-resurrection hermeneutic.

He says, God is saying this of his Son, Jesus Christ, the ultimate fulfillment of the Son of David. For to which of the angels did he ever say, you are my son, today I have begotten you. And again, I will be a father to him and he shall be a son to me.

And when he again brings the firstborn into the world, he says, and that all the angels of God worship him. You see how much the Father delights in the Son. A preferential treatment for the Son of David.

It is Christ with whom God is pleased. Are you? It is Christ with whom God is pleased. Are you? That's the question you should ask of those you want to evangelize. I don't know where you're going to spend eternity.

I'll lose sleep for weeks if you were to die tonight. I have no idea where you're going to end up. Those people you think of in your mind, those loved ones, those you care about, those you work with. Ask, say, but there are many, many stories in the Bible to show how much God is pleased with Christ.

And here's the question to us. Are we? Are we pleased with Christ? Are we all about Christ? Is he our everything? The one nail upon which we hang our entire life? That's the question. And a preeminent title, along with the preferential treatment, he calls him Jedidiah.

Yes, the Lord loved him. The Lord loved the Son of David and sent word to Nathan the prophet and he named him Jedidiah for the Lord's sake. We don't hear Solomon being called Jedidiah later on. He's not introduced to the Queen of Sheba as King Jedidiah.

That's not a name that he operates with later on in the stories. And so what does it mean here? It means this is a title. This is a title that he bears. In fact, later on in the Bible, we hear this refrain about Solomon that he was beloved of God.

You see, that points back to this title. Jedidiah means beloved. It means beloved. God was showing his commitment to his promise to David to be a father to David's son and the son of David to be God's son by naming him my beloved.

He has this preeminent title. Nobody else got that title, just the Son of David. There was understanding of that and this caused anticipation among the believers in the Old Covenant that there would be one loved of God, a son of David to come, a king to which the daughter of Zion would sing Hosanna.

And so it was when Jesus was baptized by John in Jordan River, Matthew 317, and behold a voice out of the heavens said, this is my beloved son in whom I am well pleased. Again, he says it on the Mount of Transfiguration.

While he was still speaking, a bright cloud overshadowed them and behold a voice out of the clouds said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. This preeminent title of Jedidiah, of the beloved, is given to the son of David who is Jesus Christ the Lord.

He is God the Son in human flesh and we behold the wonder of the Incarnation. He's named Beloved. Isn't it interesting, and you can do this on your own, run a search on your Bible program on your phone or blow the dust off your Strong's Concordance at home, replace whatever you are propping your table up with with that, and just look up Beloved in the New Testament.

Look up the word Beloved in the New Testament and here is something we ought to be thankful for and rejoice in Christ about. How often are we called the Beloved? Why? Why are we called the Beloved? We're not the son of David.

We deserve no preferential treatment. We've done nothing for God whereby we could repay him or inform him or help him out. Why would we ever be called the Beloved? Because by grace alone through faith alone we are in the Beloved, united to him, and so that what God says of the Son he says of us, that we are Beloved.

We ought to be thankful for that and rejoice in Christ for that. Number eight, a perpetual throne. Perpetual throne. So David and Bathsheba have another son, Solomon. The Lord loves this son and he names him Jedidiah.

This is the son that was promised to David in chapter 7. The promise included other things like God would chasten and discipline the son of David should he stray. He would love him and establish him on the throne.

But there was also a promise connected to the giving of Solomon, a promise that just doesn't fit within the realm of Solomon's 40 years alone or even the reign of his son Rehoboam or his son or his son.

Because as brief as the temple was in Jerusalem, even briefer was the reign of a son of David upon the throne in Jerusalem. Jeconiah was the last of the lineage of David to reign upon a throne in Jerusalem.

There hasn't been a physical descendant of David reigning on a throne as king in Jerusalem for the greater part of all of history. There was a brief span. So how is it that God's promise is true? How is it that God has kept his word that there is an everlasting throne upon which the son of David reigns in Zion?

How is that promise fulfilled? Well it's interesting that in a critical moment the son of Solomon was not a good king. His name was Rehoboam and God in judgment split the kingdom and he gave ten northern tribes to a man named Jeroboam.

And speaking to Jeroboam, he told Jeroboam why he was not giving him all 12 tribes. Why just the northern lands of the nation of Israel? Why split it up? Why even leave Rehoboam in charge of Jerusalem if he was so bad?

God explains it, 1st Kings 11 36. But to his son, meaning to the son of Solomon or to the son of David, I will give one tribe, which is Judah, that my servant David may have a lamp, listen to it, may have a lamp always before me in Jerusalem.

It was vital to God that the son of David, that his servant David, would have what in Jerusalem? A lamp before God in Jerusalem. This is what Jerusalem is. The city where I have chosen for myself to put my name.

Hold on to that. I'm not giving you Jeroboam, I'm not giving you the whole thing. I'm not giving you Judah, I'm not giving you Judah. It must be a descendant of David upon the throne in Jerusalem, the place where I've decided to reveal my name, the lamp must remain.

And although Abijam, Rehoboam's son, was also bad, he was also wicked. God did not destroy him and end his lineage. Why? 1st Kings 15 4, God explains why. But for David's sake, the Lord, his God, gave him a lamp in Jerusalem to raise up his son after him and to establish Jerusalem.

You following it? Jerusalem has to remain. A lamp has to remain in Jerusalem. This is the place where God has chosen to reveal his name and the lamp, the descendant of David, must be there. A light in Zion.

Of course, Jerusalem was destroyed, wasn't it? Jerusalem was destroyed and after Jeconiah, there was no true king of Israel for many generations. And in fact, it took 70 sets of seven years from the time that Cyrus issued a decree to rebuild Jerusalem.

It took 483 years, actually, for the Messiah, the king of the king, the son of David, to come into his own. And when he arrived, he announced what? That the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, had come near.

But it was not of this earth. The earthly Jerusalem was slated for judgment, but that the new Jerusalem would never be shaken. Jesus is the son of David and he currently, now, reigns amidst the bride called Jerusalem.

The lamp, brothers and sisters, has not gone out. There is a lamp in Jerusalem. Revelation 21, 22 -23, I saw no temple in it, no brick and mortar. For the Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple.

And the city, which is described in Revelation 21 as the Bride of Christ, and if you're the Bride of Christ, simply raise your hand. The Bride of Christ is called the new Jerusalem. The new Jerusalem is called the Bride of Christ.

Now listen, the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God has illumined it. Listen, and its lamp is the Lamb. There's a lamp in Jerusalem. There's a son of David upon the throne, an everlasting throne, and he's still reigning.

He's still reigning. For a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders. Government does not rest on an election. The government does not rest on the integrity and the wisdom of men.

Government is upon Christ's 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, like there was with Solomon, Rehoboam, Abidin, and so on.

No, 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 and uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Not us, yes, through us and around us and with us, but the zeal of the Lord of hosts accomplishes this. So listen, no matter, no matter who claims to be the authority over us, and no matter what kind of tyranny is attempted, and no matter who considers themselves to be president elect, Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today, and forever, and of his kingdom there will be no end.

Reason to be thankful. Offer up Christmas blessings, which leads us to the ninth reason to be thankful. We're reminded of in this text a paramount truth. And when God keeps his promise to David, and he gives David and Bathsheba a second son, they name him Solomon.

It's this man of peace the Lord loves, gives this title of beloved to. Let's think back and the fulfillment of this promise, at the giving of the promise, the response of David to this promise. 2nd Samuel chapter 7 and looking at verse 20, David is responding, David is praying, David is giving glory to God.

Now listen to this, verse 20, again, this is David speaking, again, what more can David say to you? For you know your servant, O Lord God, for the sake of your word, and according to your own heart, you have done all this greatness to let your servant know.

For this reason you are great, O Lord God, for there is none like you, and there is no God besides you, according to all that we have heard with our ears. He's like, why are you doing this? Why are you making these amazing promises to me?

You know who I am. It can't be me. The reason why you make these promises about a seed, an everlasting throne, and a temple, he says, it can't be because of me. It's because of you. You're doing it because of your word, because of all of your promises that you've given.