Christ: The King of Christmas (Isaiah 9:6-7)

The Coming King and the Promise of His Kingdom

In your copy of God's Word, Isaiah, the book of Isaiah, in the ninth chapter, Isaiah chapter.

9.

And when you've found your place, let's bow in prayer before we begin. Our Father, we pray that you would open our eyes and our hearts to your Word. It is our hearts that need to be illumined by the gift and grace of your Holy Spirit so that we may understand your Word and that we may give to you affectionate hearts full of desire to obey you and your Word.

We pray that you would fix our hearts and our minds upon heavenly things and upon Christ and upon the future that we have with him and do so from this passage, we pray in Christ's.

Name. Amen.

I had no idea what the nature or the content of the song was going to be that the choir sang at the beginning of the service today. I was listening to the practice before the service and they started singing this passage in Isaiah 9, verses 6 and 7, and I thought, wow, that works out really well with what I had planned to preach.

And so I, without knowing any of that, and I swear to you, I didn't know any of that, I chose this passage to preach from today. And I say all of that just to remind you that when something does go well with my preaching, it's usually completely accidental, which it was in this case, and it was a good gift of God's providence to us.

So we're going to be looking today at Isaiah 9, 6 and 7 in a little bit of that context. And it's always my goal around Christmas and Easter to do something that is in keeping with the themes of those two holidays.

I don't usually arrange my preaching schedule around holidays on the calendar, but there are two exceptions, and that's Christmas and Resurrection Sunday. And even at those two occasions, I try to take a little bit of a break, or I try and incorporate the themes into whatever passage we're dealing with in the normal schedule or course of my preaching.

And we've been in Hebrews. Last week, it was somewhat easy to do that because the text in Hebrews 10 talks about the incarnation of Christ and one of his reasons for coming into the world, that the Father prepared a body for him, and that body was to be offered up as a sacrifice.

So that came quite naturally last week. But as we look at the next passage in Hebrews, it doesn't really tie in as specifically. So I determined to take a break from the book of Hebrews, which we've been in in recent months, recent years, and to do something a little bit different.

So that's why we're in Isaiah 9 today, and we're going to be looking at a little bit of a different theme. Last week, we saw how one of the purposes of the coming of Christ was to offer his body as a sacrifice.

And it was really, that passage deals with the priestly ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ. And today, we're going to be transitioning a little bit and talking about the kingly office of the Lord Jesus Christ and what he fulfilled and what was promised concerning the messianic expectation that a king would be born as both a savior and a prophet and a priest.

And so that is, in fact, what the Jews of Jesus' day expected. They had a very intense and rich messianic expectation that all revolved around the Messiah being a king. And they expected this because the Old Testament taught so much about the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the kingdom of the Messiah, and that it would be David's kingdom and that he would rule and reign over the house of David and on the throne of David and the city of David.

That was what was promised in the Old Testament. And the Jews didn't expect Jesus to come in the way that he did, nor to be the type of person that he was. They weren't expecting him to be born in a manger.

They weren't expecting him to be born to a poor couple, an obscure couple who lived in a backwater town off in Hickville of Israel, in the northern part of Israel. They weren't expecting any of that. They weren't expecting a Christ who would be meek and lowly, who would come and teach and preach.

They weren't expecting one who would be subject to the forces of Rome and end up dying on a cross at the hands of Roman executioners. That was the last thing that they would have expected. They were expecting a king.

And it is interesting how often in both the Old and the New Testament, the promise of Christmas or the promise of the coming of the Messiah is coupled with the promise of his kingdom and his role as a king.

Jesus is and he will be the king of Israel. And the identification of him as king runs all the way through the Old Testament and all the way through the New Testament. The overwhelming expectation of the Jewish people at the time of Jesus was that the Messiah would be a ruler, a prince, a king, that he would sit on the throne of David and that he would rule over the kingdom of David and that his kingdom would have no end.

They expected him to come and to rule and reign from the city of Jerusalem and to have an earthly kingdom. You say, why did the Jews expect that? Because that was what the Old Testament promised. And the Old Testament did not promise that in some obscure corner of some obscure passage of some obscure book of the Old Testament on one or two occasions.

The Old Testament made that promise repeatedly. And there are massive passages and texts of the Old Testament that describe the nature of that kingdom and the nature of his rule and of his reign. And those promises are on nearly every book, in nearly every book of the Old Testament.

The Psalms are prolific with messianic Psalms that describe the kingdom and the rule and the reign of that messianic kingdom. That was the Old Testament expectation. You say, why did the Jews miss it then?

Why did the Jews miss the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ? They were expecting a king. Is that all that they were expecting? Shouldn't they also have expected one born in Bethlehem as Micah 5, 2 promised?

Shouldn't they have expected one born of a virgin as Isaiah 7, 14 promised? Shouldn't they have expected one who would be betrayed for 30 pieces of silver and betrayed by a close confidant and end up dying of suffering on a cross as Psalm 22 describes?

Shouldn't they have expected one who would come and bear our sins and by whose wounds and stripes we would be healed? A perfect servant who would come to do the will of the Father who himself would die in the place of transgressors as Isaiah 53 promised?

Why did they miss all of the promises regarding the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and just focus in and expect and make much of the promises of the second coming of the.

Lord Jesus Christ?

How could they have missed him at the first coming? They missed him for a couple of different reasons. For one, because even though his rejection was predicted and promised in the Old Testament, the nature of his ministry spread across two advents or two comings was not specifically and explicitly declared in the Old Testament.

In fact, we see many times in the same passage of Scripture, promises concerning the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ and promises concerning the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, and they are in the same passage, sometimes the same verse, and sometimes the same sentence.

Sometimes the same sentence they're put together. And the fact that those promises would be fulfilled by him in not just one advent, the first one, and not just the second advent, but over two separate advents separated by time, the fact that those promises would be fulfilled in that way was not something anticipated and expected under the Old Testament.

It wasn't something revealed under the Old Covenant. A second reason that the Jews missed him at the first coming is because they didn't understand how the prophecies and the promises regarding his first coming could be fulfilled just as literally as the promises and the prophecies regarding his second coming.

How is it that this one who is supposed to reign and rule on the throne of David forever over the nations is also going to suffer and die and be rejected by his people? Without the revelation of the New Testament and in the person of Christ, you would never be able to see how these two things could go together.

How can the one who is supposed to be universally worshiped by all the nations be rejected by all the nations at the same time? How can he rule and reign and suffer and die? And because they couldn't see how these two things would go together, they instead began to spiritualize and sort of allegorize and take in a spiritual sense all the promises regarding his first coming.

So they would look at Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22 and they would say, well, certainly those cannot possibly be fulfilled literally just as they're written. Instead, this suffering must be allegorically or symbolically speaking of the nation of.

Israel.

Maybe it's Israel that's going to bear our stripes and be afflicted and rejected of men, Isaiah 53. Maybe it's the nation that that's speaking of. Or they would begin to think, or they suggested, maybe these promises will be fulfilled in two separate persons.

One of them would come and fulfill the office of Messiah as the suffering servant and one would come and fulfill the office of the Messiah as the ruling and reigning king. But because they could not see how those two prophecies, those two ideas of a Messiah could fit together, they began to spiritualize the first one.

So when he showed up as meek and lowly and humble Jesus, suffering and dying at the hands of men, they rejected that because they said that can't possibly be our Messiah. And listen, Jews today reason the exact same way.

He can't possibly be our Messiah. Our Messiah is going to come as a ruling and reigning king. I think Christians, this is not to get into an eschatological debate, I think Christians today make the exact same mistake in the other direction.

Now we have eschatological camps that emphasize so much the first coming of the Lord Jesus Christ that they refuse to take literally in a straightforward fashion the promises of his second coming, that there will be an actual kingdom, that there will be an actual king and that he will rule and reign on the throne of his father David and over it forever and forever.

So that brings us to Isaiah 9 verse 6 and verse 7. We're going to be looking at these two verses today. These two verses I think are two of probably the most used and yet least taken seriously verses of all of the Christmassy verses that we attach and put on Christmas ornaments and Christmas cards.

We're familiar with verse 6, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

Typically when we quote that verse, we quote it this way, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, ellipsis. That's it, that's ellipsis as if that's all that is to the promise. And yet verse 6 describes the government resting upon his shoulders, his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, the Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

And listen, verse 7 is just as much a Christmas verse as verse 6 is. Look at verse 7, there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace and on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.

The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Now to take that passage, that promise of a Messiah and to cut it into the middle and to suggest, well verse 6 really describes Christmas, is to do, I think, damage to the reputation of the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ because this describes two separate comings.

Remember earlier when I said sometimes the promises of the first coming and the second coming are together in the same passage, sometimes the same verse and even in the same sentence? You see it here in verse 6 and 7.

Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given. That's the first advent. And the government will rest upon his shoulders and to his kingdom there will be no end. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish it.

That's the second coming. It's all the same passage. This is all the same person. And listen, if we take the promises regarding his first coming literally just as stated, I believe we have to take the promises of his second coming literally just as stated.

You can't avoid that. We don't switch our hermeneutic in the middle of a sentence and say this is literal, that's.

Spiritual.

That's not how we handle Scripture.

Not at all.

All right.

The Judgment on Israel and the Promise of Restoration

Let me describe to you the context here because verses 6 and 7 become even more magnificent when we understand the context in which this came, particularly to the Jews in Isaiah's.

Day.

Isaiah wrote toward the end of the southern kingdom just prior to the Babylonian invasion which resulted in the Babylonian captivity. The northern kingdom had long ago fallen and Isaiah is right at the end.

He's watching the dissolution of the southern kingdom. For him, for the Jews in Isaiah's day, the memory of the Davidic kingdom and the Davidic monarchy with all of the power and the wealth and the glory and the peace and security of that, that was a distant memory.

They had international enemies who were knocking on the gates of Jerusalem and on the cities inside of Judea and they were threatening to take over. And they were stronger nations than Israel was at the time.

And all they knew of the Davidic monarchy was hundreds of years earlier it was a great and it was a glorious thing. But the kingdom of Isaiah's day was nothing like the kingdom of David's day. And spiritually, the nation was at an all-time low.

They were involved in rampant apostasy and spiritual harlotry, idolatry was all over the place. In fact, I want to just take you back to Isaiah chapter 1 and this will be quick because we're not going through nine chapters today.

But I just want you to get a flavor for what Isaiah was dealing with in his day, Isaiah chapter 1. I want you to notice in verses 3 and 4, the spiritual picture that Isaiah paints. Where will you be stricken again as you continue in your rebellion?

The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint. Look at this apostasy described beginning in verse 10. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts. They become a burden to me. I'm weary of bearing them.

So when you spread out your hands in prayer, I'll hide my eyes from you. Yes, even though you multiply prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are covered with blood. He calls them to repentance in verse 16.

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean, remove the evil of your deeds from my sight, cease to do evil, learn to do good, seek justice, reprove the ruthless, defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Beginning in verse 18, judgment is promised.

Come now and let us reason together, says the Lord, though your sins are as scarlet, they will be as white as snow. Though they are red like clemson, they will be like wool. If you consent and obey, you will eat the best of the land, but if you refuse and rebel, you will be devoured by the sword.

Truly, the mouth of the Lord has spoken. Verses 21 to 23 describe their iniquity, how the faithful city has become a harlot. She who was full of justice, righteousness once lodged in her, but now murderers.

Your silvers become dross, your drink diluted with water, your rulers are rebels and companions of thieves. Everyone loves a bribe and chases after rewards. They do not defend the orphan, nor does the widow's plea come before them.

And verses 24 and 25 describe the judgment on those adversaries. Therefore the Lord God of hosts, the mighty one of Israel declares, ah, I will be relieved of my adversaries and avenge myself on my foes.

I will also turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and will remove all your alloy. He's threatening judgment on the nation for their spiritual apostasy and their wickedness.

Then chapter 2 describes the coming kingdom of Christ. Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, even in chapter 8, there is judgment prophesied upon Damascus and Assyria as Isaiah focuses the prophecies of judgment upon the nation of Israel because of their rampant spiritual apostasy and their adultery, spiritual adultery and all of the wickedness going on inside the nation at the time.

It was hardly a righteous man anywhere in the nation. And wickedness was exalted and wickedness was approved at the highest levels of the entire society. It was corrupt from head to toe. And God says the only thing to do with this is to judge all of that sin.

And the scope of that judgment expands out and even incorporates other nations in chapter 8. And then we get to the end of chapter 8 and look at verse 20, sorry, verse 21. They will pass through the land hard pressed and famished and it will turn out that they are hungry.

They will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. Then they will look to the earth and behold distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be driven away into darkness.

That is a solemn promise of judgment. That is dark. So then you may say, well, with all of that spiritual apostasy and all of that wickedness and the promise of judgment, destruction from foreign enemies, and the Davidic monarchy lying in ruins, almost no spiritual hope, almost no political hope whatsoever, almost no way that they could ever foresee the promises of a king and a kingdom for their nation ever coming to pass in that context.

We may ask ourselves in the midst of all of that apostasy, does that mean that God's promises that he made to David so many centuries earlier, that God has set those aside as God determined that because of their spiritual apostasy, they have forfeited those promises?

Or will God still fulfill his promises to the nation even in spite of their apostasy and in spite of their sinfulness and their wickedness? Even in spite of their disobedience, will the Lord bring to pass all that he has promised to them for his glory, for his namesake, because he promised it, or is what he promised conditional upon their obedience?

Has God set aside his promises to the nation because of their sinfulness? And the answer to that question is found in chapter 9, and the answer is no. After that dark promise of judgment at the end of chapter 8, look at verse 1 of chapter 9, there will be no more gloom for her who was in anguish in earlier times.

He treated the land of Zebulun and the land of Nephthaly with contempt, but later on, he shall make it glorious by the way of the sea. On the other side of Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles, the people who walk in darkness will see a great light.

Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them. The Gentiles will see, that is. Verse 3, you shall multiply the nation, you shall increase their gladness. They will be glad in your presence as with the gladness of harvest, as men rejoice when they divide the spoil.

For you shall break the yoke of their burden and the staff on their shoulders, the rod of the oppressor as at the battle of Midian. In spite of all of that judgment that is to come, God will destroy the oppressors and he will liberate the nations and restore the nation and restore their gladness.

Verse 5, for every boot of the booted warrior in the battle of Tumult and the cloak rolled in blood will be for burning fuel for the fire. No more war, no more destruction, no more nation rising against nation.

How will these promises be bought to pass? Verse 6, for a child will be born to us, a son will be given to us, and the government will rest on his shoulders, and his name will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, and there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace.

For on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore, the zeal of the Lord of hosts will accomplish.

This.

See, that is a promise of a literal, physical, Davidic kingdom and a king given to the nation at their lowest point, right on the cusp of the worst judgment they would ever face as.

A nation.

And yet God says, this promise, it's still yours. You will eventually be glorified and you will enjoy that glory and I will restore your gladness because a son will be born to us, a child will be given to us, and the government will rest upon his shoulders.

Verse 6 describes this king. We have in verse 6 a description of his coming and of his character, and then verse 7 describes his kingdom. So that's our outline. We're already halfway through it, and that just sets up the context.

So now we have to look at this king, the description of the king and his kingdom. Notice first his coming in verse 6, a child will be born to us, a son will be given to.

Us.

I want you to notice that he would just be born, it would be a natural birth, a natural, he would come into the world in a very natural way. Now in one sense it was supernatural because it was the womb of a virgin, and in one sense it was supernatural because his birth was attended by angels who appeared to shepherds out in the fields nearby the city of Bethlehem or the town of Bethlehem and announced his.

Birth.

Now his birth was natural in the sense that it was just as any other human is born, from a woman, he came as a child, he came as a son, he came as a baby, he didn't descend directly from heaven, he didn't come out fully grown from heaven and descend in the clouds and come here to earth in that way.

Instead it was a very natural birth, but in another sense it was supernatural because I doubt that any of you were born of a virgin, and I doubt that any of your birth was announced by angels to shepherds nearby.

So it was very supernatural and unnatural in one sense, but in terms of the physical activity of it, it was a very natural and normal birth. And a survey of the Old Testament shows that they were to expect one who would be born and who would come from a certain lineage.

It would come from Adam and from one of Adam's descendants, Noah, and from one of Noah's particular three sons, Shem, and Shem would have a descendant named Abraham, so to Abraham was given the promise of the land and the seed and the kingdom and that this king would come through Abraham.

Abraham had a son Isaac, two sons, and it would come through Isaac and not Ishmael, and from Isaac's line it would come from Jacob and not Esau, and of all of Jacob's sons it would come from Judah and not any of the other 11 sons.

The promise would be fulfilled through Judah. And so one comes from Judah, David, who becomes king over the nation of Israel, and to David God says, I will raise up for you a descendant and I will give him your throne and he will rule over the house of Jacob forever and ever into his kingdom there will be no end.

So you can trace the physical lineage of the king, the coming king, through all of those Old Testament patriarchs. Then we come to the Lord Jesus Christ and he is the one who comes from the tribe of Judah through David.

He is a descendant of David through both Joseph and Mary, legally through Joseph, physically through Mary. He's a descendant of David in that regard, and David can trace his way all the way back up through Adam.

We ought to expect from the Old Testament prophecy, since his lineage is given, that he's not going to descend down out of heaven physically as an adult male, but instead he would be born in a normal way, just as verse 6 described, a child would be born to us.

You take that literally or spiritually? Take that literally or metaphorically? That allegorical, born to us, what does the born to us represent? How do we interpret the prophecies regarding his birth?

Quite literally. He was born to us, as a child, as a son. Unless you think that he's just ordinary in every way and there's nothing extraordinary about this birth whatsoever, notice that verse 6 says, government will rest upon his shoulders.

Now, what does that mean? The government will rest upon his shoulders. In what can only be a conscious and willful attempt to avoid the plain and straightforward language of that passage, people have suggested that that is speaking symbolically or allegorically of the cross.

It was really popular in the 2nd and 3rd and 4th centuries when allegorical interpretation was all the rage, big hip things, social media was all lit up with allegorical, everywhere you turned, and they would take these very plain prophecies and these very plain narratives and they would find in them all these symbols and types and shadows and they would connect all of these obscure dots and what resulted was usually an obscure understanding of the passage and an obscuring of the plain meaning of the text.

So in an attempt to avoid that this would actually be speaking of a literal physical earthly government that would rest upon his shoulders, they instead said that this reference to the government being upon his shoulders was a reference to the cross.

It was symbolic of the cross which he bore on his shoulders. I'll give you an example. Justin Martyr who lived in the early 2nd century said this, quote, this signifies the power of the cross which at his crucifixion he placed on his shoulders.

See the symbolism? The government will rest upon his shoulders. Jesus bore a cross on his shoulders. Can't you see how those two come together? See how those, I mean it's obvious, right? Not obvious at all, is it?

What gets even worse, Ambrose in the 4th century said this. He bowed his shoulder to labor, bowed himself to the cross to carry our sins. For that reason the prophet says whose government is on his shoulder.

This means above the passion of his body is the power of his divinity or it refers to the cross that towers above his body. Says the government rests upon his shoulders, it refers to the cross powered above shoulders of his body.

Caesarius of Arlis at the turn of the 6th century said this. Christ then had the government upon his shoulders when he carried the cross with wonderful healing. Not unfittingly does Christ's cross signify government because by it the devil was conquered and the whole world recalled to the knowledge and the grace of Christ, close quote.

Not unfittingly does the word government refer to the cross because by the cross, the devil is conquered. Do governments conquer one another? So since governments conquer one another and the devil was conquered by the cross, the government was able to connect those dots.

You say, Jim, I've never heard an interpretation like that. Well, but you're in a community church. You're right, you won't. As long as I'm alive, you won't. You think that that's what Isaiah meant? The government will rest upon his shoulders?

That that must be referring to the cross? Do you think any Jew in Isaiah's day, scratch that, any Jew between Isaiah's day, 700 BC and the year 30 AD, do you think any Jew anywhere in there would have read Isaiah's prophecy here?

And in light of understanding God's promise to David in 2 Samuel 7, when the Lord said to David, when your days are completed and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up a descendant after you who will come forth from you and I will establish his kingdom.

He shall build a house for my name. I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. You think that any Jew read Isaiah 6 in light of 2 Samuel 7, the promise to David, and thought to themselves, the government must refer to a wooden beam physically placed on the shoulders of the Messiah?

Or do you think that a Jew in Isaiah's day would have heard this promise in chapter 9, verse 6 and thought, I wonder if chapter 9, verse 7 has anything to say about what the nature of that kingdom is?

Sure enough, there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace, and on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forevermore.

Do you think they might have interpreted the word government in verse 6 in light of the rest of the sentence in verse 7? They might have done that. And if they did that, what conclusion would they come to?

Isaiah must be describing what? A literal, physical kingdom. The only way, the only thing Isaiah could have been describing is to suggest that government is symbolic of the cross, is to take an interpretation from outside of the text and force it upon the text and make the text to mean that, when the text in its most natural sense could never and would never have meant that.

This son of David will rule and the government will rest upon his shoulders and he will rule and reign over the house of David, over the nation of Israel, from a physical throne, in an earthly city, Jerusalem, and that kingdom will be established and it will have no end.

It will go on forever and forever. That's the promise. That is a glorious and a beautiful promise. It's not allegorical. It's not spiritual. It's not a figurative rule. It's not a rule from heaven. It's not a rule in the church through elders.

It's not a rule in the hearts of his people.

Not any of that.

It is exactly what Isaiah described that we are still waiting for and expecting. Describes the coming of this king. Notice now he describes the character of this king. Look at his character. He will be called, in verse 6, his name will be called Wonderful Counselor.

Some people divide that up and say it's Wonderful and Counselor. It could be because the punctuation is not inspired in the text. It could be Wonderful, it could be Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace.

It could be four titles there or five titles. Let's just take them each. Wonderful just describes something that causes intense amazement or a feeling of awe or a feeling of wonder. There's something about the nature of this son which will be wonderful or awe and wonder-inspiring.

That is certainly true of him. The more we get to know the Lord Jesus Christ, and the more we see of him in Scripture, and the more we know of him in our lives, the more wonderful he becomes to us. The more beautiful and glorious and magnificent is his person.

Not because we make it so, but because it is so, and we become more enthralled with him as we are brought from one degree of glory to the next in our understanding of who he is. He is a person who is filled with wonder, and he is a counselor.

So unlike every other king who would gather around him a council of men who could give him wisdom and knowledge and understanding and advise him, this king will need no counselors because he is the wonderful counselor.

He's the perfect counselor because he is infinite in wisdom and infinite in knowledge and infinite and perfect in his understanding. He doesn't need to get advice from any counselor or any council of wise men or a cabinet or a group of advisors.

He doesn't need that. Why? He's going to teach the Lord. He's going to say to him, here's what you need to do in this situation. Here's the right course of action. Here's how you need to handle that. He will not need that in his government.

He will not need any group of counselors because he himself is the wonderful, the wonder, awe-inspiring counselor. He is also El Gibor, which is translated Mighty God. His name is called here Mighty God.

This is a reference to the deity, the Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son. There's a reference to his deity right here in the Old Testament. He is God the Son of one substance and one nature with the Father.

In him dwells all the fullness of God in bodily form. He is the exact representation of the Father in every conceivable way. He is perfect and one in unity, one in nature with the Father and with the Holy Spirit.

So he is appropriately referred to as the Mighty God. I think it is in that way, in terms of his deity, that the next phrase, Eternal Father, should be understood. This doesn't mean that he is to be confused with the Father because it is the Son who becomes incarnate here, not the person of the Father.

But it describes one of two things. Either that this person who is going to be born to us would be to his people like a father in terms of he would protect them and he would guard them and he would keep them and provide for them.

Or it could be just a reference to the fact that he is the father of eternity, which most people take it to be describing that. That he is the one who holds time and eternity. His goings forth have been forevermore, Micah 5 .2 says.

This one who was born in Bethlehem, too small to be labeled among the tribes of Judah. This one who would come into Bethlehem has also his goings forth have been from everlasting to everlasting. He's the eternal God, so all of eternity is his.

He's the progenitor or the father of time. He's the progenitor or the father of eternity. Everything flows out of him because he is the mighty God. And he is also the Prince of Peace. What will his reign be like?

It will be a reign and a rule of peace. Now, he is the Prince of Peace in the sense that, and we know him as the Prince of Peace because he has done something for us in terms of peace, has he not? The gospel is a gospel of peace.