The Foundation Of Christmas In Isaiah

Hello, everybody, and welcome to our first message in the Christmas series of Isaiah.

Every year, what we normally do is we come together as Christians in order to examine who

Jesus is and to look at the reasons for why he was born and to see what difference that that's gonna make in our lives.

And as Christians, what we tend to do is we do that in the Gospels. We open up Matthew's Gospel or Luke's Gospel.

Even last year, if you'll remember, we opened up the Gospel of John, and we saw that in verse 14 of that very first chapter how he is the word of God made flesh.

He's the one who came and he dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glories of the only begotten

Father. What normally happens at Christmas is we look at the

Gospels. All throughout your Christian life, I'm sure you've been to different church services and Christmas services where the

Gospel narratives were open and you would examine stories. Like when John the Baptist was announced, the birth of him was announced to Zechariah within the temple, or when the birth of Jesus was announced to Mary in the

Gospel of Matthew. We see that the baby, John the Baptist, is leaping within Mary's womb and she interacts with, or within Elizabeth's womb when she meets with and interacts with Mary.

That's another story that I've heard sermons on. I've heard sermons about the angelic vision that was given to Joseph so that he would not put

Mary away, but he would bring her into his home and he would make her his wife because what was happening inside of her was not the product of infidelity, it was the product of the

Holy Spirit. We've heard sermons on how God's sovereign plan allowed this

Nazarene couple, not through chance, not through happenstance, but through sovereignty, to go from Nazareth to Bethlehem in order to be in the city of David when the child is born.

That's in fulfillment of prophecy. We've heard sermons, and I myself have preached three sermons, and actually three years in a row on the shepherds, on the shepherd's story in the

Gospel of Luke, where they were keeping their watch of their flocks by night, the very night that the sky exploded with the glory of God.

And in that passage, what we see is that they came looking for Jesus, finding

Jesus, and then they leave praising and singing songs of worship on their lips as they go back to their towns and to their fields, because they had seen the child.

We examine the song of Mary called the Magnificat. We examine the song of Zechariah.

We've heard sermons on both of those. We've listened to messages on the magi who come from the east bearing gifts for this newborn king, and we also see the puppet king

Herod who wants to kill the child. All of these things are wonderful, beautiful things that we find in the

Gospels, but this year I wanted to do something just a little bit different.

Instead of looking in the New Testament, which again is glorious, there's a good reason why we would do that, but instead, because we're a young church, because we're still new,

I wanted us to go back into the Old Testament. And you may be wondering, why would you do that? Most churches begin with the

Gospels because they're easier to understand. Why would you go back into the Old Testament, which it tends to be harder to understand.

It tends to be more esoteric. It tends to, you need more context and more help in order to be able to understand it.

Why would you do that for a young church? Because in the Old Testament is where you find the foundation of Christmas.

Because Christmas doesn't just pop into existence in the New Testament as if God was up in heaven and one day he just decided that he was gonna send his son.

No, the hope of Christmas, the need of Christmas, the joy of Christmas, the expectation and the longing for Christmas, all of that happens in the

Old Testament. You know, it's much like a house that has a foundation underneath it.

You rarely ever see the foundation, but it's there and it's holding up the entire superstructure of the house. Well, the same is true in the

Old Testament. If it were not for the Old Testament, Christmas would not have come. If it were not for the

Old Testament, the incarnation of the Son of God would not have happened. All of that foundation is there in the pages of the

Old Testament so that as we go back into the book of Isaiah, we're gonna see it building and climaxing towards humanity's desperate need for a savior, born in the flesh to save God's people from their sin.

All of that we're gonna find in the gospel according to Isaiah. And I call it the gospel according to Isaiah because the entire message of the good news can be found within its pages.

That man is sinful, that the nation that God set apart to be his special people had failed and they are going to ultimately suffer punishment and ruin.

But fear not, because God is going to replace their wicked kings with the true and better king. He's gonna replace their wicked kingdom with a true and better kingdom.

And in that kingdom, he is going to win the world over. He is going to spread that kingdom to every tribe, tongue, and nations.

And then when the end comes, it will not be the end because God will bring his eternal and everlasting new

Jerusalem -like kingdom into existence so that all of those people who lived on the earth and who served the

Lord on the earth will then be with him in the new heavens and the new earth for all of eternity. All of that happens in Isaiah.

In fact, most of the biblical themes happen in Isaiah. And if we take the time to understand what is happening in Isaiah, it will be a blessing to us.

Again, out of all the places that we could go to find the foundation of Christmas, Isaiah, I believe, is one of the most comprehensive.

If you go to a greeting card section, some of the most popular verses of Christmas are found in Isaiah.

Verses like Isaiah 7, 14, which says, "'Behold, the virgin shall conceive and shall bear a son, "'and you shall call his name

Immanuel,' which means God with us. We read earlier,

Isaiah 9, it says, "'Unto us a child is born, and to us a son is given, "'and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, "'Mighty

God, Prince of Peace.'" Earlier in the chapter 9, it says, "'To those who are walking in darkness, "'a light has shone.'"

You see, of all the Old Testament books, I believe that Isaiah is the most densely filled with the hope and the themes and the expectation of Christmas and I believe that it's imperative that we go back and we understand it.

But before we can dive in and enjoy everything that it has to show us,

I believe that we have to understand a little bit of the background of Isaiah. Because listen, my goal for this

Christmas series is not to rip a few hallmark verses out of context so that we can have our warm and fuzzies and so that we can all drink hot cocoa around a fire,

I know some will take that goal, some will have the goal of just simply preaching feel -good messages that rip verses out of their context.

That's not my goal. My goal is that we would understand the foundation of the incarnation of the

Son of God and that we would do that by diving into the passages in Isaiah so that we could see what was happening during his time period and why

God ultimately decided to use Isaiah to communicate these precious eternal truths to the people of God.

So in the time that we have remaining today, I want us to look at the background of Isaiah so that in the weeks ahead, we can see and we can savor its

Christmas truths. And with that, let us pray. Lord God, I pray that you would use the preaching of your word.

Lord, I pray that you would use this fascinating and wonderful book. Lord, I pray that you would measure my words.

Lord, I pray that you would, by your spirit, that you would write them on our hearts. And Lord, I pray that we, as the people of God, would see the beautiful themes that you are working out in this great, glorious book.

Lord, I pray that the foundation would be laid today. Lord, I pray that everyone would have understanding.

Lord, I pray that this would not be a seminary lecture or just an excuse for me to nerd out for 45 minutes on ancient culture and background.

Lord, I pray against that. Lord, I pray that the necessity of this background would be noticed.

Lord, I pray that it would be felt. Lord, I pray that it would be understood. And Lord, I pray that in the weeks ahead, we can build our house upon the rock, the foundation that Isaiah lays, which is the cornerstone

Jesus Christ. Lord, I pray this in your son's name. Amen.

Now, when you're thinking about the book of Isaiah, you're thinking about one of the major prophets.

Isaiah is one of the four. You have Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel. And all four of the major prophets are what's called exilic prophets.

You have pre -exilic prophets and post -exilic prophets, which means that these prophets either come before the exile or after the exile.

And the major prophets really are happening right around the same time as the exile. And we'll get into that in just a moment.

The point is, is that they pop onto the scene in a very specific time in the history of Israel.

And it is important for us to understand why or what that time period is before we can really understand what's going on in the book.

So let's do that right now. You'll remember that Israel as a nation, they got its start when

Moses was appointed by God to leave the deserts of Sinai and to lead the people of Israel out of Egyptian slavery and into their own land, a land that was flowing with milk and honey, where they would worship

God at a tent temple called the tabernacle through a sacrificial system that was meant to atone for their sins, where they were served by the priests and Levites who mediated this covenant between God and them, where they were supposed to live in obedience to the law of God so that they could live collectively in the presence of God as the unique and special people of God.

And that is perhaps one of the greatest themes in the entire Bible. Let me say it this way.

God designed human beings to live with him. That is, I think, probably one of the most primary themes in all of scripture.

It could even be the major, the most major theme, the ultimate theme of scripture, because think about it.

In the beginning, God did not create the heavens and the earth in order to look at them. He didn't create cosmos, different universes and galaxies and planets that all orbit in motion and stars that hang in the sky and grass that grows and trees that grow and birds that fly and fish that swim and all these cattle that walk on a thousand hills.

He didn't create all of that for nothing. He created it for a purpose. The first purpose was to give himself glory because everything is about the glory of God.

But even in that, he also did it so that human beings could live with him as the pinnacle of his creation.

At the height of his creation, every day builds in magnitude.

At the height of his creation, he didn't create the planets, he didn't create the sun, the moon, and the stars. He created man.

And man was supposed to live with God in this perfect relationship as the special people of God.

That's what the Garden of Eden was. Man walking, talking with God in perfect unity and harmony forever.

That was the point of creation so that man could live in the presence of God. And man fell.

And man fell so that they were cast out of the presence of God. And that would seem like it would be the end of the story, but it's not because God is gracious and because the story that God was telling would be the story, the rest of the

Bible, from Genesis 3 all the way to Revelation 22, is the story about how

God is going to fix the brokenness within the relationship between him and man so that he could restore that and so that human beings could once again live with their

God. That is why Revelation ends with people living eternally with their

God. It starts in the garden with people living with God and it ends in a garden city with people living with God.

Why? Because that's the point of the Bible. That people would live in perfect harmony and unity and fellowship with their

God. We see in the people of Israel, even though they're sinners,

God is pulling them out of the land of Israel, pulling them to the mountain of Sinai, coming down and graciously living on top of the mountain.

He's living in their presence. He's coming and inhabiting a tent temple called a tabernacle.

Why? Because God wants to live with his people. That's the purpose of the

Bible. It's the story of how God is going to overcome the problem of sin in order to live with his people.

And the people of Israel were supposed to be a part of that mission. They were supposed to take the law of God, take the tabernacle of God and march into the promised land and set up a kingdom, the kingdom of God.

That was their purpose. They were supposed to cast out all of the people who worshiped the serpent, idolatry and everything else.

They were supposed to cast them out and they were supposed to live as the redeemed people of God in God's kingdom.

And eventually, as we see in Joshua, they were supposed to totally conquer the land.

As we see the hope in the book of Judges, they were supposed to live faithfully in the land.

And as we see in the hope of the book of Samuel, they were supposed to live with God as their king. So if Joshua, Judges and 1

Samuel actually happened according to the way that it should have happened, you would have seen Israel conquering the land, setting down roots, living in the land faithfully and then serving

God their king. And then the kingdom of God would have grown and it would have grown much larger than Israel.

The world would have eventually been won over to the kingdom of God, but that is not how it happened.

And of course, that is not the way God wanted it to happen. You see, the people failed to conquer the land of Israel in the book of Joshua and they left the nations there, which constantly led to their downfall and their ruin.

And they were punished by God, often in the book of Joshua for failing to do what God had told them to do because of their hardness of heart and their sin.

And Judges, they didn't live faithfully in the land, they chased after idols from the peoples that they allowed to live there.

They were as morally depraved as anywhere in all of the Bible and anywhere, I think, in all of literature even.

If you've read the book of Judges, it's like this rollercoaster ride of insanity spiraling into moral confusion and chaos.

In literature, I think it's some of the darkest and most violent moments in all of history. They're parts of that book that even,

I think, Hollywood would shudder to try to depict. And the point of that's pretty simple.

The people who were supposed to live in the presence of God refused to live in the presence of God and because of that, they devolved into ruin.

And Samuel, instead of pledging allegiance to their

God and living under his rule and reign as king and sovereign and submitting to his direction, the rebellious people of God rejected him.

They cried out to Samuel, the final judge, and they said, give us a king so that we will be like all of the other nations.

Israel already had a king. God was their king, but they said, we don't want that king.

We want another one, we want a man. And they abandoned their God.

But before we're too hard on Israel, the same thing happens to us today. It does. When our hearts have long been chasing after the world, loving the world, thinking about the world, spending time in the world, pretty soon, it's not long before our bodies end up following suit.

For decades, even centuries, the people had been in love with the religion of the nations, the practice of the nation, the politics of the nations, the monarchies of the nations, and they wanted to follow the nations and having a king.

So after years of their hearts being corrupted, their bodies soon followed suit, and God gave them exactly what they wanted.

At first, they chose a tall, handsome man, and God did anoint him as king, but God also makes clear that Saul was not the man that God had chosen for them.

He anointed him king, but it wasn't Saul that God was going to bring because in their foolish vanity,

Saul was bringing them into ruin, but God was working behind the scenes to anoint a better king, a ruddy -skinned, overlooked, young shepherd boy in the fields named

David. And again, after this tall and handsome

Saul led the nation into great immorality and sin, God uses David, God orchestrates the emergence of David so that 40 years later, after the inauguration of Saul, Saul's gonna be, he lies dead in a battlefield by a self -inflicted wound, and David was being crowned king.

Now, at first, David was only crowned king of Judah and Benjamin, the two Southern tribes, but it wasn't long before all of Israel had united under his leadership, both

Northern and Southern tribes together in a united Israel. And again,

God uses David to show us something of a picture of Christ because David was a perfect,

David was humble, he was a man after God's own heart, but he had deep flaws. But under his leadership, it's true,

Israel did grow strong. All of the pagan nations were purged from her borders, and it was under David that the nation obtained its greatest military power, and it occupied the largest geographical plot of land.

In fact, it was under David that Israel occupied all of the promised land that God had promised them, and it wasn't at no time before him or after his son

Solomon was that amount of land occupied so that we can say that under David, all of the promised land belonged to the people of Israel because of this man's leadership.

Great stability happened to Israel because of the reign of David and his son

Solomon. Again, David wasn't perfect. He had massive character flaws.

He had lifelong trouble with immorality in him and in his family, but he did unify the people.

He established a united Israeli empire. He prepped the nation for a permanent temple so that they could have centralized worship.

He built a palace for himself so that they could have centralized government in Jerusalem so that the nation would have a healthy monarch and executive branch.

His rule would be considered by God the archetype for all future kings. Every king of Israel would be measured against David, not because he was perfect, because of the grace of God.

After his death, his son Solomon took over as king, and it was under the rule of Solomon that Israel was at its height.

Solomon builds upon the success of David, and they're at their political height. They're at their economic height.

They're religiously at their height. During Solomon's reign, it said silver was as common as stone, and gold was as common as silver.

Massive palaces were built. A temple, which would have been one of the architectural wonders in the ancient world, was constructed and erected at the highest point at the top of the hill in Jerusalem, and of course, word got out to all of the nations that this

God of heaven was pouring out his blessings upon the people of Israel, and the nations were streaming into Jerusalem to see and behold everything that God had done.

We see evidences as that in the book of Kings, where kings and queens and nations and emissaries and ambassadors are coming to talk with Solomon to see all that God had done because of what they had heard, the rumors that they had heard back in their homelands.

This was the height of the entire Jewish empire under the reign of David and Solomon, which means, sadly, that it all goes downhill from here, and that descent into ruin begins even with Solomon himself.

Like his father Adam, Solomon lived for a short time in the blessings of God before he fell into ruin and sin.

He fell by making allegiances with foreign nations, which was forbidden in the

Bible. He fell by marrying pagan idolatrous women, which was expressly forbidden in the law of God.

He fell by building his wives altars to worship their foreign gods on, and eventually at the end of his life, he's bowing the knee to them as well.

He's bowing the knee to pagan idols, which was a shocking act of defiance from a son of David who had seen the favor of God, he'd seen the blessings of God, Solomon had seen the fire, literal fire from God, fall down from heaven and consume 10 ,000 sacrifices that they offered on the very first day that the temple was opened.

He prayed, my Lord, my God, how could this little house that I've built contain you who are so high up in the heavens?

And the fire of God comes down in front of the people, and all of them see it, and yet with such preponderance of evidence and knowledge of God, Solomon chose the allure and the disgusting, feckless, powerless nature of idols at the end of his life, showcasing for all of us the vital importance of walking with God and clinging to the gospel because we who have been saved by Christ, given the favor of God, seen the love of God, experienced the fires of God coming into our heart by the power of the

Holy Spirit must not take any of this for granted. The Bible is clear, friendship with the world is enmity with God.

Enmity means division, separation, so that if you are a friend with the world, you will slowly and surely be dragged away from God.

The more time we spend in love with the world, the more time we spend being dragged away from our God, that Solomon had to learn that lesson, and we often learn that lesson as well.

It's possible that during the season of moral depravity was when

Solomon fathered and raised his arrogant and quick -tempered son, Rehoboam.

Rehoboam became king after Solomon died, and his very first decision as king was so poor and so foolish that he alienated the people against him.

He caused a sort of soft civil war, meaning that the nation divided without any fighting or bloodshed, and 10 tribes splintered away from the dynasty of David.

David's grandson lost 10 out of the 12 tribes of Israel. They left and they never came back, so that the kingdom essentially from that moment forward was a divided kingdom.

The 10 northern tribes broke away from the family of David, and they set up their own capital city, their own monarchy, their own temple, and their own gods in the northern section of the country of Palestine, with only two tribes left under the dynasty of David.

Now, this is something that you have to be aware of if you wanna understand the Old Testament, especially if you're reading the books after Samuel, because in this period, you're not reading about one nation.

You're reading about two nations. You're reading about the northern tribes called Israel and the southern tribes called

Judah, and if you wanna understand the book of Chronicles or the book of Kings, you have to understand that it's two nations, and that background is vital for us to understand because both of these nations thought that they were the people of God.

Both of them thought in some way that they were gonna inherit the blessings of God. Both of them thought that they were the true descendants of Abraham, and both actually wanted a united empire again, but with their king in control and with their temple, the one where worshiped happened, and because neither one of these factions could come to any sort of agreement, they remained divided and hostile towards one another until both of them were totally conquered.

Because of their rampant sin, the northern kingdom, which was the northern 10 tribes,

God issues them a written decree of divorce, and they were conquered in 721

BC by the Assyrian empire. Assyria came in and burned Israel to the ground.

They killed thousands and thousands of people, and for all of the survivors, they carried them into foreign lands and they had them intermarry with foreign peoples so that genetically speaking, there were no more people from those tribes that exist today.

It was sort of a genocide through cultural assimilation. Their culture today, the 10 tribes of Israel is gone through intermarriage.

Their identity was squashed through exile. The 10 tribes do not exist. So when you think about the tribes of Simeon and Naphtali and Asher and Reuben and Gad and Ephraim and Asadan, Issachar, Zebulun, all of them, after 721

BC, they do not exist. They were ethically cleansed from the earth, never again to be reassembled.

In fact, as a side note, many scholars actually believe that Jesus gathered his 12 disciples together to follow him as a symbolic way of reconstituting

Israel since only the two tribes of Judah and Benjamin existed at Jesus's day.

So as a symbolic way of reconstituting all 12 tribes, he called 12 disciples because he was forming a new

Israel, the church, but that's a different message. Either way, 300 years after the height of Solomon's empire, 10 out of the 12 tribes were thoroughly vanquished and it happened right in the book of Isaiah.

And this is why I went through all of this history with you because I wanted you to know that when we get to the book of Isaiah, we are not talking about the era of Israel, the

United Kingdom, we are talking about the era of the divided empires. Isaiah, born into the southern province of Judah, was born into the northern province as a son of a royal official who was serving the king in Jerusalem and his prophecies cover both the southern kingdom and the northern kingdom.

Isaiah, as we just mentioned before, lived and ministered during the era of the rise of the Assyrian empire to power and they were threatening the region of the

Levant, which is this region of Judea and the surrounding countries. Both Israel and Judah were sorely afraid of Assyria.

They were menacing, they were merciless and they destroyed everything in their path.

But Isaiah also lived during the time under the reign of Hezekiah where God miraculously delivered the nation of Judah, saving them from the wrath of the

Assyrians even while he allowed Israel, the northern tribes, to fall into permanent, lasting judgment.

That's the context that we step into when we step into the book of Isaiah and you must know that context if any of these passages are gonna make sense.

Now, with that history in place, you're probably wondering, what does all of that have to do with Christmas?

Well, a funny thing was about to happen in the nation of Judah during the time of Isaiah.

As they watched Israel, the northern tribes, being destroyed and as they ultimately would see

God rescue them from Assyria, they began to believe that the kingdom of God was gonna be built back through them.

They believed that all the promises of the Old Testament, all the prophecies about the kingdom of God, all of that was going to be fulfilled in them.

And who could blame them? They just watched God destroy their sister, their rebellious, sinful sister nation of Israel.

And in a sort of way, that vindicated them in their minds, thinking that, well, since God destroyed them and decided to spare us, well, then maybe we're the ones who are on the right side with God.

Maybe God is more pleased with us than them. Maybe he's gonna work through us and bring the promises of old to fruition through us.

But the point of Isaiah and what he's gonna tell them shockingly and repeatedly is that these promises will not come through them.

They too will fall. They will fail. They will be destroyed. In the short term, they're gonna be destroyed practically by Assyria.

Now, Assyria did not destroy the city of Jerusalem, but they destroyed almost every other city in the land of Judah.

And what they left behind was Jerusalem paying exorbitant taxes because they were now a vassal state of Assyria.

So they were not free by no means. When Assyria fell, they didn't regain their independence far from it.

Their tax bill was simply transferred to Babylon. And eventually in 586 BC, Babylon got tired of dealing with Israel.

They came in, they killed their king, they burned their city to the ground, they exported everyone back to Babylon.

And all of this happened around the time of Daniel. Even later, after they're allowed to return to their land, they didn't gain their freedom back.

They didn't gain their sovereignty as a nation back. They were never again free. They were subject to the

Median and Persian empire in the time of Ezra and Nehemiah and Esther. They were subject to the Greek and Syrian empire during the post -exilic prophets, the prophets that wrote after the exile like Malachi.

Around 200 BC, in between when Malachi and Matthew wrote, there's a gap of 400 years between the

Old Testament and the New Testament. During that gap, Rome rose to power and they subjugated the people of Judah once again.

So that from the time of Isaiah, all the way until now today, where you and I sit,

Israel has not been a sovereign nation. Now in 1948 and moving onwards,

Israel did become a sovereign nation, but they're not the nation of David. They're not the nation that they were.

They're a political nation. They're no longer a theocratic religious nation. That status was never again given to them.

And it has not been for 2700 years since Isaiah.

See, the point of Isaiah is this. How is God going to bring all his promises to pass without Judah?

How will God live with his sinful people and dwell with his people who constantly keep on living in rebellion?

What kind of a nation is God gonna build if he's not gonna use Judah and Jerusalem and the Davidic kings? What kind of king is

God gonna raise up if it's not gonna be a physical son of David? And in the wisdom and the providence of God, all of the answers to this center upon Jesus Christ who did come from the tribe of Judah, who was a child of David.

But yet his birth was not to reinvigorate Judah. It was to establish the kingdom of God.

Jesus Christ, even as far back as the book of Isaiah, 700 years before he was born, is prophesied as the true king.

The one who will bring the wonderful and peaceful reign of God from heaven down to earth. As Isaiah 9, 6 tells us, for unto us a child will be born and to us a son will be given and the government will rest upon his shoulders.

His kingdom that he's bringing, the rule and the authority will rest upon his shoulders and his name will be called

Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father and Prince of Peace.

Isaiah tells us that the coming of Christ is not like the birth of any other king. This king will not just be the flesh of man.

He'll not just come for the reestablishment of the Davidic dynasty or the Judean empire. This child will be none other than God in the flesh and he will bring a government that will never end and it will rest upon his shoulders.

No other human being was called Wonderful Counselor. That's the name that was often given to the spirit of God. No human being had ever been called

Mighty Yahweh. No human being had ever been so related in power and status in person to the father.

This child was none other than the God -man Christ. Isaiah 7, 14 shows us how this

God -man is gonna be born. Therefore, the Lord himself, Yahweh himself, will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin will be with child and bear a son and you shall call his name

Emmanuel, which means God with us, God with us.

Do you see it? Isaiah is prophesying 700 years before it happened that the promise of Eve that she would have a son who would crush the serpent's head, not a child of Adam, a child of Eve alone so that there would be a virgin birth and he would crush the serpent's head and he would forgive his wayward people of their sin and he would welcome them back into God's presence.

His name, Emmanuel, shows us. He will be

God with us. God and man will dwell together again. And as we will see next week in greater detail, this child will come to all the children of Adam, the rebels who were kicked out of the garden with God and he will come and he will set up God's kingdom back on earth and God will dwell with man again.

And God is gonna do this by first becoming a man, but being laid in a humble manger, taking on our flesh so that he can once for all put an end to our sin and establish his forever kingdom.

Isaiah 9, 7 says there will be no end to the increase of his government or of peace, which means that his kingdom will never end and it will increase.

There's so many Christians who have such a pessimistic view of the kingdom of God where they say that the kingdom of God is failing right now.

America, things are getting worse. Things are getting much more awful and terrible and the world is this awful place and Jesus is gonna return to a world that is in utter rebellion against him.

But history doesn't bear that out. This passage doesn't bear that out. Yes, times right now are hard and tough in America.

America's a secular nation. America is turning their back on God, but the passage says that the increase of his government will be no end, meaning his government will continue.

The New Testament tells us that the gates of hell will not stand against the advancement of his church. That's his kingdom, that's his government.

The church is God's government here on earth led by the one and only Christ. It says on the throne of David that he's gonna sit and over his kingdom he's gonna reign to establish it and uphold it with justice and righteousness from then on and forever more.

The kingdom of God is not gonna come crashing down because of secularism.

The kingdom of God is not going to be overwhelmed by Islam. The kingdom of God is not gonna be overwhelmed by atheism or materialism or any of these other theories.

The kingdom of God will continue because God says in Isaiah 9, 7, the zeal of the

Lord of hosts will accomplish this. Things might look bad in our life today, but wait 1 ,000 years because the kingdom of God will continue to march forward.

The kingdom of God will continue to gain more and more territory for the sovereign Lord Jesus Christ. The kingdom of God will be preached from Jerusalem all the way until every tribe, tongue, and nation have heard the message of the gospel and his kingdom of peace and his kingdom of righteousness and his rule and his reign will continue until he decides to come back and he will decide to come back at the end of his successful kingdom that has went to all the ends of the earth.

That is what the Bible says and Isaiah is showing us that Jesus is gonna begin the final worldwide kingdom and it's gonna be a kingdom in his image.

A kingdom that will begin in the stalls of a barn and a feeding trough made for pigs and a defeated little nation and a tiny little city known as Bethlehem and a city that used to be known for the glory of Israel's kings and now the true glory of God is gonna shine through the king of kings and the

Lord of lords. He's gonna be born and he's gonna set up his eternal kingdom and if you are in Christ, now you are in that kingdom.

That kingdom is gonna move from Israel to Judea to Samaria and to the ends of the earth and it's gonna do so because of Christ.

He was born in a manger, he died on a cross to ransom his people into his kingdom as full citizens, as children of God, as co -heirs with Christ.

On the cross, Jesus died a death that looked like defeat but actually it was his moment of greatest victory because in that moment, he defeated

Satan. He mortally wounded the dragon. He, in the grave, he kicked

Satan off the throne that he was sitting on in the world. He was the prince and the power, the heir of this world. He was the

God of this world and Jesus on the cross dethroned him and when he rose in victory, he bound the strong man so that now

Jesus is the only one who's in control of this world. Yes, things aren't perfect but his kingdom marches on. Yes, it looks like times of failure but his kingdom is gonna march on.

His kingdom will march on until every single person bows the knee to Christ, whether willingly or forcefully but Jesus' kingdom marches on so that you and I who are in Christ are no longer slaves to our sin, no longer rebels like Israel, no longer people who turn their back on God like Judah did.

In Christ, we have been made citizens of saints. We've been made soldiers and conquerors, ambassadors and servants of this great king and in this great

Christ, yes, we, even we have been made into the people of God and now we are tasked with announcing and heralding the good news of his kingdom and his reign on earth as it is in heaven.

That's the story that Isaiah is going to be telling us. That is the glorious prophecy of how God will replace the pitiful kingdom of Israel with the glorious earth -encompassing,

Eden -like kingdom of Yahweh and how he will replace the weak and morally failed kings of Judah with the king of kings and how he will come down and dwell with his people once again.

He did that for 33 years in the flesh. It's been going on 2 ,000 years by the spirit and that is why we need

Isaiah for Christmas because all of the answers that we see in the New Testament are found in here and over the next three weeks, we're gonna look at him.

We're gonna explore them together. We're gonna celebrate our king together. We're gonna praise our God together and we're gonna magnify his name, the name above all names.

Let's pray. Lord, thank you for showing us everything that we have seen today, just as a glimpse, as the tip of the iceberg of what's going on in Isaiah.

Lord, would you cause our hearts to be joyful? Lord, would you cause us to see that you came in order to set up your kingdom that we are citizens of?

And Lord, would we find our place in your kingdom? Would we have the joy of your kingdom? Would we have the love and the fellowship that is requisite in your kingdom?

And Lord, would we announce and herald the news of your kingdom? Lord, we live in a world of materialism and presents and gifts and Christmas trees and lights and everyone's walking around with a sort of pseudo joy that comes from Christmas songs and hot chocolate and snuggly pajamas.

Lord, would you let us to show them and teach them and tell them the true joy that our

God broke into human history to rescue and redeem sinners. And if you believe in him, you can be in his kingdom.

That is the joy of Christmas. And Lord, I pray that it would be on each of our hearts this week and beyond.