“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone. You have multiplied the nation; you have increased its joy; they rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will do this.”

Advent – Peace that Surpasses Understanding

As we continue on into the second week of Advent, we remain in the same section of Isaiah 9. Last week, we looked specifically at verse 2,

“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shone.”

And how this helps us understand the immeasurable hope we have in Christ, who came into the world as the Light of God, and the Hope of all mankind. This week, as we look at and seek to further understand divine peace, we’ll look at verses 4-7,

“For the yoke of his burden, and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us a child is born, to us a son is given; and the government shall be upon his shoulder, and his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end, on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore…”

I have a running joke with one of my oldest friends, that in theory, any system of government could work. Imagine a dictatorship where you have a kind and benevolent dictator who loves his people, operates his nation ethically, and doesn’t exploit his power for tyrannical gain, then you could, again in theory, have a functioning, flourishing dictatorship – yet we don’t see any of those cropping up around the world. While I acknowledge my extreme bias as an American, I’m blessed to live in a nation where our democratic republic truly represents the greatest nation and governmental system in the world. This isn’t because Americans are ethically superior to the billions of other fallen humans that populate and make up the governmental systems of the rest of the world, but because by design, our government is intended to self-regulate better than any other through its system of checks and balances. You could argue how well these checks and balances ultimately work, but regardless, they’re there, they’re in place, and they serve some function. There is some degree of diffusion of power, and so there is some semblance of peace. But even if we assume there is no debate, and that the United States is ultimately the greatest nation and system of government that has ever existed, we cannot even begin to claim that it is a perfect nation or system of government. We have been blessed with prosperity, with power, and by comparison to many other places at many other times, we have been blessed with peace, and yet we don’t really know peace, because peace is ultimately found and known in the person of Jesus Christ, in the fear, and reverence, and comfort of Mighty God – and so we as sinful people are estranged from God. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Russian veteran of the second World War, who was placed in a Siberian forced labor camp by his own nation, would go on to write a three-part series titled, “The Gulag Archipelago.” The extensive writings detailed the rise of communism inside the USSR, and the barbaric process of a nation eating itself from within, exterminating and enslaving its own people, all in the name of peace and prosperity. I confess, I haven’t finished the complete work – I made it a few hours into the audiobook before deciding to put it down, somewhere in the midst of the list of the twenty some torture methods that the Soviets were fond of using to get people to confess to the crimes against the state that they had been accused of. It wasn’t that I didn’t understand the point, and it wasn’t that I couldn’t stomach listening to these things, despite how disturbing they were. What I was learning had begun to feel redundant because it was only repeating a principle I already knew well – there is no peace at the hands of humanity, and there is no atrocity too great for sinful man. As Mr. Solzhenitsyn puts it so succinctly,

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty.”

We are stained by sin, and in our sin, we are limited. We have minds filled with greed, corruption, lust, and rage – we serve the sin of our flesh, and in this there is no peace. Paul pulls no punches as he quotes the Old Testament, citing the Psalms, Proverbs, and Isaiah, in Romans 3:10–18,

“as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God. All have turned aside; together they have become worthless; no one does good, not even one.’ ‘Their throat is an open grave; they use their tongues to deceive.’ ‘The venom of asps is under their lips.’ ‘Their mouth is full of curses and bitterness.’ ‘Their feet are swift to shed blood; in their paths are ruin and misery, and the way of peace they have not known.’ ‘There is no fear of God before their eyes.’”

We are a people at war with one another, at war with ourselves, and by far worst of all, at war with perfect, holy, righteous God. We don’t have peace, we don’t know anything about peace – for us peace is a concept or an idea of when things go the way we want them, when there is a moment of rest or reprieve, but it’s so often marked by selfishness and even when it’s not, it is without question temporary. Last week as we studied the passage in relation to our own condition, we looked at the hopelessness of our condition, until Hope came to us, the Light that pulled us from the darkest of places. Now we look at what it means to live in that Light, to be delivered beyond worldly darkness into true peace – peace that is not limited by situation or circumstance, peace that defies the comprehension of minds twisted in sin – the glorious Peace that is found in Christ and Christ alone.

1. The Victory of True Peace

There’s an idea that will come up in political circles of “peace through strength.” It’s something that was prevalent during the Reagan administration as well as currently in the Trump administration. Whether you agree or disagree with the principle, and whether it works on paper, versus in execution, there is a certain logic to it. If you’re the biggest and baddest person, or tribe, or nation out there, then you should enjoy some degree of peace – it’s also a sort of flawed logic, because the peace you’re maintaining exists under the constant threat to your enemies of just how bad conflict with you would be. In essence, it’s “peace” achieved through the spirit of conflict, and while I’m not trying to lend support or critique to the concept, there is something oxymoronic about it, effective or not. It may be that this is simply the best that fallen humans, limited in our sin, are capable of, but what we can see clearly is that what we do in imperfect imitation, God does perfectly. For a nation to maintain peace through strength they need the perception of strength, the show of force that indicates their power – maybe it’s real, maybe it’s exaggerated, but there has to be that perception to serve as a deterrent. Think of the Philistines sending Goliath out as their champion before the people of Israel. 1 Samuel 17:4–11 says,

“And there came out from the camp of the Philistines a champion named Goliath of Gath, whose height was six cubits and a span. He had a helmet of bronze on his head, and he was armed with a coat of mail, and the weight of the coat was five thousand shekels of bronze. And he had bronze armor on his legs, and a javelin of bronze slung between his shoulders. The shaft of his spear was like a weaver’s beam, and his spear’s head weighed six hundred shekels of iron. And his shield-bearer went before him. He stood and shouted to the ranks of Israel, ‘Why have you come out to draw up for battle? Am I not a Philistine, and are you not servants of Saul? Choose a man for yourselves, and let him come down to me. If he is able to fight with me and kill me, then we will be your servants. But if I prevail against him and kill him, then you shall be our servants and serve us.’ And the Philistine said, ‘I defy the ranks of Israel this day. Give me a man, that we may fight together.’ When Saul and all Israel heard these words of the Philistine, they were dismayed and greatly afraid.”

The Philistines, through Goliath as their show of force, were effectively maintaining a degree of peace through strength, deterring Israel’s attack and filling them with fear. Then God sent David, at the time just a young shepherd boy, to fearlessly stand in His name and strike down the champion of the Philistines. 1 Samuel 17:45–47 records David declaring to Goliath,

“… You come to me with a sword and with a spear and with a javelin, but I come to you in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the LORD will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you down and cut off your head. And I will give the dead bodies of the host of the Philistines this day to the birds of the air and to the wild beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a God in Israel, and that all this assembly may know that the LORD saves not with sword and spear. For the battle is the LORD’s, and he will give you into our hand.”

The power that man displays is assumed, it’s temporary, and it’s ultimately hollow. The power of God is absolute – whether He reveals Himself through driving winds and pillars of fire, through miraculous healings and death-defying resurrections, or if He only allows Himself to be glimpsed, the low whisper that is ignored by so many, His strength is perfect, and so the peace that He offers is perfect. We can understand the depth of this perfect peace, that defies human expectation and understanding through the reference in today’s passage to the, “day of Midian.” There’s an observable cycle throughout Israel’s history: God’s people are in a lowly position (they’re slaves in Egypt), God, through His might, and mercy delivers them from their compromised position (the ten plagues, the Passover, the parting of the Red Sea, and the Jews Exodus from Egypt), the people, either through assurance in their prosperity, temptation from other people groups, or poor faith, rebel against God, (the fearful refusal to enter the Promised Land and rebellion), God strips them of His blessings and returns them to a lowly state (the forty years in the wilderness, barred from the Promised Land), and then the cycle begins again as God raises His people up from their lowly position (the deliverance and conquest of the Promised Land). This cycle repeats across the Old Testament again and again, illustrating God’s justice, patience, and the persistent folly of man. The book of Judges highlights this repeatedly, with the people’s offenses escalating to the point that the tribe of Benjamin is nearly exterminated toward the end of the book. Judges 6, 7 and 8 show us Israel’s oppression under the Midianites, and the context for today’s reference. Without reading through three full chapters, let me give some excerpts to grant some perspective on the position of things when God lifted up the judge Gideon, and the position this lends us on the unstoppable power of His peace. Judges 6:1–6 says,

“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the LORD, and the LORD gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and the strongholds. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and the Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel and no sheep or ox or donkey. For they would come up with their livestock and their tents; they would come like locusts in number—both they and their camels could not be counted—so that they laid waste the land as they came in. And Israel was brought very low because of Midian. And the people of Israel cried out for help to the LORD.”

After rebelling against God and being subjected to the rule of an enemy people group, we see the nation of Israel reduced to living in caves and starving. In the midst of this, God raises up Gideon – the youngest son, of the weakest clan in the half tribe of Manasseh. And yet Gideon shows himself to be faithful to God – he’s timid at times, and from the reader’s perspective, he can seem unreasonably anxious, but God uses this unassuming man to great victory, because God is not limited by Gideon’s ability. After he speaks with the angel of the Lord, Judges 6:22–24 says,

“Then Gideon perceived that he was the angel of the LORD. And Gideon said, ‘Alas, O Lord GOD! For now I have seen the angel of the LORD face to face.’ But the LORD said to him, ‘Peace be to you. Do not fear; you shall not die.’ Then Gideon built an altar there to the LORD and called it, The LORD Is Peace. To this day it still stands at Ophrah, which belongs to the Abiezrites.”

We as fallen people do not make our own peace – we can’t even imagine or devise what true peace would look like in our lives. Rather peace is a gift, a blessing delivered from God out of His abundant mercy and steadfast love. However humanity has a terrible habit of taking what God has given us and imagining that we’ve obtained it for ourselves. Judges 7:1–2 goes on to say,

“Then Jerubbaal (that is, Gideon) and all the people who were with him rose early and encamped beside the spring of Harod. And the camp of Midian was north of them, by the hill of Moreh, in the valley. The LORD said to Gideon, ‘The people with you are too many for me to give the Midianites into their hand, lest Israel boast over me, saying, “My own hand has saved me.”’”

Despite the fact that it is God who will deliver victory, that it is not by the strength of their arm, but the will of their God that the people will be made victorious, there are too many men, and they will deceive themselves into thinking they have claimed their own freedom. And so God instructs Gideon to send home all the men who are afraid, and in what I see as a shocking display of honesty, 22,000 men leave Gideon’s army and return home, while 10,000 remain. This is still too many, and the men will think that they’ve driven out the Midianites by their own might. We do this to ourselves in our own pursuit of peace. Regardless of how insurmountable our circumstances may be, we’re always just a step away from imagining that we have persevered, that we’ve found peace through our own strength, good judgement, and wisdom. And so God has Gideon pare down the army even further, having the men drink from the water nearby, and separating those who bent down to drink directly from the water (which not to judge too harshly, but sounds like the dumbest possible way to drink from a body of water), from those who scooped the water with their hands and brought it to their mouths. After this, Gideon is left with the three hundred men who scooped the water in their hands as his army. To put it in perspective as to just how outmatched Israel was with their 32,000 before anyone was sent home, Judges 7:12 describes the army they came against, saying,

“And the Midianites and the Amalekites and all the people of the East lay along the valley like locusts in abundance, and their camels were without number, as the sand that is on the seashore in abundance.”

Victory over this force with an army of 32,000 would have been a legitimate miracle – victory with 10,000 men would have been a further miracle – but it reveals the hardness of heart found among men, and self-aggrandizing deception we’re capable of this army had to be so small for them to see and know the work of God’s hand among them. This is what Isaiah brings us back to in today’s passage – miraculous deliverance. The yoke of oppression removed, and the staff and rod of incessantly oppressive sin broken. This is the imagery that is delivered through Christ, the Good Shepherd who walks as a Light before and behind us in the darkness, His rod and staff, not berating us, but comforting and defending us. Jesus says in Matthew 11:28–30,

“Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

This is what we’re brought to, what we’re freed from oppression into, through the victorious and absolute peace of God. The Lord used His servant Gideon to great success, but this miraculous peace did not endure, because the people again rebelled. While the miraculous nature is the same, this is not the kind of peace that Isaiah promises, because what God delivers through Christ is lasting and permanent. As we read,

“For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire.”

This is the same message as Isaiah 2:4, which is later mirrored in Micah 4:3,

“He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore.”

 The marching boots of war, the blood-soaked clothes of battle no longer have a place, there’s no need for them. They are good for nothing but to be burned, because the peace that Christ delivered has put an end to war – His victory has brought the good news of absolute peace through His absolute strength. It doesn’t make sense to have peace when facing down an enemy force who vastly outnumbers us. It doesn’t make sense to know peace in the midst of trials and suffering, while loved ones leave us, while our mortal bodies fail us, while the world hates us – sin is the dark, pervading force on this earth, and in its midst, how can we possibly know peace? We can’t, because all we know is the brutal battering of defeat – but Christ, who is perfectly and eternally victorious delivers His peace to us. As He is Hope to the hopeless, He is Peace against all odds, against all explanation, because His victory is perfect and absolute.

2. The Assurance of True Peace

The peace of God does not play by the “rules” that we imagine as the peace of man, because the peace of man is flawed and broken, while the peace of God is perfect. Any peace, respite, calm, or prosperity is a blessing, and yet the more we feel the need to tinker and meddle with the calm that God has given us within the midst of the storm of the world, the more we impose our will upon what He has blessed us with, the more we foul what is pure. Part of this, apart from our sin nature itself, is our temporal nature, which despite our fleeting mortal lives, our sinfulness encourages us to place our confidence in. James 4:13–16 puts this beautifully, saying,

“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’ As it is, you boast in your arrogance. All such boasting is evil.”

As it pertains to this, a proper Biblical perspective makes one thing absolutely clear – you cannot rely on yourself. You can’t “be a good person” on your own, you can’t save yourself, you can’t save your family, you can’t bring peace into your life or the lives of those around you. And even if you imagine that you could live your life as close to perfect as possible, as obedient to the will of God as any sinful man has ever lived, you’re going to die… Well, that’s all I’ve got, Merry Christmas everybody!.. No, thankfully, that’s not the end of it all – we are, thank God, not dependent upon ourselves, we are not forsaken and left alone to bear an eternal weight we cannot hold. We are not our peace, Christ is our peace, and He has brought this to us. Paul writes in Ephesians 2:13–17,

“But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility by abolishing the law of commandments expressed in ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near.”

This is the One who came for us, the One whose titles and attributes we read of in today’s passage – of Jesus Christ, God made flesh. God who came into the world, not as a sword wielding warrior, or a scepter wielding emperor, but as an infant, born in a manger. The Son entered the world, lowly and humble, displaying from His absolute power a supreme humility. As Paul wrote in Philippians 2:4–7,

“Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others. Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

 God has nothing to prove, no one’s acceptance to earn, no approval to gain – He’s God – perfect and eternal and entirely assured in Himself before the foundations of the world were laid, before the stars shone in the sky, before time itself began. This, maximally powerful, maximally humble, perfect, and holy Creator is the One who is our Peace. The governments of our present world fade in time, but what we see as lasting is that which rests upon His shoulder. Jesus says to the church at Philadelphia in Revelation 3:12,

“The one who conquers, I will make him a pillar in the temple of my God. Never shall he go out of it, and I will write on him the name of my God, and the name of the city of my God, the new Jerusalem, which comes down from my God out of heaven, and my own new name.”

This is a glorious promise of stability, of permanence, and of eternally belonging in the presence of God. But in all the things that Jesus promises to the one who conquers among the seven churches, we see things that draw us closer to Him, make us more like Him, and secure our eternal position by His mighty hand. Jesus is the eternal pillar before we are ever included in the temple of God, the One upon whom all stability and order perfectly rests. We know that we can be entirely assured in Him, in the promise of His peace, because, as His titles are listed we can see that He holds authority that belongs to God and God alone.

“… his name shall be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”

Isaiah 28:29 says,

“This also comes from the LORD of hosts; he is wonderful in counsel and excellent in wisdom.”

This parallels the Lord of hosts, the God of the angel army, the Lord, and Master, and King, surrounded by worshiping seraphim, to the peace bringing, wise and Wonderful Counselor, who is Mighty God, who is the Eternal Father, who is the source and governing force behind true peace. We can trust in Him – beyond powers and institutions, beyond governing bodies and judicial systems, beyond tribe and friend and family, and beyond ourselves. We can be absolutely assured in Him, in His promised peace because He is absolute, because, to quote the children’s song,

“He’s got the whole world in His hands.”

This is the Liberator, the One who is Beginning and End, and All in All. This is the One who is Peace, who brings a peace so profound, so absolute and assured that we can’t fully wrap our minds around it.

3. The Permanence of True Peace

Daniel 7:13–14 shows us the oneness between the Father and the Son through their identical power, as the Son of Man is presented before the Ancient of Days,

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

I’ve spent my fair share of time thinking about eternity. It used to terrify me – being a temporal being, feeling so anchored in time, trying to imagine time without end was incomprehensible. If I thought about it too hard, I would get dizzy, my breath would catch in my chest, and I would be seized by pure terror of something that is entirely unknown, and completely unavoidable. I don’t have this same relationship with eternity now. It’s still a subject I approach with caution – contemplating it without reverence and prayerful respect still gives me little jabs of the old unease sometimes – but it’s something that spending more time in God’s Word, and in prayer with Him has begun to bring more and more comfort over time. It’s not that I suddenly understand eternity – the clock on my computer attests to the fact that I’m still very much moored in time, and I can’t process reality without time – but what God has done is allowed me to understand Him better. That’s not to say that I understand Him – His ways and thoughts are too high for me to comprehend, but His Word and His Spirit have certainly brought me closer to Him than I was in the past. There’s a lot (an infinite amount actually) that I don’t know about eternity, but what I do know is that it’s going to be amazing, and whatever I can possibly imagine, it’s going to be better than that. This isn’t some sugar coating, wish fulfillment perspective – I force no concepts or ideals onto eternity, but just go off of what is explicitly revealed in Scripture, and all the Word explains is that there is no negative. Eyes and minds opened, flesh made new and redeemed – no sickness, no suffering, no pain, no end to the Peace that reigns in our very presence. In this life, bound by this flesh, we can’t comprehend eternity, we can only know God in part, and we can’t truly understand the peace that has been delivered to us – but this doesn’t prevent God from bringing its fullness to bear within us through His Spirit. Philippians 4:4–7 tells us,

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, rejoice. Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.”

There is no peace that makes sense in the midst of the world – in war and famine, cancer and sickness, hatred and violence and all manner of abuse, in a place where sin is glorified and righteousness is maligned, how could we possibly make sense of peace? In a place where all that seems reasonable, all that logic would tell us to do is despair, to weep, and wail, and beg for death to come sooner rather than later so that we might be rid of this mortal suffering, how can peace prosper? In us, it can’t. In Christ, it defies human understanding, it surpasses the rationale of mortal minds – God’s Peace is perfect, and holy, and righteous, and all enduring, it never flags, never fails, but is victorious in all things at all times, it is more assured than the sunrise in the morning, or the starlight at night, and it is permanent – today, tomorrow, stretching on to endless eternity. In it we persevere, in it we know triumph beyond understanding, because though we remain in the world, we are no longer in step with the world. Because their hope is not our Hope, their peace is not our Peace, as we stand in the eternal assurance of the Son of God, the King of kings, Lord of lords, and Prince of perfect Peace.

Pastor Landon’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nmgfyg_R4k4