Is Peace On Earth Possible?

Isaiah 9:1-6

Slip up your hand. We want to put a Bible in your hand. Isaiah, chapter 9: Look at verse 2. “The people who walk in darkness will see a great light. For those who live in a land of deep darkness, a light will shine. You will enlarge the nation of Israel, and its people will rejoice. They will rejoice before you as people rejoice at the harvest…” that’s just a powerful metaphor there, “…and like warriors dividing the plunder.” That’s not the kind of metaphors we experience because it used to be you only got certain fruits in certain seasons, and it was always an exciting thing when the harvest came about. I guess probably the closest thing you and I might come to this is exciting walking through Whole Foods and discovering the new apples are in.

“For you will break the yoke of their slavery and lift the heavy burden from their shoulders. You will break the oppressor’s rod, just as you did when you destroyed the army of Midian.” It’s interesting he reflects back to what happened with Midian because there’s something he is pulling out of their history. They were defined by these narratives of deliverance. They rehearsed the stories. The Passover story was something that every family… They did not depend upon the priest to tell the story. It was the responsibility of the house to tell the story. The most significant religious supper they had did not happen down at the temple; it happened in the home.

Built into that process was a section where the children stood up and said, “Father, why is this night different than any other night?” It was the responsibility of the head of the household to explain why the Passover mattered, what was meant by the exile, what it meant for that whole thing. It’s so important.

He looks back to Midian and Gideon, and I don’t have time to get into this, but if you know that whole story of Judges and Gideon, they were in a time of deep oppression from the Midianites, and God speaks to Gideon. Gideon is down in the threshing floor. He’s hiding out. He’s taking his last little group of wheat he has to eat, and the angel of the Lord appears to him and says, “Hey, great, mighty man of valor!”

It’s in that place and in that time that God reveals Himself by the name Jehovah Shalom. This is where he is going to go, this whole idea of wholeness and peace. Verse 5: “The boots of the warrior and the uniforms bloodstained by war will all be burned. They will be fuel for the fire.” This is something that Isaiah keeps referring to. Isaiah’s poetic abilities are unsurpassed in all of literature. He uses so many just emotional metaphors.

This one right here is like they’re taking their uniforms of battle that are stained, and they’re just burning them up. They don’t need them anymore. No more military uniforms; it’s done. Later on, he’s going to use this metaphor of beating the sword into a plow. If you just contemplate the power of that story, let that picture, that image capture your brain for a minute.

You have this old soldier, and he has seen war, and he has this sword he has carried into battle numbers of times, and it’s dented, it’s stained, it’s been with him. He has it up on the wall. He walks over and he pulls this sword off the wall and pulls it out, and he walks out to the barn, and he lights a fire, and he heats up in the forge, and he sticks that sword down into the fire, and it turns red hot. He takes a hammer out and wraps it around the anvil, and just Bam! Bam! Bam! “What are you doing?” “I’m making a plow. We’re just going to raise crops now.” This is what Isaiah says, “That nations will study war no more.” You know, we’re going to have to turn West Point into like an agricultural studies center.

Notice what he says in verse 6. “For a Child is born to us, a Son is given to us. The government will rest on His shoulders. And He will be called: Wonderful Counselor…” That’s where we went last week with the names of God. When Simeon sees the Child, he calls Him the “consolation of Israel.” This is the comfort. This is the messianic hope. He’s going to be the Wonderful Counselor. This is all out of that whole Isaiah 40 passage where there’s this change of tone, where there’s this prophetic present tense statement. “Comfort My people. Comfort My people. Cry in the wilderness. Make a way straight in the desert. Straighten the roads. Raise up the low places. Lower the higher places for your King, your sovereign Lord comes to you.”

There’s this whole inner lacing that is going on. It’s going to be in a Child, and He’s going to be the “…Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God…” which reflects that whole Elohim idea, “…Everlasting Father…” and then he uses this phrase, “…Prince of Peace. His government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and justice from the throne of His ancestor David for all eternity.”

I don’t know if you get the message in this, but if this is a literal understanding of what is going to happen, Jesus Christ, when He comes back… Listen, a lot of what has been preached and believed about salvation is kind of an elevator condo to the cloud thing. You know, you say the prayer, you get in the water, you join the church, you die, and the elevator goes up to the condo in the cloud, and there you live in the condo in the cloud forever and ever.

What happens to earth? Well it burns up. It’s gone. All this is worthless. Listen, there is going to be a refining of earth, but you do realize redemption is going to take back all of earth…all of earth. You do realize you’re not going to live as some disembodied spirit out into cosmic space somewhere. That’s not the Christian faith; that’s Buddhism.

The Christian faith is that you’re going to be resurrected with a resurrection body, and this literal earth is going to be completely redeemed and taken completely back. I’m excited about that. I kind of like stuff down here. Don’t you like some of this stuff? Like, I like peaches! It would be sad to me to be like up in the condo somewhere in the cloud without a body and you can’t put your teeth into a peach. No! No! I like that!

I like grits. We’re going to have grits. We’re going to eat stuff. There’s going to be this massive party. We’re going to have bodies that are going to be better…much, much better…than the bodies we have now! There’s going to be this rule, and He’s going to rule. Now you can say, “Ah, that’s just all symbolic.” Well I don’t believe it.

Now notice what it says here. “The passionate commitment of the Lord of Heaven’s Armies will make this happen!” Now then, I’m reading that out of the New Living. If you grew up with the Christmas story, you’ve read this story, and the way it reads in the older translations is, “The zeal of the hosts of heaven will make this happen.” The zeal of the hosts of heaven.

Now I don’t know what your language patterns are, but I actually can’t remember the last time I used the word zeal…maybe zealous. “Boy, there’s a zealous person.” The Lord of hosts doesn’t really describe much to me. What this is describing is that God is a cosmic Commander of this cosmic army, and the One who is the Commander of the angelic armies has decided this is going to happen. So it’s going to happen.

So let’s go over to chapter 2 of Luke because how does this Prince of Peace look? What does this look like? Now if you have your Bible, just look at Luke for a minute. Look at Luke, chapter 1, verse 1. “Many people have set out to write accounts about the events that have been fulfilled among us. They used the eyewitness reports circulating among us from the early disciples.”

Now Luke was a companion of Paul, and he talks about gathering all this firsthand account. He was a brilliant historian. The first story has to do with John the Baptist and Zechariah. If you take notes in your Bible, you might circle that word Zechariah. Sometimes people translate that as “God remembers.” It really would be better translated “God never forgets,” that God keeps His promises.

Then you find this Gabriel coming into Nazareth, into this village, and having this conversation with Mary and then telling her what’s going to happen here. Then Elizabeth, and then you have this magnificent song that is just packed with Scripture. It’s packed with passages out of the Psalms. Then Zechariah’s prophecy.

Then, chapter 2, look at verse 1. There’s that whole birth narrative. It gives you what happens there, how it happens, what goes on. But I want to move down into verse 8 because we’re kind of focusing in on this Prince of Peace. This is where this is announced here.

Verse 8: “That night there were shepherds staying in the fields nearby, guarding their flocks of sheep. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord appeared among them, and the radiance of the Lord’s glory surrounded them. They were terrified, but the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news…'” That’s that gospel, euaggelion. It’s the good news. It’s the Roman war word that the Empire has arrived.

“‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people…'” you see another couple of names of God, of Jesus that is here, “‘…The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord…'” Sometimes people say, “Why did God send a Savior?” and the simple reason is because we needed saving.

He “‘…has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize Him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.’ Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others…” see this? “…—the armies of heaven—…” This again goes back to Isaiah 9, “…praising God and saying, ‘Glory to God in highest heaven…'” this is a divine decree, “‘…and peace on earth to those…'” now I’m reading this out of the New Living, “‘… with whom God is pleased.'”

If you read one of the older translations, it says, “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Now that’s hard for us to get exactly what that means, and I think part of it goes back to that whole idea of that older translation “good will to men.” I think we kind of think, “Peace on earth, good will to men,” and Christmas is a time when people do nice things for people, and they do! It’s always a lot of fun.

It’s amazing. People will do just things they won’t do all year long, but they’ll do them on Christmas, and it’s just a wonderful thing. But that’s really not what it’s talking about. It’s not talking about, “Peace on earth, be nice to each other.” This is a divine decree from the Lord of hosts. It is decreeing like the Pax Romana, peace on earth. The New Living says, “…those with whom God is pleased.”

Literally what it’s describing is those on whom God’s favor rests, which also doesn’t actually explain what it means to us, but what it literally means is those whom God has blessed, those whom God has graced…God has graced. Peace on earth to those whom God has blessed.

Now if you’re like a Calvinist or Reformed…don’t raise your hand; it’s okay. You know who you are. This is your verse. I mean, this is what He said He’s going to do. You have been graced. It’s the sovereign will of God. He has just graced you, and that is an important concept. You do know we are not saved, we are not born again, we are not blessed because we deserve it. That’s important.

Sometimes we get this idea, Well you know, yeah of course God would bless me. I’m a nice person. Listen, if you don’t read about grace sometimes and go to yourself, That can’t be true, then you don’t get it because it’s way too good to be true. “For by grace are you saved through faith,” and then he says, “and that is not of yourselves. That is a gift of God.”

Now I’m not here to explain this. I’m just telling you. Even the fact you have faith is a gift of God. The fact you have this hunger for God, you search for God, God puts this in your heart, and He says, “Search for Me,” and you go, I need God. I’ve been searching for God. You don’t realize truly it’s just God searching for you. Now okay, I’m not here to explain that. I’m just telling you that’s what He says.

“When the angels had returned to heaven, the shepherds said to each other, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem! Let’s see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’ They hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing Him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this Child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all
these things in her heart…” That word is sometimes translated treasured these things in her heart, she pondered these things, “…and thought about them often.” I hope when you’re reading this, you’re actually hearing Mary’s words because this is the inspired, inerrant Word of God.

But it’s a very interesting thing. Luke tells us he collected these firsthand accounts. So nobody knew this but Mary. Luke is going, “What did you think?” She goes, “I just packed it all down in here, and I held onto it so tightly.”

“The shepherds went back to their flocks, glorifying and praising God…” this is what they’re getting out of the angels by the way. It’s the same thing the angels do, “…for all they had heard and seen. It was just as the angel had told them.”

So here we go. The title here is Is Peace On Earth Possible? There are three big questions I want us to kind of wrestle with through this passage…Who were these shepherds, what happened to them, and why does it matter? I think all of that is going to reflect up on that question, Is Peace On Earth Possible?

1. Who were these shepherds? We tend to kind of romanticize shepherds. They were out in the fields, and they were guarding their flocks. Shepherds by rabbinical tradition were not allowed to give testimony in court because they were somewhat thought of as a marginalized part of society. They were not thought of as maybe the sharpest knife in the drawer. We tend to kind of romanticize this shepherd thing, but the reality is that being a shepherd was not… Like if your kid said to you, “I want to grow up and be a shepherd,” you would say, “Eh, I think you could do better than that. Come on.”

They were mostly illiterate. They were smelly. They were dirty. They slept outside. If you tried to take their sheep away, they threw rocks at you or hit you with a stick. They were kind of bad boys, and they hung out together and stood around the fire. It’s probably not like an intensive kind of work. It’s not like building a bomb or anything. I mean, they’re just like, “Baa, baa. Come baa-ack here.”

They were not… I’m going to get myself in trouble. They were like third shift workers. Have you ever worked the third shift? I have. When I was in college, I worked the third shift in a steel mill, and I’m going to tell you something. That’s a whole subculture of people. You work the third shift in a steel mill, these were the people with the lowest seniority and the least ability in the plant. If you were there, they just thought, Just don’t tear the place down while we’re gone. They really honestly didn’t expect huge production. They just didn’t want it to be on fire when they showed up in the morning.

When we started a church in Idaho, we didn’t have financial support. My wife worked for a couple of years, and I went to work as a bank security guard in a third shift. Let me tell you something. If you are working third shift in a bank in Idaho as a security guard, you don’t have lots of options in life. You’ve tried to be a soldier, and you were kicked out. You tried to be a policeman, and that didn’t work. The day shift wouldn’t take you. This was a whole subculture of people, and they walked around with rolled up copies of Mercenary Monthly magazine in their back pocket. It’s like whoa!

Shepherds! Shepherds! God appears to these shepherds…these smelly, dirty, uneducated, marginal people, but let me just say this to you: God has this propensity (I would even say a prejudice) toward these people. He has this tendency to pick extremely unlikely people that the world looks at and goes, “What good are they?” and He says, “Let Me show you.” He takes great glory in using what the world sees as absolutely unusable resources.

I remember we were over at the Cabrera’s this week, and Christy was dying. We were sitting out there, and I was talking to Alejandro, and Alejandro had invited me to come down to Peru and do this discipleship thing. We went down to the ocean, and we were walking along the Pacific, and there were some guys down there just cleaning the nets, and I said to Alejandro, “Would you trust those guys cleaning the nets, these fishermen, with the inner prize of reaching the world for Jesus?” You think, No! No! This is impossible! What is this about? Picking a bunch of fishermen, of shepherds? These shepherds were really not kingly kind of people.

2. What happened to them? It’s interesting what happens to them. There are three things that happen. One, it happens very quickly. It happens very, very fast. It says, “Suddenly,” and they are encompassed (I have some references there) with the radiance, the glory of the Lord.

Exodus 40…1 Kings 8: Those are passages describing the reality of the shekinah glory. These shepherds are out watching their sheep, and all of sudden just out of nowhere unexpectedly the glory of the Lord shows up, and an angel appears to them. It describes their reaction to this angel that appears to them. They are absolutely terrified.

A few months ago, some of us were in Israel, and we went down to Bethlehem and Palestine and Jordan, Jerusalem. There are some followers of Jesus. That’s a complicated conflict over there. If you think you understand it, you don’t. It’s really, really complicated. But there are some believers over there, and there are some Palestinians who are there. There’s not much work, and so they’re trying to find work and dignity. They particularly have targeted women who can’t get a job and particularly handicapped women.

They were working with this family, and this man had discovered he had cancer, and he asked this lady, “Could you possibly employ my youngest daughter?” She had already employed their youngest daughter, and he goes, “My other daughter.” She said, “Who are you talking about?” The family had had another daughter, kind of a young teen, pre-teen young girl, and he called her, and she crawled out from under the kitchen table.

This little girl lived under the kitchen table. This lady had been in the home numbers of time. Never knew there was another child. This girl, her hand was drawn up into almost like a claw, and the right side of her body was drawn in. Her face was completely emotionless, and when she crawled out from under the table, she looked at her and would not look at her in the face, and this lady walks over to her and tries to look at her in the eyes. She feels God’s call to this little child, and she says, “Can you come to work in the morning?”

She said she went home that night and she thought, What in the world am I going to get her to do? So when she came into work the next morning, they gave her the job. She said, “Can you use your left hand?” So she would take her hand, and she would load up the little packages. That’s all she could really do, and then they started moving her to where she could hold these carvings. They make them out of olive wood. This is where I got this stuff. She would hold it next to her, and she would rub it with sandpaper after the carving had been done.

They started praying over this little girl and praying with this little girl and telling her the stories of Scripture. She said, “Week after week after week we could see the change happening in this little girl’s face, and the emotions started coming into her face, and her hand even began to just loosen up, and the side of her body started loosening up.” I saw this girl. You would look at that girl right now, and you would think nothing is wrong with the girl at all. Isn’t that amazing?

But part of it comes from just dignity and loving someone and giving someone this chance. They carved this out, and this is like a sheep, but it looks kind of like a dog honestly. This is Mary. This is the manger, but it doesn’t have the baby Jesus in it because we’re not going to put the baby Jesus in it until Christmas Eve, you know. That’s the right way to do this, right? You Catholics know this, right? Baptists don’t know that. Catholics know you don’t put the baby Jesus in there until Christmas Eve night. This is the angel. Isn’t that sweet? Can you see this angel? This is sweet. Would you be afraid of this angel? Like, if this angel showed up, I would go, “How sweet! That’s a nice angel.”

I was at the house last night, and the grandkids were over, and I was thinking about this sermon actually, and so I had that angel. They’d gone to McDonald’s, and this is their toy. Can you see that? Now when you read the Bible… Okay, I know some of you are thinking, I don’t like where you’re going there, Buddy. Okay, look at this. They were…what? They were terrified. They were terrified.

Daniel in chapter 10 says, “Only I, Daniel, saw this vision. The men with me saw nothing, but they were suddenly terrified and ran away to hide.” Now you would not run away to hide here. “So I was left there all alone to see this amazing vision. My strength left me, my face grew deathly pale, and I felt very weak. Then I heard the man speak, and when I heard the sound of his voice, I fainted and lay there with my face to the ground. Just then a hand touched me and lifted me, still trembling, to my hands and knees. And the man said to me, ‘Daniel, you are very precious to God, so listen carefully to what I have to say to you. Stand up, for I have been sent to you.’ When he said this to me, I stood up, still trembling.”

Okay, here’s the problem when we think about angels: We think about naked babies with wings. That’s the Renaissance idea of angels. The Bible idea of angels is they are like extraterrestrial, cosmic warriors. You get this idea? We’ve romanticized the story to, “Oh, and the angels came, and everybody said, ‘O happy angel!'” No, the cosmic warriors show up, and they go, “Ah! Ah! Ah!” I don’t know, have you ever been in a situation where you were so afraid you fainted? Fainted! Fainted! Or soiled your pants!

Did anything ever happen to you that was so traumatic you threw up? Some of us said, “Oh yeah.” Yeah! I was almost in a wreck one time, and it scared me so badly, I had to pull over and throw up. I mean my whole stomach just like bleh! You’re like, “Oh, that’s really spiritual, isn’t it?” Okay, if you don’t get this, you are thinking the wrong guy. These aren’t Renaissance, nice little dressed angels. These are cosmic extraterrestrial angels! When you see them, you don’t go, “Oh my, that’s really sweet.” You’ll go, “Oh my, we are dead people!”

Now why is that important? Look at this. Verse 10 he says, “…the angel reassured them. ‘Don’t be afraid!’ he said. ‘I bring you good news that will bring great joy to all people. The Savior—yes, the Messiah, the Lord—has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize Him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.'”

Now look at verse 13. You see this same thing again. “Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others—the armies of heaven…” Now you get this? Not just like one extraterrestrial cosmic warrior. You have a whole troop of them. How many of them? It does not say, but Daniel describes it this way. He says, “I saw the Ancient of Days,” and he uses this number that’s always used to describe a number you can’t count. He says, “Ten thousand times ten thousand terminators!” You get it? If you see one, here’s what you can be sure of…there’s more because that’s just how they roll. They hang out together.

Have you ever been around some of these guys like black ops, Special Forces kinds of people? Listen, if you jump out of a plane a few times in the middle of the night three miles up with oxygen, and you sail into places unknown, there’s not a lot that scares you anymore. I preached one time down in this place where half the church was Rangers, and it was like the strangest group of people I’ve ever been around in my life. They said, “You want to go over and work out?” I said, “I don’t want to be with y’all at all! I don’t even want to know you guys exist. What are they going to do with you when this thing is over? They’re going to have to get a country just for you.”

But it’s interesting what happens here. He says these angels show up, and what do they say? They say, “Peace on earth.” This is not a request. This is a divine decree. “Peace on earth. God’s grace upon you.”

Now the Bible says a lot about angels. It tells us we’re not to worship them…Colossians, Revelation. I mean, John sees one, and he falls down. He’s going to worship him. This is John. I mean, John. He’s an apostle who followed Jesus around. He’s going to fall down and worship him. He goes, “Hey, get up. Don’t worship me. Only worship God.” You’re not to worship them.

But I’m going to tell you this: they’re real. Now I don’t know how you feel about this, but they’re real, and if you understand this, it actually changes a whole lot of perspectives. You know, there’s a story over in 2 Kings. Elisha is traveling around. He has this guy who’s in the school of the prophets who are traveling with him. Elisha is sleeping in that morning. The young prophet goes outside, and there are the Arameans and this King Ben-Hadad. He’s heard that the problem is Elisha has been telling the king what to do, so he just sends an army down there to take care of him.

This young prophet walks outside, and he just sees the whole place covered up with soldiers and chariots and they’re there to take him hostage. He goes back inside, and he says, “O Master, what shall we do now? O Master, what shall we do now?” I think a lot of people live in that world. They think that disaster has taken God by surprise. They do. They think, Oh, I had no idea Ben-Hadad was going to send all his chariots and warriors down there. You know what? Elisha could have gone out of there and gone, “Whoa! We’re in serious trouble here.” But you know what he did? He said, “Lord, open his eyes.”

You know why? Because true prophets count what other people discount, and all of sudden, God opens this man’s eyes, and he says, “The mountains are full of extraterrestrial chariots of fire!” He doesn’t even know how to describe what he sees. He just knows it’s not like anything he’s ever seen before. You know why? Because that’s just how angels roll. That’s how they do it.

3. Why does it matter now? What does that have to do with me? I remember this vividly. I was an eleven-year-old kid, and we used to live on Brownlee Drive, and there’s a big woods out behind the house. Have you ever been like spooked out by the woods? The woods can spook you out. They just can. They can just kind of spook you out because you don’t know what’s out there, and you know, you’re sitting there by the fire, and you hear something. Doo, doo, doo! “Man, what’s out there?” Do you ever like grow up and camp out and you tell axe murder stories, and then you’re like, Oh man, what if the axe murderer is out here?

I remember going to the house, and I’m sitting there in my bedroom that looks out over the window, and there’s the backyard there, and I call my mom, “Hey, Mom! What if there’s like an axe murderer out in the woods?” She goes, “There are no axe murderers out in the woods, son. You’re okay.” I mean, we didn’t even lock our doors. I mean, Tucker was like the safest place you could imagine. Of course, there were guns in the house, but…

She opened up her Bible, and she read Psalm 91 to me, and then she told me the verse in Psalms that says, “The angel of the Lord encamps around about those who fear Him.” She went back to bed, and I sat there and looked out that window, and I in my mind thought about all those angels camped out in my backyard. You know what? I’m going to tell you something. It was a complete paradigm shift for me…one hundred percent paradigm shift for me personally. You know why? Because I roll with a posse, and I refuse to be afraid if I have a posse of extraterrestrial, celestial bad boys all over the place.

Now you say, “Well how does that explain people dying and disaster?” Listen, when Jesus was going to the cross and standing before Pilate, He says, “Don’t you think I have 10,000 angels that all I have to do is call?” Do you know that one of these guys are really bad news if they got orders to take you down? One angel, he’s called the Death Angel, went through Egypt and killed somebody out of everybody’s house and all the animals. This is just one angel! Do you know in the book of Revelation, that one of these bad boys is going to come and take Satan and wrap him up and throw him in the bottomless pit. One of these bad boys! Hosts of heavenly angels. Armies! Extraterrestrial, cosmic warriors!

But you know what? That’s not even the best part. You know what the best part is? Jesus looked at the disciples and said, “I’m with you always. I am with you always.” I think if somehow we could even peer into that divine dimension for even one moment, peace would not only be possible, it would be impossible not to have it…totally impossible not to have it because peace doesn’t start out there; it starts in here. You have to know the Prince of Peace to experience peace.

Let’s pray: Father, thank You for You. We’re awed. We’re amazed. We love You. Lord, Your Word says in this world we should have trouble, but You’ve overcome the world. Your Word says to the disciples, “Peace I leave with you.” Your Word says, “Great peace have they who love Your law and nothing can take it away.” Lord, as we look back at these marginalized people You chose, Lord, we thank You for grace. We thank You for the Child. It’s a strange way to save the world, but it’s Your way, and You receive all the glory.

Lord, if there are those here this morning who’ve never received You as their Lord and Savior, King and Master, Prince of Peace, Lord, I pray You will speak that into their hearts this morning, and that we, like Simeon, will reach out and receive this Savior that we like the shepherds will go and find this thing and praise You forever and ever, amen.