How many of you look forward to Christmas? How many of you say it is your favorite holiday out of the whole year? How many of you start listening to Christmas music before Thanksgiving? (You can’t become a member at EFC if you do! LOL) The anticipation repeats itself every year. Dalilah leads the way with Christmas music on the radio. Lights are going up, decorations are put out. The hunt for Christmas trees begins. The debate over a real or a fake tree continues. December’s baked goodies ruin the diet you started as last year’s new years resolution (that is if you didn’t quit the diet by March!). Every year we look forward to the light shows, the snow, the trans-siberean orchestra concert, the Christmas plays, nativity scenes, time with family, traditions, giving and receiving gifts. The anticipation grows leading up to Christmas.
Think about this though: what we look forward to each year at Christmas is the holiday where we look back – look back to the actual event of the birth of Jesus Christ, the Savior of the world.
Today, however, I want us to take a different perspective. I want to take us back before Christ was actually born. I want us to go back 700 years before the Word took on flesh (John 1:1), before He hid His divine glory in human form, before the fullness of time (Gal. 4:4). I want us to go back to the time when people were looking forward to the actual event. They weren’t waiting for the annual holiday that commemorated the entrance of the Savior into the world, they were waiting for it to actually happen. We know when our holiday comes every year, but, they didn’t know when Messiah would come. Because of God’s promises to a nation, there was great expectation woven into the people of that nation.
To do this, I want us to turn to Isaiah 9:6. As you’re turning there I will give us the context. Isaiah is a major prophet in the OT. His book is 66 chapters long. Isaiah means “Jehovah is Salvation”, and much of the content of Isaiah’s prophetic book deals with God’s salvation of the nation of Israel. “My salvation is on the way” (51:5); “I am He who blots out your transgressions and remembers your sins no more” (43:25); “In that day you, Israel, will say: ‘Surely God is my salvation’ and you will draw water from the wells of salvation.” (12:2). “In repentance and rest is your salvation” (30:15).
Furthermore, Isaiah speaks of the Savior, Messiah, more than any other OT book. He will be born of a virgin (7:14); He is both the Root and the Branch of Jesse (11:1, 10). He is the one whom the Spirit of the Lord will rest on (11:2; 42:1) and in whom the Lord delights (42:1). He is the servant of the Lord who suffers for the sins of the nation of Israel, the one who was “pierced for their transgressions and crushed for their iniquities.” (53).
I find it interesting that Isaiah’s name relates to salvation, and the Messiah he spoke so much about would have the name “Jesus”, a name of salvation. Jesus means “the Lord Saves”. Since this is a book with such a strong theme about salvation, this is why Isaiah has been called “the evangelical prophet”.
Israel is not doing well when Isaiah speaks. They are guilty of idolatry of the worst kinds. The nation has been divided and there is a northern kingdom and a southern kingdom. At the time of Isaiah the northern kingdom is invaded and swept away by the Assyrians and it would be almost another 50 years and the southern kingdom would be invaded and swept away by the Babylonians.
Isaiah lived and ministered 700 years before Christ was born and about 250 years after David’s reign over Israel. Isaiah, along with all of Israel, would be anticipating the famed descendant of David, the Messiah, whom God promised would come. And it is of this descendant, this coming Ruler, the Messiah, that Isaiah speaks of in chapter 9.
So what did Isaiah anticipate? When Christmas would finally come, what was he (and the rest of the nation) expecting?
A Son
First off, they expected a Son. Isaiah says, “To us a child is born, to us a son is given.” Here we have one of the great and famous verses relating the Incarnation of God’s Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. I notice 3 things.
First is the humanity of of this child. Jesus Christ was human in every way. Look at how it says, “a child is born”. He was born into the world like everyone else – through a woman. Jesus Christ was a man in every sense. Hebrews 2:14 says, “Since the children have flesh and blood , He too shared in their humanity…” John 1:14 says those famous words, “And the Word of God became flesh and dwelt among us…” Philippians 2:7 says He was “made in human likeness and found in appearance as a man.” John warned about people who taught Jesus did not come in the flesh and said “Every spirit that acknowledges Christ came in the flesh is from God but every spirit that does not is the spirit of antichrist…” Out goes Gnosticism, which taught Jesus did not come in a real physical body.
Jesus Christ was that son, and He was fully human. Romans 8 says, “God sent his own son in the likeness of sinful flesh…”
Sidebar: Let me clarify that this does not mean he was sinful like every other human being. He was human, like every other human being, but Jesus was unlike every other human being in that he did not have the sin nature and never committed sin. When it says “likeness of sinful flesh” he came looking like humans in the flesh, being human physically, but the spiritual reality was he was without sin.
Sometimes people have the mistaken notion that Jesus had a sin nature that made him want to sin but He didn’t actually sin because his divine side “kept” him from sinning. But that is a heresy called “Christadelphianism.” Jesus was without sin in the absolute sense: he neither committed any sin, and he did not have any sin nature within him that made him want to sin. I use the illustration: imagine a forest where every tree has a disease that kills it. Then imagine a tree planted right in the middle of the forest that is untouched by the disease. The tree is a tree in every sense, just like every other tree. But it is not infected with the disease that every other tree is infected with. Jesus is the tree. He is human like us in every way that makes us human. Which leads to another point:
To be human does not require you have a sin nature. Just like being a tree does not require being diseased to be a tree. Sometimes people think that because Jesus became human he must have had a sinful nature because humans have a sinful nature. But we humans have a sinful nature not because we were created that way, as though sin was essential to being human, but instead sin infected us after we were created. It is the Fall that has resulted in sin entering into the human condition, but sin is alien from God’s creation. Adam and Eve were created without sin, but they were fully human. When we are resurrected we will not have the sin nature be part of our new bodies and we will be fully human. Sin is not something essential to human nature. Humanity will reach perfection when sin is removed. The One who will make us perfect came as a perfect human, without the sin nature and without ever having committed any sin.
So when this child came, and when this son was given, he was common in his humanity but he was absolutely unique from all other humans in that he was untouched by sin and never touched sin. This child and this son would indeed be fully a human child and human son. He would come in the flesh.
Secondly, not only was he human, but we see also in this verse His deity. It says “a son is given.” He would be the son of the woman (Gen 3), the son of Mary; the son of David, and the son of the nation of Israel. But over and above all that He would be the Son of God. Gabriel declared to Mary in Luke 1:31-35 “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.” On trial, the high priest would press Jesus, “Are you the Son of the Blessed One?” To which Jesus responded, “Yes.” And it was that answer that got him killed because the Jews understood that the Son of God title meant deity. A child is born – a son is given. THE SON OF GOD is given. Psalm 2 says, “You are my Son, and today I have become your father.” On
Thirdly, this Son was particularly for Israel. Isaiah 9:6 says, “To US a child is born, to US a child is given.” In this section Isaiah is speaking as a 3rd party about what God is doing to Israel (v3) and then in verse 6 he speaks as an Israelite, Israel as a nation speaking about what God is doing. The nation expected a son to be born within the nation, and to be born for the nation. The angel told Joseph, “You are to give him the name ‘Jesus’ because he will save HIS PEOPLE from their sins.’” His people in that context was Israel, the nation.
This is where the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31 comes into play. Turn with me to Jeremiah 31. The NC was promised to Israel, and the NC promises God will forgive all their sins. “This is the covenant I will make with the people of ISRAEL….I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.” What would Jesus say at the Last Supper, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood…” This Son was given to Israel and He would be born. And he would be born to die for the sins of His people. Israel says in Isaiah 53, “The punishment that brought us peace was on Him. By His wounds we are healed. We all like sheep have gone astray, each of us to our own way. And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all.” The NC would be established in the blood sacrifice of the ultimate Lamb, the Lamb of God, the Son of God. Which is why John the Baptist cried out and pointed at Jesus when he saw him, “Look! Look! The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world!” The NC would provide the full and permanent cleansing of sin, pardon from all guilt, giving of the Holy Spirit, and fellowship with God. This could only be accomplished by the blood of the Holy One from God, Jesus Christ. Without blood there is no forgiveness of sins. This sacrifice of the Son of God for sins is captured in the most famous and recognized verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world that he gave [blood sacrifice on the cross] His one and only Son so that whoever believes in Him would not perish but have everlasting life.”
CONCLUSION: You are closer than you think
Christmas is getting closer each day. For some people it’ll be late Christmas eve and they’ll be wrapping presents wondering how it got here so fast again. In the OT, they were closer than they realized too. Each year was another year closer to the coming of the child, the Christ-son. Its the same today: you are closer than you realize. You put off Christ again and again, thinking you have all the time in the world. But the time is at hand. It is closer now than you realize.