Good News is Coming

And good morning, I'm René, one of the pastors here at TLC. Thanks for joining us live in the auditorium. We're joining us on Facebook live. We're joining us via video over in the venue service. Wherever you're joining us, we are super glad to have you with us. I want to invite you to grab the message notes that look like this. Good News for a Change is the name of our brand new Christmas series this year. And if you're joining us online, you can also download the notes on our website or on the TLC app, which you can get through the iTunes store.

Now, Good News for a Change, as I said, is the name of our new Christmas series, but since we're shifting gears here this weekend, right? The weekend after Thanksgiving is kind of the official cultural launch of the Christmas season. So I want to help you mentally shift gears a little bit. I want to start with a little Christmas music quiz. Are you ready for this? Raise your hand if you are ready for the Christmas music quiz here today. I want to ask you to shout out the answers if you think you can identify these Christmas songs in just a few little notes.

Like this first one. See if you can name this song associated with Christmas in just five notes. Listen. What song is that? It is Frosty the Snowman. So let's make this a little bit harder. That was too easy. Name this song in just four notes. Listen. It is Silent Night. You guys are really good. Those were too easy. Name this next song in just three notes, and since it's just three notes, it's actually the same three notes. So I'm going to repeat them twice just to give you a chance. Here we go. It's Jingle Bells. You guys are so good.

Okay, last one. Name this song associated in many minds as almost the soundtrack to Christmas in just two notes. And I'm going to repeat these two notes a couple of times just to give you a chance. Listen. Shout out the answer. It's the theme to Jaws. Many of us, that's the soundtrack to Christmas. Psychologically. It's going to eat me alive, right? Here it comes, the shark of shopping, right? And if you're not feeling that way about Christmas impending, you might be feeling that way about the new year. Like this last year has been so bad. What's going to wait for me in 2019?

That's exactly why we are doing this series. We are going to look at good news for a change. We're going to change the soundtrack to your Christmas and to your new year by looking at all the verses in the Bible that talk about the coming of Christ as good news for a change. I mean, the fact is lately in this country, we've just been swamped by bad news. In fact, psychologists have even coined a new term this year. This is brand new for what they are seeing in their patients. They call it headline stress disorder. This is a real thing, not a joke.

They say, quote, the 24-hour news cycle is causing anxiety, sadness, and hopelessness in more and more people. And this is like on a clinical level. The Journal of Experimental Psychopathology, a respected journal, said this is a real thing. It's a real syndrome. People can become almost addicted to bad news, and that is causing, quote, symptoms of acute stress, problems sleeping, mood swings, aggressive behavior, even symptoms of PTSD.

And this all comes from this 24-hour news cycle where anything bad that's going on anywhere, anytime, anyplace in the world, we're almost addicted to it, like to a drug. So what's the answer to all this bad news? Well, not putting your head, you know, in a hole somewhere. It's getting in touch with the good news that is in the Bible. And the Bible has a lot of credibility on this point because it was written mostly during a time of incredibly bad news. Wars and destruction and famine, but the prophets looked ahead to another time, to a time when God would send someone called the Messiah.

That was some mysterious figure from the future that the Lord would send one day to be the rescuer of the people. And what happened over time is that the prophets, the Hebrew prophets in Israel began to foretell the coming of the Messiah, as the people began to imagine the Messiah as kind of a great warrior on a white horse who would show up like a field general and he would win the ultimate battle for the nation of Israel and he would conquer the enemies militarily and politically.

Even though the prophets actually had a slightly different angle to the Messiah if you're really paying attention. But my point is, in the midst of all their bad news for centuries, the phrase good news was used 27 times in the Bible to describe the Messiah and his mission. In fact, there is no phrase associated more frequently with what we celebrate at Christmas, the advent of the Messiah, than the phrase good news.

And really in context in the Bible, written during a time of bad news, the idea is that the Messiah's coming is good news for a change. How relevant is this to what we're experiencing in our culture today? Now, just to give you a sense of the arc of this in the Bible, I put a few of these verses on the front page of your notes, all kinds of verses first of all from the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah was writing, get this, seven centuries before Jesus was born. And yet there are all kinds of prophecies in Isaiah about the Messiah associating him with good news.

I'll just read one to you out loud. He says, The Messiah himself will show up and will announce this, the spirit of the sovereign Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to proclaim, what? Good news to the poor. He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted. And so all these prophecies about the coming good news of the Messiah, and then seven centuries later, a priest named Zechariah is lighting candles in the dark interior of the temple, and suddenly he sees an angel.

And the angel said to him, I am Gabriel, and I've been sent to speak to you and to tell you the what? The good news. He's saying, the good news you've been waiting for, it's here. Now's the time. And next weekend we are going to examine this verse even more closely. And then Jesus is born, and angels announce, I bring you what? Good news that will cause great joy for all the people. And later in this series, we're going to look at that verse, and then when Jesus grows up, it says, Jesus traveled throughout the region of Galilee, teaching in the synagogues, announcing the good news about the kingdom. He's saying, you guys have been waiting and waiting and waiting for the Messiah to come with the good news, and it's happening.

And on the last weekend of this series, the last weekend of December, we're going to take a closer look at this verse. So there are all these verses describing the advent, the coming of the Messiah, as good news. And today as we launch this series, what I want to do is I'm going to go back 2700 years, right? 700 years before Jesus was born, and look at the consistent message of Isaiah, which in verse after verse is, good news is coming. Life will not be bad forever.

Now, what's he talking about? How is the coming of the Messiah good news for these people? That's a real important question, because again, the people were expecting that warrior figure to show up and do some good, old-fashioned, Old Testament smiting of the enemies of Israel. But this morning, I want to zero in on just three little verses kind of tucked away into one chapter of the book of Isaiah, where Isaiah gives little hints that the coming Messiah, to be sent by God, won't just be a human warrior, and he actually won't win his victory through war.

He's going to be more revolutionary than your stereotypical revolutionary. And listen, if you've been struggling with a little headline stress disorder yourself this year, feeling like, man, fires and politics and shootings and terrorists, and you're finding it hard to work up some Christmas cheer, I got to tell you the same exact things that made the Messiah good news for these people in Isaiah's time. It's going to make Christmas this year good news for you too.

So let's do a deep dive into Isaiah 9, just three verses, starting in verse 1, where Isaiah tells the people, the time of darkness and despair will not go on forever. And let me just pause right there before we go further, because some of you, that right there is the sentence that God wanted you to hear. Like he brought you here to hear that. So let me repeat it. The time, your time, of darkness and despair will not go on forever. You walked in today with a heavy load on your shoulders, and this promise is repeated many times in the Bible for all believers.

God has not given up on you. God never will give up on you. God still has a plan for you. God still loves you very much. God still knows what you're going through. God still cares about you. Times are tough now, but they are not going to last forever. Hang on. Don't give up. Don't quit. Don't despair, because better times are ahead. Now, there may be tough times for you in the immediate future, as there were for these people in Isaiah 9, but the message of the prophets to you too and to them is don't give up.

Isaiah goes on to say, Yes, the land of Zebulun and Naphtali will be humbled, but there will be a time in the future when Galilee of the Gentiles, which lies along the road that runs between the Jordan and the sea, will be filled with glory. Now, that was like astonishing to the people who first read this, but we don't really know what's Zebulun, what's Naphtali, what's Galilee of the Gentiles, what's the road? And so the impact is lost for us, but I really want you to get this. So put on that History Channel hat here. What's that mean, the land of Zebulun and Naphtali?

To give you the power of this imagery, I'm going to show you a satellite image with Europe and Africa and Asia. You kind of got your bearings there, right? Where is this on the globe? You kind of got that. Well, let's zoom in a little bit. In the ancient world in this area, there were empires like Rome and Greece and Babylon and Persia, Egypt, many, many more, and for thousands of years there was one little strip of land that all these empires fought over. Why? It's the only place on the planet where three continents overlap, that little strip of grain between the desert and the ocean.

And whenever armies from any of these ancient empires wanted to march north or south, and whenever their merchants wanted to travel north or south to make a little money, they always had to go through this one little north-south channel, kind of like Highway 1 and Santa Cruz. We all know about that, right? One north-south route. So let's zoom in on that little strip of land. This is Israel. Northern Israel, to be exact, it's Galilee. And that road that the verse talks about, that tied all those empires together, it went right through here between an area called Zebulun up in the hills and Naphtali down by the lake, the Sea of Galilee.

This road actually travels through one narrow valley that you could probably walk across in a couple of hours. It's called the Jezreel Valley. And the road goes, is bottlenecked right through here. And because of its location, because of this circumstance of geography, it just got hammered by army after army after army for thousands of years. There was war after war after war in this spot. In fact, right after Isaiah writes this verse, the Assyrian army would come in and take Israel captive. That is what he's talking about when he's talking about the land of Zebulun and Naphtali.

His point is this spot is kind of the icon of world trouble spots. Okay? In fact, historians say there's been more blood shed in the land of Zebulun and Naphtali, that valley, than any other place on earth. In fact, you might know that valley better by its New Testament name. Does anybody know what in the New Testament that valley is called? Armageddon. Armageddon, the word is the icon of war, right? The name means war and trouble and hardship and tragedy. And Isaiah is saying this place that is now known to you as the icon of trouble, the place that is deep in blood will instead one day be known for God's glory.

It was deep in sorrow, but it'll be soaked with glory, God's glory. Now, when did that happen? Well, Zebulun had a little town up in the hills called Nazareth and that's where Jesus grew up. And the region of Naphtali had a city named Capernaum where Jesus based his ministry. And in beautiful irony, the very thing that was this area's weakness became its strength because the world travels through here, right? And so, although Jesus never travels very far from here, the good news of Jesus spreads to the world, to the Gentiles, because the Gentiles from all these nations travel through here, they hear the good news, they become followers of the Jewish Messiah, and the glory of the God of Israel spreads through the whole world.

That is what Isaiah is seeing in the future when he says that verse and when he goes on to say the people who walk in darkness, what a dark place that was, will see a great light for those who live in the land of deep darkness. A light will shine because the light of the world, Jesus Christ, and his ministry would emerge from this area. Now, how is the Messiah going to emerge? How is the Messiah going to serve? Well, this is about to blow everybody's mind because the way Isaiah describes how the Messiah will bring glory to God is totally different from the warrior that the people assume the Messiah will be because how is God going to finally bring peace to the Armageddon Valley?

Well, it's got to be by the greatest, most fierce, most vicious warrior of all time, right? Isaiah says, wait a minute, skip to verse 6. For unto us a child is born. To us a son is given. And let me just stop right there for a second to announce something because for our family this last Monday, this exact thing happened. Our second grandson, Daniel Malone and his son, Fluffer, was born. Unto us a child is born. And to us a son was given. And mama and daddy and now big brother Freddie are doing just fine. I guess we got to study the Bible.

So let's continue. Um, Isaiah says, and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace. I want to look at these four surprising ways that this verse describes how the Messiah will be good news. Four little hints that the Messiah will be different than just a field general. And if right now in your life you're feeling like you are living in the land of darkness yourself, this is going to bring you so much hope.

Jot this down. First, it's saying that through the Messiah God guides me. That's the first thing in Isaiah's description and he will be called wonderful counselor. He's going to guide me and many of you right now need that desperately. Something is going on in your marriage, in your finances, in your health, in some relationship, in your private life, maybe something that nobody else knows about. Good news. The wonderful counselor is here to guide you.

Right now, through his Holy Spirit, through his word, the Bible, through his body, his church, the people of God, you say, how does the wonderful counselor counsel me, comfort me, guide me through those ways? Let me just give you one example. This famous man, George Frederick Handel, wrote the famous concert piece, of course, The Messiah, one of the most famous musicals that we sing at Christmas ever. And it was largely consisting of these very prophecies in Isaiah about the coming Messiah.

And of course, one of the most famous songs in The Messiah is about the exact verse we're studying today. That's part of the original manuscript in his own handwriting for unto us a child is born unto us a son is given. Now, you may not know that when Handel wrote this he was at a time of deep personal darkness. He'd gone completely bankrupt. His last couple of musical works were just flops. And he poured his money into them and all his money was gone.

He was living in this cheap little apartment in London and a lot of the friends who used to invite him to parties, you know, weren't inviting him anymore. So he lost his friends, lost his money. At his health, he had just had a stroke that had left him partially paralyzed. So, I mean, add all that up. He was at a time of just absolute despair, felt hopeless, and then a Christian friend of him gives him a handwritten list of all of the prophecies about the Messiah in the Hebrew Scriptures.

And Handel for some reason was just riveted looking up all these verses, reading them, and he ends up locking himself in his room to read all these prophecies for 23 days. Hardly eating or sleeping, his friends are like, George, are you okay? And he doesn't answer the door, but they can hear him moving around in there. He's just transfixed by these prophecies. Well, finally a friend is so worried about him that after more than three weeks of him in his room alone, he finally forces open the door, true story, and he sees Handel sitting down with tears just streaming down his face and he's clutching in one hand the music that he's been writing.

And he says this to his friend, I did think I did see all heaven before me and the great God himself. And his life was changed from that moment in every way. My personal theory is that the reason the music of The Messiah is so powerful is because in real time this man was writing as he was undergoing his own conversion. So you have this thrill of the light bulb coming on and this genius has the wherewithal to put that to music. He personally met the wonderful counselor. It's real.

In fact, let me just take a little risk here. I want to ask you a question. Raise your hands if you have ever, through the Bible, through a friend, through the Word of God, through the Holy Spirit, if you have ever known the comfort or the guidance of the wonderful counselor in your life, just go ahead and raise your hand if that's true and keep your hands up. And now I want everybody to just look around, look around the room, because there are some people right now in despair and your hands up that's giving them hope that this is not a joke. This is a real thing. Thank you. The wonderful counselor is here and he can help you.

You know, Jesus is the ultimate counselor because being human, he knows how I feel. And being God, he knows what I need, right? Being human, he never says, How could you do that? Because he knows he's been here yet without sin. And being God, he knows just what you need and he empowers you to change. So we spent most of our time at this first point, but Isaiah's first description is not and his name shall be called Wonderful Warrior, right? It's wonderful counselor. So already that's kind of a surprise about what the Messiah will be like and it gets even more surprising with each description.

Number two, he rescues me. He rescues me. Now you say, Well, the people were expecting that, but look at how it says the Messiah will rescue them. Isaiah says, And he will be called Mighty God. Now watch this, the root word used here for mighty in Hebrew is gibor, which means hero, a doer of great things. What comes to mind in our culture when most people hear the word hero these days? Probably something like Iron Man, right? Or Spider-Man, a superhero, but a human.

Now with that same idea, what do you think the people reading this for the first time thought of? Probably in their culture something like Moses or Joshua or David, a human superhero warrior, right? But watch this. This word for hero is combined in this verse with God, the Hebrew El, Isaiah saying the Messiah will be a hero far greater than some human hero. He will be the hero God. One scholar says the best way to translate this to get the sense is the one who brings order out of chaos because that's what God does. He's going to bring order out of your chaos.

Now, even more amazing. Watch this. This verse makes very clear that the hero God would first arrive as a child. In other words, he wouldn't come down from heaven fully formed as some angelic warrior wielding a fiery sword. The hero God is going to be born as a baby. This is mind-blowing. If you've never thought of this before, the mighty God who created order out of chaos when he spoke the whole universe into existence with a word will come to one of those specks of dust known as the planet earth that he created and he's going to come onto the surface of that planet in a form as real and as tiny and as tender as well as Daniel Malone Schlepper. Just as one convenient example.

In fact, let's run with this for a while, shall we? I love this picture of Daniel with his mama Kelly that I took less than a day after he was born on Tuesday. And when I saw her like this in this moment, this very natural pose, it reminded me so much of pictures of Mary and the baby Jesus that you see everywhere this time of year. In fact, if you're out shopping for religious imagery in your Christmas cards, you'll notice that this is the most common iconic religious image that's on Christmas cards, Madonna and Child. This captures artists' hearts and imaginations for centuries.

Now, let me take this further. That made me think this past week if you juxtapose all these common pictures of Madonna and Child with the other famous scene of Mary holding Jesus. There's one other famous scene that artists throughout the centuries have rendered. It's often called the Pieta. It's the older Mary cradling in her arms the lifeless body of her son after he's been taken down from the cross. And I thought if you put those two common images of Mary holding Jesus together, that's the meaning of Christmas right there. Because Mary's baby boy was born to die. He was born for a purpose to lay down his life for us all.

That and not leading an army is how he rescues us from our own sin. And we'll get back to that in just a second. But first it gets even more amazing. Isaiah keeps like ratcheting up the surprise factor about what the Messiah will be like because the third name in this verse implies he adopts me. He... I know nobody was expecting the Messiah to show up and say I'm going to adopt you into my family. Think about how astonishing this statement is. Unto us a child is born and he shall be called Everlasting Father. He's going to reveal the heart of God to us as Everlasting Father.

Now to really get the impact of this let's break this down into the two words. First look at the word father and I want you to think about all the positive connotations of this word. Somebody who nurtures who leads guides provides coaches encourages. Now some of you are probably thinking at this point, yeah, and I'm my dad. My dad abandoned our family. My dad took off or my dad was kind of there and kind of not. He was unpredictable or he was mean. Or my dad died so I never knew that kind of a father. I get that. But look at what this word is combined with. He is the Everlasting Father. That means he will never leave you ever.

That means he will never hurt you ever. That means he will never abandon you ever. He will always be your father forever. He is a good dad Everlastingly. In fact, even if you fall away, he will never ever ever leave you because he's your everlasting never-ending father. Now watch the screen for a second because I was thinking a lot of us picture God as our father in a certain way kind of like our tiny little hand clutching his big hand much like well like this picture of me and Daniel just for example. I love his little baby fingers, don't you?

Now, here's the thing when we think of God as father a lot of us maybe generally speaking think of our relationship to him as kind of like this. It's my little hand grasping my heavenly father's big hand. But you realize that's beautiful, but that's an incomplete picture. Because what happens is we can feel like yeah, I'm just trying to hold on right? I'm trying to have faith I'm trying to be good but sometimes my grip slips and I lose it right? I lose my salvation or I lose my connection with God because that's this is what we picture when really biblically your relationship with your everlasting father is more like this.

Your father holds your little hand and he will never ever ever let you go. You might let go. You might despair. You might lose strength. You might give up hope, but he will never let go. You are in a relationship with him once you receive this free gift everlastingly because not because of anything we do but because he is our everlasting father that is so encouraging, isn't it?

But the best is yet to come because watch this number four he calms me. The Messiah shows up and he calms us down it says he will be called the prince of peace. Now remember this was written to people who lived, you know, around the Armageddon Valley surrounded by enemies this constant stream of armies they wanted a prince of good old-fashioned smiting as I said, they wanted they didn't want to prince a peace they wanted a prince of war. But here's what Isaiah says the prince of peace is coming and he's going to bring you calm even in the midst of the war and that is still true today.

I want to show you this is real. It's not just, you know, church propaganda because actually not too far from the original readers of these words in the country of Jordan right next to Galilee our church refugee assistance team just got back from there a couple of weeks ago. They were working with refugees there that we help primarily from Iraq but also Syria. These are people who've lost everything because of their time of darkness and war. Please remember to pray for the millions of refugees in Jordan. We're helping our partners there just with some practical assistance things like blankets and heaters and of course also the word of God and that means that we get the blessing of a ringside seat as these people living in a land of great darkness see a great light.

I wish I could tell you all the stories. I've been there myself and the common story that you hear a lot is people who have no background in the Bible end up having visions of Jesus saying things like come to me all you who are weary and heavily burdened and I will give you rest and then they tell their friends about it who are Christians and find out that that's actually in the Bible and they come to Christ. I had a chance to hear these stories myself but our team got to see it happen a couple of weeks ago at the home of this family. By the way, do you see the Christmas decorations there? This you see the little nativity scene on the table and the Christmas tree they're starting to decorate.

This may surprise you but in many Muslim countries like Jordan they celebrate Christmas in a big way. They love Christmas actually they honor Jesus. It's just that many have never heard of experiencing a personal relationship with Jesus. Well, the mom in this family recently came to personal faith in Christ and our team got invited to their home. Heard her describe her relationship with Jesus and then the whole team was moved to tears hearing her story and then they gave her a gift, a Bible in Arabic. This is the first Bible the family has ever had.

And they opened it to Psalm 61, which is actually a prayer for refugees and their 14-year-old son read and you're watching you're just getting a peek into the first moment that a Bible has ever been read in this family. Tears all around our team said you could just sense a new era beginning and a new calm descending. What you are witnessing is the prince of peace coming into their life and giving them calm and if he can help people like this in their distress he can calm you too. The prince of peace is here and he's saying the same thing to you as he spoke to those people in their visions come to me all you who are weary and heavily burdened and I'll give you rest.

Now, how does he do that as Isaiah says just a few chapters later? He was pierced for our transgressions. He was crushed for our iniquities. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him and by his wounds we are healed. This didn't happen when the Messiah won some war. Not physically anyway. Excuse me. It happened Jesus Christ was crucified. The punishment that brought us peace was upon him on the cross because he paid the penalty for our sins and that means you never have to wonder about your standing with God. You never ever have to think I people tell me all the time when they find out I'm a pastor they go you're a pastor I could never come into a church the roof would fall down I've done so many bad things I gotta work off my bad karma before I could ever think of going to heaven.

People have all these ideas that God is holding a load of their past bad deeds against them and what's accurate about that is there is a sin debt to be paid. But what's inaccurate about is Jesus paid it. And all we have to do is receive it and we never have to worry about it ever again. We have peace with God and that is far greater and far longer lasting than any peace ever won on any human battleground. So Isaiah is saying people good news is coming in ways far beyond what you can possibly imagine.

Now this was a prophecy for Isaiah. It's reality for us. So the question is if that's true, why then aren't we all experiencing all of this? Well, the key is in a little overlooked phrase in this verse. And the government will be on his shoulders. And this doesn't just mean he's going to rule a country. This is talking about each one of us. When the government of our lives is put on his shoulders by us, that's the key to experiencing all of this.

When I allow God to rule in my life when I turn over control to him when I turn to him as king of my heart as lord of lords as king of kings as general manager of my life then I open up my life to all these benefits. So listen this holiday season in the midst of all the bad news you might hear remember there is way way better good news so when you start getting kind of hypnotized by the latest drum beat, you know the latest bad news headlines this doesn't have to be the soundtrack to your life.

In fact, I want to replace that with a new song quite literally I'm going to invite Elizabeth and the band back to sing a song that she wrote about the passage we've been looking at. Instead of closing with a story as I often do, I'm going to close the sermon with a song. I want you to settle into this good news and in this moment reconfigure your heart so that as you go into this month you're listening for the good news.

Let's pray together. Just bow your heads close your eyes. I just want to invite you to linger for just three or four minutes. Just breathe. Christmas doesn't have to feel like the shark's about to eat you alive. Jesus right now can be your prince of peace. In fact, if this reflects your heart just pray silently in your heart as I pray out loud.

Lord, I am asking you today for these four things. First guide me. Second rescue me. Third adopt me or help me remember I am adopted into your family. And please give me the gift of peace. I give lordship leadership kingship of my life to Jesus. May the government of my life be on your shoulders God as I trust not just in your birth, but in what you were born to do your death and resurrection for us. We want to be changed into people who live confident that these four things are true.

I don't understand it all God, but I take my place with Handel and the many billions like him who have said unto me this child is born in the name of Jesus. And so help me to just rest in your peace right now. And I pray this in the name of the Messiah Jesus. Amen.