Isaiah 9:6-7 For to us a child is born, to us a son is given: and the government shall be on his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful… I. GOD CAME TO US IN THAT CHILD. His parents were instructed to call Him "Immanuel" — "God with us." Such a fact is big with meaning; pregnant with vital, jubilant truth. Why did God come to us thus in a babe? He must have had some wise and loving purpose that He wished to secure thereby. What For ages men had been taught to fear God, their thoughts of Him filled them with dismay; hence the gods of the heathen nations. The large body of the Jewish nation was not much in advance of the heathen. This dread of God was universal. To correct all such ideas, and remove all such feelings from the minds and hearts of men forever, God came to us as a child. Are you afraid of a babe? II. GOD CAN COME TO US IN THE SMALLEST THINGS. We generally look for God in the great, vast, mighty, terrible. We expect something to strike the eye, etc. Will you remember that God came to us in that quiet, loving, unpretending babe, that lay in that, manager and nestled in His mother's bosom? And so God comes to us in the little, simple, humble, noiseless, common things of life, if we only look for Him. Especially He comes to us in our children. They bring love with them, and "love is of God," etc. We might in a far higher sense than we think for call every child "Immanuel." In our child God comes to us, God is with us. Do we believe this? If so, should we not oftener look for and educate the God in them? We should do far better with them if from the beginning we sought to bring out, nourish, educate, develop the good, the God that is in them, instead of making it our chief concern to correct the wrong, to restrain the evil. III. THE WHOLE OF LIFE IS SACRED AND SHOULD BE CONSECRATED TO GOD. God came to us in that Child. The whole of life is sacred, open for the operations, possession, enjoyment of God. God was in that Child notwithstanding all its infantile wants, weaknesses, complaints. And so God was in that boy, notwithstanding all His playfulness and vivacity. Indeed, that was the boyish, outward manifestation of God; the boyish way of declaring God's glory If God was in that Child, "God manifest in the flesh," His whole life, from His birth to His death, was God life. IV. GREAT ENDINGS HAVE LITTLE BEGINNINGS. Who shall measure the magnitude, height, depth, length, breadth of the work which Christ accomplished as Saviour of the world? Yet it has all to be traced back to the birth of that Child. God's method is evolution from the small to the great. (B. Preece.) Parallel Verses KJV: For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counseller, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. |
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