One of the beloved texts for the Church’s is Isaiah 9:6. We all recognize the strong name introduced there, which would later be taken up by the New Testament writers in association with that event in Bethlehem long ago: Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father and Prince of Peace. But that is not a verse for Christmas alone! For that infant, and for us, the first Christmas was but the beginning. He grew and showed us how to live. He died for our transgression and he was raised for our justification (Romans 4:25), and now intercedes for us in the glory of His Father’s throne. And as the following verse says, he shoulders the rule of God with a “government that has no end of increase (Isaiah 9:7).
It is this last phrase that is particularly gripping to me: “No end of increase.” Imagine that! That means that in the aims and goals of Jesus’ kingdom today, there are no setbacks and no retreats, not even a little stalling out for a time — no, absolutely none. Everything works and it works only for the kingdom’s advance. His rule is never surprised, never falls back to regroup, and is never thwarted. And that’s something that works all year long!
It’s also something that extends to each part of the lives of the King’s subjects, like my life, and your life. Isaiah is not just making a “cosmic” assertion -— one that merely concerns the heavenly powers and adversaries of my King. He is also talking about me and you and the things we run into every day. Things like disappointments, changes in plans, things we can’t understand, hurts, and even profound suffering. In all of this we can find comfort in the thought that our King’s government — the one to which we belong (Col 1:13) and the one that operates as the dominant power in our life, inexorably moves for increase.
And increase in my Father’s kingdom means increase for me, too — that’s the way his mighty power works. Three years ago at this time I would have been writing this note from my apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine, where my family and I had been missionaries already twelve years. Little did I know that a few months hence, I would be moving back to California for my wife to receive treatment for recurrent cancer. We left everything almost overnight — fruitful ministry (by now the Russki was working without translators), friends and colleagues, my boys’ home — and all to come back and again look cancer in the face! By all measures it was a disaster.
But then in my despair the words of one of our seasoned veteran missionaries flooded in — the words of Isaiah 9:7. “Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end.” Our relocation “disaster” was for increase. Increase for the ministry, increase for our colleagues, increase for my students, increase for me, increase for my wife, increase for my boys. No setbacks, no retreat, none — that’s the way of Jesus’ kingdom. So may this Child whose shoulders now bear this amazing government and rule that can bring good from evil be yours all this semester and always.Amen.
