And this Man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land
Peace in Christ amid invading foes
This is an announcement of the mission of our Saviour.
He is to be peace. Two facts in the text.
1. A special danger is apprehended.
2. A provision is made to meet the danger.
I. The crisis of danger. Two great nations invaded the Holy Land, the Assyrian and the Babylonian. These differed. The former was heathen, the latter idolatrous. The one sought to destroy all worship; the other to establish the worship of its own gods. These two nations represent the different forces that battle against Christianity to the present time. In the philosophy of the infidel we see the one; in the superstition of Rome we see the other.
II. The provision to meet the danger. This Man, Christ, is our peace. Christ meets the infidel successfully at every turn. Human unbelief directs its whole power to break down the truth of God in Christ, and to destroy the hope of man. Sometimes by outward, open, organised attack, at other times by private, insidious attacks on the heart Of man. In the midst of all this hostility the advent of our Saviour is our peace.
III. Some of the weapons of this Assyrian enemy.
1. It contested the authenticity of the Scriptures. This was the method of attack, from Porphyry and Celsus down to Hume and Gibbon. This mode of attack is ended.
2. The impossibility, the absurdity of the incarnation of Christ is urged. The Assyrian rejects the personality of God, the immortality of man. He seeks the enthronement of matter.
3. There is a private, a personal hostility. Many a man retains his peace amid all the outward conflict, but when assailed by doubt and fear the citadel of the soul is carried. But this Man--this Saviour--is the strength of the soul forever. (Stephen H. Tyng, D. D.)
Christ our peace
The term “Assyrian” may he regarded as symbolically used, the great enemy of the Jews being made to represent generally the enemies of man, or particularly of the Church. One of the titles under which Isaiah announces the Child that should be born is “Prince of Peace.” The chorus of the angels mentions “peace.” The angels associated the incarnation of the Saviour with the reestablishment of peace on the disquieted earth. In the apostolic writings peace is equally associated with Christ, and especially attributed to His death. Except through Him there could be no reconciliation of the human race to God. Christ Jesus, by His obedience and death, removed every obstacle to the free forgiveness of sinners, and thus in the largest sense reconciled the world unto God. There are other reasons why Christ may be affirmed to have accomplished our text. It is the tendency and property of the Christian religion to heal all differences between man and man, and to produce and preserve universal harmony. In the very degree in which the religion of Christ now gains a hold on individuals or families, it vindicates its character as a religion of peace. It cannot establish its dominion in the heart without producing a disposition towards goodwill to all men. Christianity, going straightway to the inner man, throws the salt, as it were, into the very fountains of the waters of strife, and by healing the springs, sweetens all their after flowings. Who shall order the jarring elements of the world into harmony? Make true Christians of all men, and then, such will be the principles which are universally acted on, such the motives which will be universally at work, such the ends which will be universally proposed, that divisions must disappear, because every one will seek the good of others in seeking his own. In an individual and personal sense, too, Christ is our peace. (Henry Melvill, B. D.)
The peace from God
In some crystals that coat, as with shining frost work, the sides of a vessel, we have all the salts that give perpetual freshness to the ocean, their life to the weeds that clothe its rocks, and their energy to the fish that swim its depths and hollows. In some drops of oil distilled from rose leaves of Indian lands, and valued at many times their weight in gold, we have enclosed within one small phial the perfume of a whole field of roses, that which, diffused through ten thousand leaves, gave every flower its fragrance. Like these our text contains the essence of the Gospel; peace to a world at enmity against God; peace to a race of sinners at variance with God; peace and joy in believing. Peace.
I. Who is here spoken of? The Man; the Christ. He stands alone as the Man. This is His distinguishing feature. Micah has just uttered a prediction fixing the birthplace of the promised Messiah. He is called “the Man,” because He is--
1. The Divine Man. God manifest in the flesh. He is in the Father, and the Father is in Him.
2. As the sinless Man. “He knew no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth.” A Lamb for sacrifice, “without blemish and without spot.”
II. What is He to be to us? Christ our peace. In Him God provides for the destruction of all causes of enmity and disorder. This work of destruction was to be the foundation for peace between God and man. For peace between God and man as a sinner, and as a saint. Peace He brings for the sinner. The true peace is in Christ, through His precious bloodshedding, and by His atoning death. Peace He brings for the believer. It is built upon His own promise and Word, and is compatible with the most calm and considerate view of all truth. God’s peace is with one’s self, with our conscience, with God, in fact, through the blood of Jesus. It is that we want.
III. How is He to be peace to us?
1. He satisfied Jehovah. By bearing our sins in His own body on the tree; by making peace through the blood of His Cross; by dying the just for the unjust to bring us to God; by making reconciliation for iniquity, and bringing in everlasting righteousness.
2. He overcame the enmity of the human heart. This peace is purchased for us by His Divinely efficacious bloodshedding, but it is bestowed upon us by the mysterious communication of His Spirit. The source of true peace is faith, realising and resting on the faithful and unchanging promises of God.
IV. When may Christ be said to be our peace? “When the Assyrian cometh into our land.” The allusion is to the invasion of Judaea by Sennacherib, in the reign of Hezekiah. Some think that Hezekiah is the man here referred to. But note that this Man was born at Bethlehem; and He was a Man whose goings forth have been of old from everlasting. This must be the Son of God. It is in the very presence of the Assyrian that the child of God has peace. We do not say that the consequences of our sins are taken away. And yet there is peace; Christ works it by destroying the painful sense of the corruption of the spirit’s purity, and the deadly evil poisoning of all the springs of being. He is our peace, able and willing to hush every storm, and fill us with all peace and joy. Apply both to our corruption and to our affliction. Then, if there is no true peace in time or eternity but what comes from God in Christ, then let the believer live near to God. Let him, through the aids of the Holy Spirit, maintain a conscience void of offence towards God and man. (William Adamson.)
An invasion
I. A terrible invasion. The Assyrian, who may be regarded as the representative of all the enemies of Israel, enters the Holy Land, takes Jerusalem, and treads the “palaces” of the chosen people. A faint picture is the Assyrian of the hellish invader of human souls. He breaks his way through all bulwarks, enters the sacred territory, and treads even in the palaces of the intellect and heart.
II. A triumphant defender. There are “seven shepherds and eight principal men” who now hurled back the Assyrian invader, entered his own territory, and carried war into the midst. Who is the deliverer? “This Man shall be the peace.”
1. He did it successfully. “Thus shall He deliver us from the Assyrian.” Christ will one day ruin this moral Assyrian, as lightning falleth from heaven he shall fall. He will hurl him from the habitation of men.
2. Christ, in doing this, uses human instrumentality. “Seven shepherds and eight principal men.” Christ destroys the works of the devil by the instrumentality of men.
(1) The instrumentality that He employs may seem to us very feeble. “Seven shepherds and eight principal men,” against unnumbered hosts of enemies. “He chooseth the foolish things of the world to confound the wise,” etc.
(2) Though the instrumentality may seem feeble, it was sufficient. The work was done. “Not by might and not by power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord.” (Homilist.)