I want to call attention to a feature of our text this morning that we won’t want to miss.  Maybe you detected it already.  But there is a “thread” that runs through this section of Scripture.  It is this idea of “seeing.”  Philip says to Nathanael, Come and see (v. 46).  Jesus sees Nathanael coming and says, Behold! (v. 47).  “Behold” means “look at this!”  Nathanael is coming to see Jesus but Jesus flips the script and tells Nathanael that he already saw him when he was sitting under the sycamore tree. 

Do you have a “bucket list”?  You know what a “bucket list” is, right?  A “bucket list” are those things a person wants to do before they “kick the bucket.”  Maybe on a person’s list would be seeing a Packers’ game at Lambeau Field or going skydiving or seeing the Grand Canyon. 

I want you – to the best that you are able – to try to imagine what it must have been like to be one of those shepherds in the fields of Bethlehem the night Jesus was born.  We don’t know what time it was.  We don’t know how many there were.  But there you are, with your colleagues, perhaps warming yourself around a little fire.  The drowsy sheep over yonder.  As many who work the “night-shift,” maybe you are thinking it’s going to be another night of the “same-old-same-old.”

Our text this morning is not the easiest text to understand.  Oftentimes texts from the Old Testament prophets can be like that.  But two things will help us make sense out of this text.  The first is this:  the prophet Isaiah was sent to the people of Judah and Jerusalem to deliver a message of God’s judgment.  He told them that because of their sinful defiance of the LORD, the Babylonians were going to come and destroy the city of Jerusalem and carry off many of the people into exile in Babylon. 

Grace to you and peace… That’s the way the apostle Paul begins our text today.  Paul wrote 13 books in the New Testament.  He begins all 13 with these twin words – grace and peace.  That’s not accidental or merely coincidental.  These two words are the sum-and-substance of our existence as Christians.  We are saved by GRACE.  God’s love for us sinners that caused him to send his Son to save us.  And this love of God in Christ, this GRACE, results in PEACE.