How many people have finished their shopping?
Did you hear about the guy who went out and bought his wife a beautiful diamond ring for Christmas? His friend said, “I thought she wanted a new SUV?”
“She did,” he replied. "But where am I gonna find a fake Jeep?”
It’s funny isn’t it that so many people make this time of year about buying and receiving gifts but they forget that the reason we are supposed to do that is to remember the gift that was given 2000 years ago. The reason we honor that gift and the birth of that child is because of the mission that He was sent to accomplish. We’ve said that Isaiah 9:2-7 could be a birth announcement for Christ, because even though it was written hundreds of years before His birth it describes the life and mission of Christ so well. Let’s just read our key verse for today one more time, Isaiah 9:6, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And he will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
The beauty of this passage becomes greater when we realize the background. It was one of utter darkness. The people were trapped in a land of injustice. The government was corrupt, the judges were corrupt, even the priests were corrupt. Worse their enemies were growing stronger all around them, while their nation was growing weaker. It was a time of worry and injustice. The people had turned from God and were discovering that they had then turned to hopelessness.
That is always the case apart from God there is no lasting hope. We may find success and happiness in life for a while, but everything in this world fades and ultimately we will face the final test, when this life is over and the next begins. Will we be stepping into the presence of our God, or will we be stepping into an unknown and fearful place.
The difference for us, the blessing of being a Christian is found in these titles. When we face difficulties and we don’t know where to turn, we discover that Jesus is our “Wonderful Counselor.” The meaning of those words reveals the depth of their promise. Wonderful in the Old Testament is a word reserved for things that only God can do. Counselor is not just someone who gives advise or listens well. It was someone who was well versed in diplomacy and economics it was a person who was trained to know the answer. Our God is the one the we can turn to and He will reveal answers to us that no one else can, in ways that no one else can. Then the promise is that he will be our mighty God, in other words our Hero, the one who will go to battle for us. He is the one who gave Himself the mission of saving us. That mission was completed when He not just when He was Crucified, but when He stepped out of the grave three days later have taken the keys of death and Hell. But it’s not just in the next life that God promises to be our hero, because He also promises to save us from injustice. It’s not that He promises that there will be no injustice in the world, but that He would not let injustice destroy us.
Today we are looking at the next title slash promise that God gives us. It is that we would call Jesus the Everlasting Father. Father is a term that mean a lot of things to a lot of people, and usually it is connected to the relationship that we have with our Father. But think about this context for a minute. Isaiah is writing to the nation of Israel. When a nation calls someone Father it is always a term of honor. Here in America we call George Washington the Father of our Country. It is meant to honor him and the courage and sacrifice that he display which enabled our country to even exist. We call the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and wrote our Constitution among other things, the Founding Fathers, again honoring what they did for this nation to exist.
But before any of that happened there was a prophecy that a nation, and ultimately everyone, would call someone Father, and not just for a time, not just look back at what he did and say that he contributed something and had and impact centuries ago, but He would be the Everlasting Father, that He would not only accomplish something during one period of time, but for all time. The promise is that for all generations God would be a part of our lives this is the gift that we celebrate every Christmas and hopefully throughout the year.
Within this title for the Messiah we see not only what He came to do, but why He came to do it. As we look at the term Everlasting, it calls to mind the everlasting promises of God. The first promise that everyone should know about God, not just in their head but in the heart is that God loves us with an everlasting love. Look at the promise of Jeremiah 31:3, “The LORD appeared to us in the past, ‘I have loved you with an everlasting love; I have drawn you with loving-kindness.’” There is nothing that we can do that causes God to stop loving us and there is nothing that can stop Him from coming to us.
Think about who Jeremiah was. His nickname was the weeping prophet because during his ministry the prophcies of judgment on the nation came true. He not only expressed sorrow for what God had told him would happen but also for what did happen. Yet in the midst of their nation being over run, their lands taken and many of them literally being driven out, Jeremiah understood that the one thing that they had not lost was the love of God, that if they would just turn from their sin and to God, that God would still be there and still act as a Father to them.
Maybe you’ve been in a similar place, maybe you’re their now. You’ve wandered away from God, and faced the consequences, maybe your life right now if far from what you want it to be. Do you know that no matter what you have done, no matter how far from God you’ve tried to go that He’s always right there for you? God loves you with an everlasting love, there’s no place you can go that He can’t come to you, and nothing you’ve done that will cause Him to lose that love. 2000 years ago He literally crossed time and space so that He could come be with us, live with us, understand us, and ultimately die for us, so that one day we could go to be with Him. Why did He do it? Because before we were even born, He loved us that much. Despite all the flaws we would have and the sins that we would do, He still loves us that much and always will. It is an everlasting love.
He is also the everlasting light. We’ve talked about it before, the backdrop of this prophecy by Isaiah is one of utter darkness, and there was no hope for most of the people in Israel. The government was corrupt, the judges were corrupt, even the priests were corrupt. Worse most of the people didn’t really know God anymore. At times even those who still went to worship at the temple were only doing it as an insurance policy, just in case they could get something from God for it. But in the midst of darkness God is always the light. There is another promise from God in Isaiah look at Isaiah 60:20, “Your sun will never set again, and your moon will wane no more; the LORD will be your everlasting light; and your days of sorrow will end.
Light is an amazing thing, in nature it is a particle and a wave. In our language and in our minds it also represents more than one thing. Think about what we say when we’ve been through a long and dark times, we say, “I think I see the light at the end of the tunnel.” Light has come to represent hope to us. There may be times that we are concerned that the light at the end of the tunnel is a train but we usually expect it to be a time of hope, of break through a time when we are no longer trapped in darkness. Light is hope.
Hope is what the prophets were writing about when they wrote passages like our key passage in Isaiah. They were passages of hope, promises of what God could do and would do. For those who would say Jesus was just a prophet or a good teacher, here is one key difference between Jesus and those prophets, He didn’t just talk about what God would do, He was God in action fulfilling those promises, He was and is hope fulfilled. We trust in what He has done as well as what He will do.
We can say that because light represents Salvation, when we come out of the dark tunnel the sun represents the end of the darkness and the continuation of life. In Jesus, the Son of God is also the end of darkness and the coming of life for ever. He is everlasting salvation. That is the promise of Isaiah 45:17, “But Israel will be saved by the LORD with an everlasting salvation you will never be put to shame or disgraced to ages everlasting.” This point is so key for people to get about the promises of God, when you accept Him as your savior you are saved. It’s not about what you have done it is about what He has done. Yes you must serve Him, but that is out of obedience the way a child serve’s it’s family. That service doesn’t get you into the family that service is because you are part of the family. Yesterday I was at the funeral of Jim Reynolds, a long time member of this church, and truly was a celebration of his life because the family and friends who gathered together had the assurance that he was with God, not because the things that Jim did but because of the truth that Jim had placed in God. Through Christ God gives us everlasting salvation. That is one of the everlasting promises of God.
But the next part of this title is our Father. This is also a term that means different things to a lot of different people. I have been blessed in my life to have a wonderful Father a man who taught me right from wrong and who cared for and provided for our family. But that is not everyone’s experience with their earthly Father. The good news is that can be the experience for everyone with their heavenly Father. In a world where some father’s turn their back on their children, God came to earth so that He could know us and be with us, not just for a short time but for all time.
Not just in this scripture but all through the Old Testament we have this promise that the Father wants to be with us. Look at Isaiah 63:17, “But you are our Father, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us; you, O LORD, are our Father, our Redeemer from of old is your name.” Let’s look at this verse closely for a moment. The prophet claims that God was their father even though “Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us.” What does that mean? Well the prophet is writing to a people who had turned their back on God, a people who were not doing what their ancestors would have done. What he is promising is that even though as a people they had turned their back on God, God didn’t turn His back on them. They He still was their father and would always be. This is the promise we have that God is our Father. He is here for you and me, for all of us.
This should be the message that we give to everyone on Christmas. It is a shame that so many people get caught up in so many things that they miss what God has done for us if we will just accept Him. Merry Christmas shouldn’t be threat to anyone because it is a reminder of the gift that God gave. It is great to know that God is here for everyone. It is also a reminder that even though we can get frustrated with other people, even though some times we may feel like giving up on sharing Him with people, He doesn’t, He loves them just as He loves us. May we never fail to view people as He does, people who need their savior.
But there is a meaning here that is more personal than that, there’s also the promise that God is my Father. It is the personal promise. Look at Psalms 89:26, “He will call out to me, ‘you are my Father, my God, the Rock my Savior.” This verse is personal. Three times the Psalmist uses the word my. As Christians it is good to know what God has done for the world, but we should never forget that God did it for us. God doesn’t call to the whole human race at once, He calls to us as individuals, and then He cares for us as individuals. How good it is to know that although there are 6 billion people in this world, God knows my name, He knows me. I am not the first John Tutell who has ever lived, I hope I will not be the last, but God still know which one I am. That can’t be said of everyone from the time Linda and I first got married the AARP has been sending me enrollment cards, they think I’m my father. The AARP may have me confused with my dad but God doesn’t. He knows who I am and He calls me son. He know who you are and He calls you son or daughter, and then as we read the prophet Zephaniah last week, He rejoices over you with singing. There is a personal promise here that God knows who you are. God is our Father and God is my Father, it is a promise that was given to Israel in millenniums past that is still good today.
This promise was fulfilled in Christ. You see one of the greatest gifts that a father can give to his children to presence, not the type under a tree, but simply being with them. In Christ God came to dwell among us. That is the refrain of the wonderful Christmas song Immanuel. That God came to be with us. Because Christ was here we no longer have to wonder what God is like, because He came here and told us. People then told each other and wrote down what He was like. That is why the Bible is so important, because it tells us exactly who God is. For those who would doubt it the great news is that the character and ministry of Jesus in the New Testament is consistent with what we find in the Old Testament. God was with us. That was the promise of the Old Testament fulfilled in the life of Christ.
People today ask what God is like, but that isn’t a new question it has been around for thousands of years. Look at what Jesus said on the subject John 14:9, “Jesus answered: ‘Don’t you know me, Philip, even after I have been among you such a long time? Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father?’” In Christ, God came down to be with us, to know our hurts and our fears, He knew what it was to have loved one die, the shortest verse in the Bible is Jesus wept, it was because of the death of Lazarus. But Jesus also knew what joy was, his mother would have children, they would live and love together. He formed friendships with the disciples and others, God was one of us. Finally He faced the greatest test at any of us will, the day He died. The difference was that His death paid the price for all of us to be with Him forever. God was with us.
The star that shown at His birth was over the light of the world. You see that’s something else that we think that light does, it reveals the truth. In Christ we have the truth about God and life. That is what Jesus told us in John 5:24, “I tell you the truth, whoever hears my word and believes him who has sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, he as crossed over from death to life.” It is a verse that we usually here at funerals, where we focus on the ending, the promise that we cross over from death to life, but the first part is just as important. Jesus came to tell us the truth because He is the truth. There is only one way to God, because God only came down once. He came down and told us what who He was, but more then telling us, He lived it, he allowed us to see who He was. In his healing miracles we could see the compassion He has for us. In His ultimate sacrifice He showed us the love that He has for us. Our God came down and lived with us not just so that He could know us, but so that we could know Him. When we find Him, we find that He is a God who cares for us and loves us. A Father who wants to meet the needs of His kids for all eternity and give them a purpose in life.
In 1994 two Americans answered an invitation from the Russian Department of Education to teach morals and ethics (based on Biblical principles) in the public schools. They were invited to teach at prisons, businesses, the fire and police departments, and a large orphanage.
It was nearing the holiday season for the orphans to hear for the first time the traditional Christmas story. They told them about Mary and Joseph arriving in Bethlehem and finding no room in the inn, the couple went to a stable, where Jesus was born and placed in the manger.
Throughout the story, the children, according to one of the Americans, “sat in amazement as they listened. Some sat on the edges of their stools, trying to grasp every word.”
As a follow-up activity to the story, each child was given three small pieces of cardboard to make a crude manager. Each child was also given a small paper square, cut from yellow napkins which the children tore into strips the paper and carefully laid them in the manger for straw. Small squares of flannel from a thrown away nightgown were used for the baby’s blanket. From pieces of tan felt a doll-like baby was made.
As they made their way around the room to observe the children this is what one of the Americans noted, “All went well until I got to one table where little Misha sat. He looked to be about 6 years old and had finished his project.
As I looked at the little boy’s manger, I was startled to see, not one but two babies in the manger. Quickly, I called for the translator to ask the lad why there were two babies in the manger.”
The observer goes on to note that Misha very accurately recalled the story that had been told until he came to the part where Mary put Jesus in the manger. “Then Misha,” it is noted, “started to ad-lib. He made up his own ending to the story as he said, “And when Maria laid the baby in the manger, Jesus looked at me and asked me if I had a place to stay. I told him I have no momma and I have no papa, so I don’t have any place to stay.
Then Jesus told me I could stay with him. But I told him I couldn’t because I didn’t have a gift to give him like everybody else did. But I wanted to stay with Jesus so much, so I thought about what I had that maybe I could use for a gift. I thought maybe if I kept him warm, that would be a good gift.
So I asked Jesus, “If I keep you warm, will that be a good enough gift?” And Jesus told me, “If you keep me warm, that will be the best gift anybody ever gave me. So I got into the manger, and then Jesus looked at me and he told me I could stay with him – for always.”
As little Misha finished his story, his eyes brimmed full of tears that splashed down his little cheeks. Putting his hand over his face, his head dropped to the table and his shoulders shook as he sobbed and sobbed. The little orphan had found someone who would never abandon or abuse him, someone who would stay with him – FOR ALWAYS!”
