Jan. 23, 2011 Isaiah 9:2-7 C & Z “Claim the Name"
There are many times in our lives when we take God for granted. For instance we are truly blessed that we can have a meal every day. For many people of the world this is a luxury. The people of Haiti for example have a hard time eating once a day. They had this problem before the terrible earthquake. Now it is worse. We take having clean water to drink for granted. There are many places in Africa where having any water at all, whether it is clean or not, is a luxury. We take for granted the everyday things of our lives. We have vehicles and grocery stores and freedoms that most people of the world don’t have. But I was thinking, after reading our passage for today that we really take ‘light’ for granted. With a flip of the switch, we have light. With the strike of a match we have light. If we wait a few hours, our nighttime becomes the light of day. One of the properties of light that I think is phenomenal is that you can see a light for miles if it is dark out. A match in a darkened room will light things well enough to see all, although maybe not that well. But if you try to take darkness into the light, darkness disappears. Look at my hands. I have darkness cupped in my hands but if I open my hands the darkness instantly disappears. It doesn’t have a chance in the light. This morning we are going to look at an ancient text from Isaiah, that’s Australian, which names some of the names that we have for Jesus. It begins with darkness but this all disappears. Let’s just take a look at some of these names this morning and then claim them.
Max Lucado tells the story of a woman who lived by the seashore in Ireland many years ago. She was quite wealthy and quite frugal. Her neighbors were surprised when she was one of the first people in the area to have electricity in her home. Several weeks past after the installation and a meter reader came knocking at her door asking if the electricity was working. She said it was working well. Then he said, “I’m wondering if you can explain something to me. Your meter shows hardly any usage. Are you using the power?” “Certainly,” she said. “Each evening when the sun sets, I turn on the lights long enough so I can get my candles lit. Then I turn them off.” She had tapped into the power but she did not use it. I look at our world today and I wonder the same thing about God. How many people tap into the power of God and then go back to their old way of doing things and leaving God out of it. Think of all the power we are wasting.
This morning I would like to take a look at some of the names Isaiah calls Jesus centuries before He is even born. Before we begin I would like to say that Isaiah made these statements more than 2700 years ago and 700+ years before Jesus was born. So he had no idea of what he was talking about. Most of the time these ancient prophets thought that they were talking about something of their time; not a time far, far into the future. So Isaiah really has no idea of who will be born and called Wonderful Counselor.
Several things may come to mind when we hear the word counselor. We may be thinking of a psychiatrist, one who looks at our inner being. We may also think of an attorney as a counselor. But I don’t think this is what Isaiah had in mind. I think that he was talking more about an advisor. This was probably written just prior to the fall of the northern kingdom of Israel. Remember that the southern kingdom was Judah and it fell later. But just prior or during the fall of the north, Isaiah is telling the people that in spite of all the trouble and bad times that they are in now, God will send someone who will be a wise advisor to help them.
If you think about that, it would really be nice to have a wise advisor. If this country had a wise advisor, maybe we could get the health bill squared away. Wise people would take out what is bad and leave in the good parts. Obviously, neither democrats nor republicans are that wise. A wise advisor would look at the size of our government and cut in in half, at least in half. I was looking at some of the things that they are going to vote on that they consider to be so important. I looks to me like our congress could meet every other year and they would have plenty of time to pass the important laws.
A wise advisor would help us with our own personal spending so that we don’t over spend. He would help us in our family lives so that our children would have a chance in this world. A wise advisor would help us so that we wouldn’t say the wrong thing at the wrong time.
Well, guess what? We have a wise advisor who would do all these things if only someone would believe in Him. We have a crisis in this country and it has nothing to do with the government. It has nothing to do with the economy or whether social security is solvent or not. All these things and more are important but they pale in comparison to the real crisis. The real crisis is of the heart. We believe that we can do things on our own and we will talk to God only on Sunday and that is it. We have an advisor who can do anything. There is nothing that He cannot do. And still we do not call on Him.
The reason we should call on Him is that He is not just a counselor but He is the Wonderful Counselor. I think that the term wonderful here means that this is a kind, gentle God who will stop at nothing to help someone who loves Him and believes in Him. Look at all the blessings He gave to Abraham, Joseph and David to name just a few. None of these great leaders deserved the love that God gave them but He gave it to them anyway.
Often times we find ourselves in a place where we feel we are very insignificant. This is an easy place to get to when we think of the 6-7 billion people of the world. But you are very important. You are just as important to God as Abraham, Joseph or David. You are so important that Isaiah tells us that God will send a child to us. He didn’t know this at the time but this child would save the world. Jesus loves each and every one of us individually. I know that we cannot begin to imagine this love that Jesus has for us so all we can do is trust and believe in Him.
We trust and believe in Him because He is also known as Mighty God. So we have this kind and gentle Wonderful Counselor in the form of Mighty God. This is just the opposite figure but it is right. First of all He is God. He knows everything that has ever been known and then some. He has all the power of all forces that you can think of and then some. He is every place in the world all at the same time. He is God and He is mighty. We cannot even begin to imagine the power of God. We get a little glimpse of it as we read the story of Elijah on the mountain. Do you remember that story? God made the wind blow so hard that rocks were shattered. He caused an earthquake. He caused a fire. But He presented Himself in a small voice. This doesn’t even begin to describe the power of God who made our world. He is that powerful and yet He wants to help you with your life.
The people of the ancient world needed to know this because of what was happening and what would happen. They thought that they were pretty big and strong and they had forgotten God. They would be conquered and made into slaves. Lots of bad things were going to happen because they thought that they could do things themselves, without God.
Keep this in mind when you listen to the news. Most of the people who run this country consider themselves to be above God or at least an equal to God. That is what power does. It corrupts. I think that it is time that the church starts to speak out against all the corrupt power of this country. It is time for us to be prophets for the modern times. We will have very tough times ahead unless we come back to God. This could be a whole other sermon so I’m going to leave it for now.
We have Wonderful Counselor and Mighty God and then Isaiah tells us that this baby will be the Everlasting Father. In our infinite wisdom, we in the modern world don’t like to use the term father to mean God. As a matter of fact if you refer to God in any masculine terms at the school I attend, you will get points deducted. The reason for this is that we equate father with a human image of someone who is far from perfect. Many people have fathers who are not good and have done many evil things. These people shouldn’t even be considered to be fathers. Anyway, I try not to use the term too much because of these bad connotations. But when I do use the term Father to mean God, I mean it in a perfect sense. When we hear the term Father to mean God we should not be thinking in human terms. We should all strive, men and women alike, strive to be like the perfect God, our Father. There is nothing bad about God. He is always good. This is a term of endearment.
One of the reasons that we should be striving to be more like God the Father is that He is everlasting. He will always be there. He will never be on vacation. He will never be working too late or causing pain. He will be with you throughout eternity if you only believe. He has already shown us that He has been here since the beginning of time. He will also be here until the end of time if there is such a thing. He will always be with us and He will always be with our children. He will always be there for Carter. He loves us this much. Here is another reason why I say that if you don’t know Jesus this morning, then confess your sins to Him and ask Him to live in your life. He wants you to spend eternity with Him. It is that simple.
The last term that Isaiah talks of this morning is the Jesus will be the Prince of Peace. First of all He is a prince. In the olden times, this was very important. It was important for them that their leaders were part of the royal line. This is why we have the genealogies in Matthew and Luke. They had been, we have been, promised a savior in the line of David. Jesus is that savior in the royal line making Him a prince. These things are not as important today in our democracies but they were extremely important to the early followers.
So He is royalty and He will bring peace. These ancients needed peace. Israel was a small nation and they were always being conquered by someone. It seems that they were always at war. Here they have the promise of peace. This would get their attention.
Are we so different today? I was born about the time that the Korean War was beginning. I lived through the era of the Vietnam War. We now have war in Iraq and Afghanistan. We have had lots of skirmishes in between. We are just as barbaric as they were 2000 years ago; 4000 years ago. It will probably be the same in 2000 years from now unless Jesus comes back.
We not only have declared wars, we have undeclared personal wars. There are many terrible things waiting for us. We have divorce, alcoholism, drug abuse and if things aren’t already bad enough we have many churches that don’t even believe in Jesus and the Bible.
But fear not! Fear not! Don’t let these personal wars get you. You can have the Prince of Peace. He will come to you and help you and heal you and love you. He will always be with you. This Jesus who I’m talking about has promised to help you get through life. I know things are not easy but they are so much easier with Jesus than without Him. There are many more names for Jesus in the Bible and these have been just a few of them. Grab on to the one that means the most to you or grab them all. He is and will always be the same no matter what we call Him.
Bruce Howell tells the story of a father and his son and daughter who were 8 and 10. They went swimming in the Atlantic Ocean off New Jersey a few years back. They were all great swimmers. They were a long way from shore and they became separated when the dad realized that the tide was carrying them out to sea. He called out to his daughter, “Mary, I am going to shore for help. If you get tired, turn on your back. You can float all day on your back. I’ll come back for you.” He and the boy made it to shore and then there was a frantic search for the girl. Finally after 4 hours they found her far out in the sea. She was calmly swimming on her back and wasn’t frightened at all. There was a tremendous amount of relief when the calm girl was finally back on shore. Everyone wondered how she could be so calm. She said, “Daddy said he would come for me and that I could float all day, so I swam and floated because I knew he would come.”
This is what Jesus is all about. He will always come for us. He will always be there. It doesn’t matter which name we use for him. It only matters that we trust and love Him and will do what He tells us to do, because when we do this then we will be able to swim and float all day, and then some. Praise the Lord for all the love He has for you. Let’s pray.
