Mighty God
Sunday, December 16, 2001
A couple of weeks ago at our seven and eights group on Wednesday night we looked at the question of Jesus resurrection. We did it from a different sort of perspective. I divided the kids up into groups and gave each group one of the most common naturalistic explanations people give for the resurrection.
He didn’t really die - he just swooned.
The women went to the wrong tomb.
The disciples stole his body.
The teens concluded that none of these hold water. The only reason people stubbornly cling to them is that they refuse to accept that the answer must be supernatural in origin. They rule out the supernatural even though none of their natural explanations come even close to accounting for what happened.
We run into the same problem when we deal with Isaiah 9:6. For years people have tried to get around the titles that are used in this verse.
Read verse
Last time we looked at Wonderful Counsellor - today mighty God. The first you can slough off as a title for deity, but how do you get around Mighty God?
Jews: Retranslate the verse "the God who is the wonderful counsellor, the mighty God, the eternal Father calls his name Prince of Peace. One Jewish writer puts it plainly - It is impossible for a human child to be called mighty God.
Liberals - borrowing of Egyptian throne names. Egyptians often used divine throne names for their kings when they came to the throne. 1. Egyptians thought their king was divine - Jews didn’t. 2. This is a birth announcement not a ascension to the throne. 3. The whole message of Isaiah is trust God not Egypt.
1. Is Mighty God a divine name?
Isaiah 10:21
NIV Jeremiah 32:18 You show love to thousands but bring the punishment for the fathers’ sins into the laps of their children after them. O great and powerful God, whose name is the LORD Almighty,
NIV Nehemiah 9:32 "Now therefore, O our God, the great, mighty and awesome God, who keeps his covenant of love, do not let all this hardship seem trifling in your eyes-- the hardship that has come upon us, upon our kings and leaders, upon our priests and prophets, upon our fathers and all your people, from the days of the kings of Assyria until today.
8 Who is this King of glory? The LORD strong and mighty, the LORD mighty in battle.
2. Is a divine Messiah consistent with the Scripture?
Isaiah 7:14
Daniel 7:13-14
John 8:54-59
3. What does mighty God mean when we refer to the messiah?
This quality is the complement to the previous one - the two go hand in hand. One without the other is inconceivable.
Good Counsel without the power to make it happen is futility.
Power without good counsel is abusive.
The one who is mighty God is the one with the capacity for carrying out to the full all that his brilliant plans call for. He has nothing less than the full omnipotence of God as his command. What he devises he is able to achieve.
This is a very important attribute for us at Christmas.
At Christmas we celebrate Christ’s coming - a coming in which the Wonderful Counsellor aspect of his character was very evident. But in that first coming, the Mighty God aspect of his character was rarely revealed. Because of that some have made the mistake of assuming that it is not there at all.
It is a result of the work in his first coming that we can anticipate the power of his second.
Revelation 19
Next time there will be no baby - meek and gentle
Only a mighty God terrible in his wrath.
Are you ready?
