Grace Church
257 Kendall Street
Burlington, WI 53105

(262) 763-3021

His name is Everlasting Father: He gives new dimensions to life Is. 9:6 His Name Is… Sermon #6 I know that we’re in the middle of the NFL playoffs but can I share a true story about America’s favorite sport…a much warmer sport…Every World Series has its memorable moments – great pitching performances, decisive home runs, amazing catches...but the 1989 World Series will always have a distinctive claim to fame. Something happened that hopefully will never happen again. The third game was being played in Candlestick Park in San Francisco.  During the 3rd inning the ground suddenly started shaking. An earthquake hit the stadium!  People began to flee and the players quickly left the field. Many suddenly cared about only one thing, whether the people they loved were safe. San Francisco Giants catcher, Terry Kennedy, was living a dream come true, he was playing in the World Series. Suddenly, though, in one redefining moment, everything changed. When a reporter later asked about his reaction to the quake, Terry Kennedy summed it up very well, “Sure does change your priorities, doesn’t it?”   How are your priorities…about the things that ultimately matter? Does heaven matter? Does eternity matter? What you think about eternity determines what you think about the present. C.S. Lewis observed, “It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this one.” It’s so easy to get so swamped with things of this temporal earth, as we get squeezed by our jobs, the finances are tight, and our relationships are going sour. When those kinds of things are happening it’s easy to forget eternity and the glories of heaven. Joe Stowell wrote, “When we begin to believe the reality of the other side, we start behaving differently on this side. This is what drove the disciples out into their world – they had seen firsthand the reality of the other side.”   God designed us for eternity. Solomon wrote in Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything beautiful in its time. He has also set eternity in the hearts of men…” God has so wired us that we’re dissatisfied with life on the surface and have a deep, inner craving for that which is eternal. We’re designed by God so that we know that there’s something more than this brief physical life. We’re so designed by God that we know we’re made for something greater than time, and we live with a tension between temporal time and eternity. How do we solve this tension between time and eternity? How you solve this problem of eternity determines your world view.      Turn to Isaiah 9:6 (p. 489). Here we have an unusual name for Jesus Christ. “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.” That Jesus Christ is called “the Everlasting Father” seems like a real mystery. If He’s the Son how can He also be the Father since each Person in the Godhead is separate from the other Persons, yet equally God? God the Father is God, God the Son is God, and God the Spirit is God. But the Father is not the Spirit and the Son is not the Father.   The answer is found in the Jewish use of the word "Father." For an Old Testament Jew reading Isaiah's prophecy, the word "Father" would mean "originator of" or "author of." Remember Jesus called Satan the "father of lies" (John 8:44). Genesis 4:20 records that Jabal was the “father of those who live in tents and raise livestock.” In calling Jesus Christ “the Everlasting Father,” Isaiah is saying, “Jesus is the Father of that which is everlasting. He is the Father-Originator-of eternity!”   Eternity! What a concept! It’s so vast that the human mind can’t grasp it. God is eternal with neither beginning nor end. Man has a beginning but no end. Man will live forever either with God or apart from God, either in eternal glory or eternal darkness. When you trust Jesus Christ, you become a part of eternity! He “fathers” eternity in your life. This involves much more than simply forgiving your sins. You become a part of the very spiritual life of God. Because Jesus Christ is "Wonderful," He takes care of the boredom of life. As the "Counselor," He is the solution to life’s problems. "The mighty God" enables you to meet the demands of life. Because His name is Everlasting Father: He gives new dimensions to life. You become a part of eternity. 1. What does this name, Everlasting Father, teach us about Jesus? For centuries this particular name was shrouded in mystery. What mortal could bear such a name? Please notice in Isaiah 9:6 the Messiah is described as both a Son ("unto us a Son is given") and a Father ("His name will be called…Everlasting Father"). Jesus Christ became a child in time through the incarnation, but He’s the author and possessor of eternity. This means several basic things:   a) He inhabits and possesses eternity. “For this is what the high and lofty One says—He who lives forever, whose name is holy: “I live in a high and holy place, but also with him who is contrite and lowly in spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite” (Isa. 57:15).   b) His name is eternal. “May His name endure forever; may it continue as long as the sun” (Ps. 72:17).   c) He is the eternal provider. Revelation 21:6-7 says, “He said to me: “It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End. To him who is thirsty I will give to drink without cost from the spring of the water of life. He who overcomes will inherit all this, and I will be his God and he will be my son.” He is eternal in all that He is and all that He does! This implies several crucial truths claimed for God's Messiah in both the Old and New Testaments…   d) He is preexistent. “Before the mountains were born or you brought forth the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting You are God” (Ps. 90:2).   e) He is self-existent. In Exodus 3 He is the great “I AM.” This name describes and defines the God who is. He’s totally independent of His creation and time. He’s the Alpha and Omega, the God of the eternal present tense. As self-existent, He is wholly and completely self-dependent. Frederick Faber wrote, “No age can keep its outward years on Thee, dear God! Thou art, Thyself, Thine own eternity.” 2. Because Jesus is the Everlasting Father, He provides us with an eternal dimension. In the book Halftime, author Bob Buford shares how he faced a midlife crisis a few years ago. A lot of us would like to have his kind of crisis! He was the president and CEO of a very successful cable TV company. He was a self-made millionaire, with a home in the city and one in the country. He had a happy marriage and a wonderful son. But in spite of all of his success, he wasn’t fulfilled. In fact, he started asking himself some pretty serious questions, such as: “What is the center of my life and identity? What is my truest purpose? My life work? My destiny? What do I want to be remembered for?”   To resolve his midlife crisis, Bob Buford didn’t go to his pastor or to a Christian counselor. He did what any hard-core businessman would do—he called in a strategic planning consultant. Not just any strategic planning consultant but a man named Mike Kami, who is one of the top people in his field. Bob describes Mike Kami in the following way: “He is brilliant. He is demanding. He is intuitive. He slices through all the pretense and posturing and hones in on the core. A top resource consultant for the American Management Association, Kami was, at one time, director of strategic planning for IBM, serving that company during its years of rapid growth. He was then hired away by Xerox for a seven-figure bonus to do the same thing for them. He is independent, iconoclastic, and ruthless in his analysis…Mike is also an atheist. But after listening to Bob talk for about two hours, Mike asked him a simple question: “What’s in the box?” When Bob asked him to explain, Mike described an experience he had a few years earlier with the top executives of Coca Cola. Mike Kami met with these executives to try to find the driving force of the company, the primary passion that should motivate all of their decisions. After a lengthy discussion, they decided that “great taste” was their main goal as a company. So they wrote those words down and put them in a box, and they used them to guide all of their strategic planning. Then a few months later when the company discovered a new formula that tasted better than the old Coke, they introduced “New Coke” and made one of the biggest mistakes in marketing history. When the executives later asked Mike what went wrong, he said, “You must have written the wrong words in the box.” So they met again for several hours and finally decided that “American tradition” was their true driving force. They realized that Coke was an American tradition, like baseball and apple pie, and that customers didn’t want them to mess with their traditions! Now that the company had the right words in the box, they were able to make better strategic planning decisions, and they quickly recovered.   Then Mike turned to Bob Buford and said, “I’ve been listening to you for a couple of hours, and I’m going to ask you what’s in the box. For you, it is either money or Jesus Christ. If you can tell me which it is, I can tell you the strategic planning implications of that choice. If you can’t tell me, you are going to oscillate between those two values and be confused.” What’s in our box determines which world we are living for.   a) We are made for eternity. Remember Ecclesiastes 3:11, “He has made everything appropriate in its time. He has also set eternity in their heart, without which men will not find out the work which God has done from the beginning even to the end” (NASV). God so designed us that we’re dissatisfied with a life just skimming the surface. Man craves that which is essential and eternal. He knows that there is something more than this brief physical life, that he was made for something greater than time and man searches for this missing dimension. How many people have died longing for another lifetime in which to accomplish what they wanted to do!?! Like the architect of British colonialism in South Africa, Cecil Rhodes, they die saying, "So much left undone!"   We were made for eternity and cannot be truly satisfied until we’re living for eternity. How you solve this tension between time and eternity determines your worldview. Some people try to forget eternity and live only for time. If this philosophy is taken to its logical limits, it leads to, "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die!" If there is no God or eternity, then why bother to make the most of today? Get it over with as quickly as possible!   b) Is there a solution to this tension between time and eternity? Yes, there is, in the Person of Jesus Christ. In the incarnation eternity invaded time. God created us for eternity and Christ came to earth to reveal eternity. “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us” (1 John 1:1-2).      When Jesus came, He wedded dust and deity…time and eternity into one. The eternal Word was made human flesh and that union will last forever. As the perfect Man here on earth, He showed us what it’s like to live for the eternal. He lived as no other lived. Everyone saw that He was different. Jesus Christ proves that the eternal is real and we can live for it!   c) Jesus was not simply born; He "came into the world." He invaded time from eternity. His words are "words of eternal life" (John 6:68). His deeds had in them the quality of eternity. He spoke as no one had ever spoken and lived as no one had ever lived. His values were vastly different from those of other religious leaders. Because of this He clashed with the established religious system. The publicans and sinners were not outcasts to Him, they were lost sheep needing the care of a shepherd. He was not impressed with the stones of the Temple, for He was building a temple that would last forever. When He looked at the lily or saw a sparrow fall, He thought of the eternal Father in heaven. Everything Jesus talked about or touched took on a new dimension because he is the "Father of Eternity." Even ordinary bread and wine were touched by eternity when Jesus blessed, broke, and shared, saying, "This is My body, broken for you; this cup is the new covenant in My blood."   God made us for eternity and in Jesus Christ we see eternity revealed. He is that eternal life. But how do you and I experience it? After all, we’re sinners. Everything that partakes of sin experiences death. Until you and I can remove this horrible thing called sin, we can never move into the marvelous dimension of the eternal. But Jesus is where time and eternity meet. He came to earth to reveal eternity and died that we might share eternal life. “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). Sin is the great obstacle to experiencing eternal life. But sin is not eternal, only God is eternal. But until we do something about our sins, we will never share His eternal life. 3. God solved the sin problem and limited dimension problem for us.  God solved the sin problem and limited dimension problem for us when He sent His Son to die on the cross. Time and eternity met at Calvary. Christ is the Lamb of God “chosen before the creation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20) and “slain from the creation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). God's great plan of salvation was not some hasty afterthought; His people were chosen in Christ “before the creation of the world” (Eph. 1:4), “according to His eternal purpose which He accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Eph. 3:11). When Christ was born at Bethlehem, time and eternity met in a person. When Jesus died at Calvary, time and eternity met in a price, and that price paid for sin met the demands of God's holy Law and opened the way for sinners to be forgiven and share in eternity.   But Jesus Christ is the "Father of Eternity" in another way, He lives now to give eternal purpose and quality to our everyday lives. Sin is the great waster; Satan the great destroyer. Most people are existing, not living. What they live on and live for doesn’t satisfy and will not last eternally. They’re living on substitutes and the substitutes are robbing them of the true experiences of life that God wants them to enjoy. Instead of investing time in eternity and enjoying the dividends here and now, most people are spending time or (worse yet) wasting time. The person who trusts Jesus Christ and lives for eternity will not settle for so little.   The late Adrian Rogers observed, “In this day when we are supposed to have so many devices to save time, I've never seen so many hurried and restless people! If the computer, the laptop, the cellular phone, and all of these other technological wonders are supposed to save us time, why do we have so little time for the things that matter? It seems that with all we've accomplished, about all we have really added is speed and noise. We get there faster, but we don't know where we are going. And when we get there, we're out of breath.   I read one time about a man who swallowed an egg whole. He was afraid to move because he was afraid it would break. But he was afraid to sit still because he was afraid it would hatch. There are a lot of people like that today--so frenetic, so pressured they don't know which way to go.”   a) Jesus Christ is the controller of time. For the Christian, Jesus Christ is the controller of time. The Psalmist wrote, “my times are in Your hand" (Ps. 31:15). Jesus Himself lived that way when He walked this earth. You can’t read the Gospel of John, a book that magnifies His eternity, without realizing that Jesus lived according to a divine timetable. “My time has not yet come” He told His mother, Mary, at the beginning of His ministry (John 2:4). To His brothers He responded, “the right time for Me has not yet come; for you any time is right” (John 7:6). An unbeliever doesn’t have a divine schedule to follow. When His enemies tried to arrest Him, they found it was impossible “because His time had not yet come” (John 7:30). They wanted to arrest Him while He was preaching in the Temple but they failed “because His time had not yet come” (John 8:20). The climax, of course, came in the Garden when He made that final surrender as He faced the cross: “Father, the time has come” (John 17:1).   "My times are in Your hand!" Does God still plan for His children and guide them through life? Yes, He does! Is it reasonable that the God who created time at the beginning should abandon His creation and let it just drift until the final day of judgment? According to Hebrews 1:2, Jesus Christ "framed the ages" (literal translation). This suggests that even the ages of history are under His control.   King David looked back over his life and wrote, “I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread” (Ps. 37:25). At the end of life’s pilgrimage, saints of God have looked back and seen the hand of God at work all their lives. That doesn’t mean that everything they did was in the will of God, or that they never went on detours; but it does mean that God ruled and overruled in their lives to accomplish His eternal purposes. This fact that Jesus Christ controls time reveals the importance of prayer and the Word of God. As we fellowship with Him, He speaks to us through His Word and reveals what He wants us to do. When you pray, you lay hold of eternity. Your heart and mind become the meeting place of time and eternity. You can honestly say, "My times are in His hands."   b) Jesus Christ is the conqueror of time. Not only does Jesus Christ control time but He conquers time. For the unbeliever, time is an enemy; for the dedicated Christian, time is an ally. Eternity enters into us at salvation so that we might accomplish His purpose in the times that He assigns to us.      Time's ultimate weapon is death, and Jesus Christ has conquered death.  This is why Paul could shout, "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?" (1 Cor. 15:55). Jesus Christ conquered time! When Jesus Christ is in control of your life, each moment is an eternal experience because He gives you a quality of life that comes out of eternity. "Eternal life" means much more than living forever, for even the lost are going to exist forever. "Eternal life" means "the life of eternity." It’s an experience in Christ here and now!   c) Jesus Christ created us for eternity. To reject Him is to miss the very purpose for which we were created. He came to earth to reveal eternity and He died to give us eternal life. He lives to make eternity a real experience for us day by day, as He controls and conquers time. But there is a final ministry that He performs as "The Father of Eternity." One day he will return to take us to a glorious eternal home. 4. Having an eternal perspective will change the way we live. As we tie this up, turn to 2 Peter 3:11-14 (p 861). “Since everything will be destroyed in this way, what kind of people ought you to be? You ought to live holy and godly lives as you look forward to the day of God and speed its coming. That day will bring about the destruction of the heavens by fire, and the elements will melt in the heat. But in keeping with His promise we are looking forward to a new heaven and a new earth, the home of righteousness. So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with Him.”   a) We will live with devotion, “You ought to live holy and godly lives.” Peter says that an eternal perspective will change the way we behave in two very practical ways, “holy” and “godly.” Holy conduct refers to action, godliness refers to attitude. Holy conduct refers to the way I live my life, godliness refers to the spirit of reverence within me by which I live my life. Randy Alcorn in his book on Heaven says, “If my wedding date is on the calendar and I’m thinking of the person I’m going to marry, I shouldn’t be an easy target for seduction.”   b) We are to live with expectancy,Peter uses the phrase “looking for” three times in these three verses. The Greek verb carries the idea of expectancy, of waiting with alertness, of being ready. It’s translated in the present tense indicating that this is one’s habit or lifestyle. Are you continually living with an eternal perspective? If you do, it will radically impact what you are living for! The coming of Christ and the doctrine of Heaven provide some of the strongest motivation for living the Christian life that you will ever find. What you believe about the future determines how you live today.   c) We are to live with diligence, “make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with Him” (14b). What one is looking for should have a direct relationship to what one is living for. We’re to be “spotless.” This refers to our character – what we really are on the inside – there is no hidden blotch. Then, we’re to be “blameless” – this refers to your reputation and how you relate to other people – that people know that you truly are what you claim to be! These two terms speak of both character and reputation. They speak of both what we are in reality and what people think we are. Peter says the result is that we will “be found…at peace with Him.” He’s saying “I want you to be at total peace, living without fear. If you were told that the Lord was taking you home in the next twenty-four hours, either through His coming or your death, you can be at ease, because you know where you are headed.” Conclusion: Imagine someone takes you to a party. You see a few friends there, enjoy a couple of good conversations, a little laughter, and some decent appetizers. The party’s all right, but you keep hoping it will get better. Give it another hour, and maybe it will. Suddenly your friend says, “I need to take you home.” What now? You’re disappointed – nobody wants to leave a party early – but you leave, and your friend drops you off at your house. As you approach the door, you’re feeling all alone and feeling very sorry for yourself. As you open the door and reach for the light switch, you sense someone’s there. You’re heart’s in your throat. You flip on the light. Surprise!! Your house is full of smiling people, familiar faces. It’s a party – for you. You smell your favorites – barbecued ribs and pecan pie right out of the oven. The tables are full. It’s a feast. You recognize the guests, people you’ve not seen for a long time. Then, one by one, the people you most enjoyed at the other party show up at your house, grinning. This turns out to be the real party. You realize that if you’d stayed longer at the other party, as you had wanted to, you wouldn’t be at the real party – you’d be away from it.   A Christian faced with a terminal illness or imminent death often feels as if they’re leaving the party before it’s over. They have to go home early. They’re disappointed, thinking of all they’ll miss when they leave. But the truth is the real party is already underway at Home…precisely where they’re going. They’re not the one’s missing the party; those of us left behind are.   Jesus as the Everlasting Father adds a new dimension to our lives that a lost person cannot have. Friend, are you living in that new, eternal dimension? Friend, please don’t live like a pagan…just for this temporary world! Jesus Christ is the "Father of Eternity." As your Savior and Lord, let Him continually expand this eternal dimension in your life.