[Isaiah 9:6] Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace

Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace []

Stand for the reading of the word of God []

Last week we started a two part study on the names of Jesus from Isaiah’s prophecy concerning the Messiah. The names Isaiah gives concerning the Messiah were 600 plus years before Jesus would walk the earth, yet Isaiah spoke as if he saw Jesus himself…I believe through faith it was as if Isaiah did see the Savior…just as real as if you or I 2000 plus years removed from Jesus walking the earth see Him, through the eyes of faith, as if He were here with us now.

We can come to know Jesus and have a personal relationship with Him through faith and through trusting in the word of God. Today’s names we’ll look at cover a very personal relationship with Jesus, as Everlasting father and prince of peace.

Last week we looked at Jesus as wonderful counselor, might God. We saw that Jesus is wonderful…we looked at the wonderful birth of Jesus, Jesus wonderful life, we examined the wonderful death of Jesus, and His wonderful coming kingdom that is yet to come in it’s fullness.

We saw Jesus as counselor who made Himself available to mankind by becoming a man. As counselor He came with all the right answers and still answers our questions today. The wonderful counselor Jesus came with and gave assurance for hopeless sinners…in a world of hopelessness…Jesus offers assurance of hope in Him.

Jesus as mighty God came and brought those in darkness into His marvelous light. As mighty God Jesus came as the mighty problem solver…though the world makes promises to offer solutions to problems…Jesus is the only one who can solve our main problem…the problem of sin. And as mighty God Jesus is mighty to save all those who trust in Him. This wonderful counselor, Mighty God awaits for us to call upon Him and trust Him with our lives.

Today we look at the last two names Isaiah gives us concerning the nature of Jesus the Messiah…Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. I do believe these two names give us some very personal characteristics of Jesus. Once again, as we did last week, we’ll look at various other places in the scriptures to develop this. First is...

Everlasting Father []

For the name everlasting Father we’ll look at , now the first thing we should note when looking at this name are two things this name does not reference.

First, this is not a reference to the 1st person of the Trinity God the Father, you’ll immediately go wrong if you think this is a reference to the Father. This is a Jesus reference, a reference toward one of the qualities the Messiah has for His people…a fatherly characteristic. [NT refers to motherly characteristics] not gender based, parental.

Two, everlasting is not a reference to the eternal nature of Jesus, we know Jesus is the eternal Son in nature who was and is and is to come, one without beginning or end…eternal God. But this everlasting is not referring to that…it has more of a perpetual feel to it i.e. we might better wrap our heads around this title by saying Jesus is father forever. It’s referencing the never ending nature of His care for His children.

This title has a very personal feel to it, Jesus is like a good father forever, one who does not abandon His children and who never will. I did a little research on fatherless children and the numbers were staggering.

[US dept. of Census] 43% of US children live without a father

[US Bureau Census] 90% of homeless and runaway children are fatherless.

[US dept. of health and science] 71% of teenage pregnancy comes from children from fatherless homes.

[US census of disease and control] 63% of teenage suicide comes from fatherless homes

[US census of disease and control] 85 % of behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes

US dept. of health and science] 75% of adolescent in substance abuse centers come from fatherless homes.

{National dept of High School] 71% of HS dropouts come from fatherless homes.

[US dept. of corrections] 70% of juveniles in state institutions come from fatherless homes

85% of those in Federal prison come from fatherless homes

i.e. fatherless children are twice as likely to drop out of high school, twice as likely to end up in jail and four times as likely to have some sort of emotional and behavioral problems.

That shouldn’t surprise us, the need of a father in one’s live is very very important. With that being said, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Jesus shows fatherly like characteristics toward His own. We desperately need Jesus in our lives like we need a good father. But Jesus is so much more than we could ever want in a father…He will never let us down. paints for us a picture of this fatherly love Jesus has towards us.

Notice verse 13, “as father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him.” here is the nature of true parenthood…every father views their children in a way that is special and different from the way he views other’s children right? There is something special about how a father has compassion upon his children…and Jesus has that compassion for us as well. Now I know some of us may not have had the best relationship with their earthly father, so what does it mean for Jesus to show traits of father forever?

1. He Forgives us completely [;;] Those are some wonderful verses. Jesus forgives us completely, but even though He forgives completely, that doesn’t mean He ignores or overlooks our sin. To have Jesus overlooking our sin would make Him some sort of a benevolent Santa Claus… “I know you’ve been naughty all year, but I’m going to give you this anyway because that’s what I do.” No No No.

God does not overlook our sin…our sin has to be dealt with. That’s the thing with God’s love, people love to talk about the love of God but what we have to remember is the love of God displayed must be in keeping with the nature of God…and God is holy and pure and can not be in the presence of sin, so to say that God just kind of throw’s out or overlooks the bad things we do is to have a wrong understanding of who God is…sin must be dealt with…and God did deal with sin…by sending His Son Jesus to die.

We may not like to be confronted with this issue of sin…but it must be confronted. I believe many around Christmas time can easily overlook the “why” Jesus came…he came to die for sin so you and I wouldn’t have to. Life is full of distractions right, we often, probably not intentionally, fill our lives with distractions so we don’t have to deal with the sin problem. We get caught up in materialism, careers, hobbies, etc. often times to avoid this sin issue…but we must deal with sin…God dealt with it…we must to.

We can’t get to the forgiveness of sin by only looking at a baby in a manger…we have to follow that baby to becoming a man who was lead like a lamb to the slaughter. Who, as Isaiah puts it, had all of our iniquity laid upon Him, the punishment for our sin was upon Him. If we just stop at the pretty little nativity scene and say that’s nice, I feel really good now…we’ve missed the greater purpose…Jesus came to die in our place so that through Him we might be forgiven completely. As father forever Jesus also...

2. Knows us thoroughly [] [v.14] The human frame is extremely complex, take for example… The human eye which is enormously complicated itself- it’s a perfect and interrelated system of about 40 individual subsystems, including the retina, pupil, iris, cornea, lens and optic nerve. For instance, the retina [the back of the eyeball where neurons are converted] has approximately 137 million special cells that respond to light and send messages to the brain. About 130 million of these cells look like rods and handle the black and white vision. The other seven million are cone shaped and allow us to see in color. The retina cells receive light impressions, which are translated to electric pulses and sent to the brain via the optic nerve. A special section of the brain called the visual cortex interprets the pulses to color, contrast, depth, etc., which allows us to see "pictures" of our world. Incredibly, the eye, optic nerve and visual cortex are totally separate and distinct subsystems. Yet, together, they capture, deliver and interpret up to 1.5 million pulse messages in a milli-second! And that’s just our eye...

Yet as complex as our frame is…we have a Savior who knows us thoroughly,. Notice something in verses 15-16…we have a shelf life, sounds grim but it’s the truth…these bodies will not last forever, many of us here are experiencing that our bodies don’t respond like they once did. But the wonderful thing is we don’t have to get caught up in that because we have a God who knows our frail state.

We have to face something that is unavoidable…one day we will be gone, and it may be sooner than we’d imagine…so there are three questions that we need to be able to answer before our time is up…that is… who am I? Where did I come from? And where am I going? Can you answer those questions without thinking about them?

Who am I? I’m a child of the one true king Jesus! I may be many things, husband, father, son, brother, Pastor…but that’s not who I am…I’m a child of the king.

Where did I come from? I am fearful and wonderfully made by the one true King. I’m not just a number, or a statistic, I’m made in the image of God, though I am flawed in my humanity…I’m an image bearer…I have a God who knows my name, who knows my frame, my weaknesses, and loves me in spite of them.

Where am I going? I’m going to be with my God who’s image I bear, not because of anything I’ve done, but because of what Christ has done. I’m an created by God and for God to have a relationship with God and one day I will be in the glorious presence of God forever. Because...

3. He loves me endlessly [] The God whom I ignored and rebelled against in my youth. The God I chose to disobey and dishonor is the same God who sought after this rebellious man, who sought a personal relationship with me. who deliberately step into time and took on the form of a man and humbled Himself to the point of death on a cross, He did that for me…and He did that for me and you. This love of Christ is truly from everlasting to everlasting.

The one who was before time began made Himself subject to time so that you and I who are subject to time might be with Him for all time! Through faith in Christ. This everlasting father certainly is also

Prince of peace

There are three dimensions of peace offered through Christ… Peace with God, the peace of God, and peace on earth. First...

1. Peace with God [] “Therefore, having been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” Millions today seek after peace with God. Some try religious rituals, some try good works, some try giving money or possessions…but with all these efforts of man they still come up wanting. There will always be this void..they will always have to ask...what rituals work the best? When have I done enough to please God? What is enough to give to make God happy? And the answer is…it is never enough.

There is a great gulf between sinners and a Holy God. And so the reality is people try to convince themselves that this amount of whatever will have to do…but never really experience peace with God. But I tell you this, that great gulf between sinner and God has been bridged through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Jesus has paid our sin debt in full [] “But He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruised for our iniquities, The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all”

He was bruised for our iniquities, The chastisement for our peace was upon Him, And by His stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all

The chastisement for our peace was upon Him,

And by His stripes we are healed.

Jesus broke down all barriers [] “once you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, 16 and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father”

at that time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. 13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.

6 All we like sheep have gone astray; We have turned, every one, to his own way; And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all

Christ Our Peace

We have turned, every one, to his own way;

14 For He Himself is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, 15 having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, 16 and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. 17 And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. 18 For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father

As puts it… Jesus made peace with God for us through His blood. We find peace with God through faith in Jesus Christ. 2nd dimension of peace...

And the LORD has laid on Him the iniquity of us all

2. The Peace of God [] Peace with God is positional and unchanging, that is through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for salvation…but the peace of God is dependent upon our relationship with Him. Sadly, many have peace with God, by trusting in Christ for salvation, but miss the peace of God, which is dependent upon our relationship with Him…

look at how Paul puts in in “6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus 8 Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things”

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.”

Paul gives us a recipe for the pathway to the peace of God…[write these down]

a. be anxious about nothing [v.6] We live in a time where it seems everyone is stressed out, and that stress and pressure cause anxiety, which in turn robs us of peace. Paul urges us in his epistle to quite worrying about everything. One of my favorite passages in the scripture we have above our door at home, , “Be still and know that I am God.” That’s a great reminder to us…just chill out and know that God is God…why are we anxious, worried, and stressed if we believe God is in control? Just chill. that’s biblical.

b. Pray about everything [v.6] pray about everything…not just the big things…pray about everything. I read in a book once, I can’t remember where I read it, but what he said stuck with me, the author said, “we often pray for the cancer to be removed from our bodies, but seldom pray for the common cold to be removed.” I thought it was a valid point…we often pray for God to move mountains, but rarely ask Him to help us through the speed bump in our lives…pray about everything! Nothing is to trivial to bring before God.

c. Give thanks without ceasing [v.6] In this time of excess we live in today, thankfulness can easily be overlooked. Instead of focusing on what we don’t have or what we want or even how we want things to be…let us give thanks without ceasing for the good things God has done for us and given to us.

d. Think only about praise [v.8] Notice what Paul urges us to think on…whatever is true, noble, just, pure, lovely, good, and praiseworthy…think on those things. In a time where it’s easy to think about everything wrong in the world, the scriptures urge us…don’t get caught up in thinking about what’s wrong and how bad things are…think only about praising God. John Piper said, “ when a bad thought enters your mind you only have about 10-20 seconds to either take it captive and give it to Christ or focus on it and it becomes stuck in your mind, often at the center of your thoughts.” I believe there is a lot of truth in that statement.

These four things don’t be anxious, pray about everything, give thanks without ceasing, think about praise leads us to, what Paul refers to as, the peace that passes understanding. That’s the peace of God. The final dimension of peace, which is nice to think on is...

3. Peace on Earth [] “Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the LORD’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore”

Now it shall come to pass in the latter days that the mountain of the LORD’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

That the mountain of the LORD’s house Shall be established on the top of the mountains, And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

Shall be established on the top of the mountains,

And shall be exalted above the hills; And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

And all nations shall flow to it. Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

3 Many people shall come and say, “Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

“Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the LORD, To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

To the house of the God of Jacob; He will teach us His ways, And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

He will teach us His ways,

When the angels announced the birth of the Savior what was the announcement…? “Peace on earth good will toward men. {} While the savior in the first Advent brought peace to man, one day He will return and the second Advent bring peace on earth.

And we shall walk in His paths. For out of Zion shall go forth the law, And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

For out of Zion shall go forth the law,

And the word of the LORD from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, And rebuke many people; They shall beat their swords into plowshares, And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

No more war {}

4 He shall judge between the nations,

And rebuke many people;

They shall beat their swords into plowshares,

talks about what that kingdom will look like… Isaiah says

And their spears into pruning hooks; Nation shall not lift up sword against nation, Neither shall they learn war anymore

Nation shall not lift up sword against nation,

there will be peace among the animals “the wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the goat, the calf and the lion will be together”

Neither shall they learn war anymore

there will be peace instead of violence “The earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord and they will not hurt or destroy one another.”

, There will also be peace in nature “The desert shall rejoice and blossom, the parched ground will become a pool, the thirsty land will spring fourth water.”

i.e. the best is yet to come.

This Christmas do you long for peace? Trust Christ. Christ will bring peace to your troubled heart and someday He will bring peace to this troubled world.

During this Christmas season If you have not trusted Christ I urge you to do so today…turn to the one who is wonderful counselor, Mighty God, everlasting father, and prince of peace.

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus

The New King James Version Chapter 4

Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand.

6 Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; 7 and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.

The New King James Version. (1982). (). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.