Bulletins - Ashe Alliance Church

- - Bible Trivia
    Loading...
Rejoice
Leaning On The Everlasting Arms
Filled With Your Glory
Oh Lord You're Beautiful
Main Idea
The title of Father carries the weight of its biblical characteristics and responsibilities.

On March 31, 2009, my first daughter was born into the world, and I was officially a father (although technically, I became a father 9 months prior when she was conceived). As I held Anna Gray in my arms for the first time, I was struck with a thousand thoughts: How beautiful she was, how amazing my wife is, how blessed we were… and how utterly unprepared I was to be a father or even remotely comprehend what fatherhood meant. I would soon have plenty of on-the-job experience, but it took years to understand what a biblical father looked like. I am a father in the sense that I have biological children, just as many of you are with your own biological or adoptive children. However, biblically speaking, there is much more to fatherhood than blood or adoptive relation. The title of father also carries the weight of its characteristics and responsibilities. God has also woven attributes and responsibility into the term that all men in these positions are called to embrace, embody, and enact. Coded within the title is also a call to be a:
• leader and head of the family
• protector
• provider
• caregiver
• teacher and mentor
• modeler of holy living
• demonstrator of sacrificial love

These are attributes that God displays to His people as He governs them. They are the responsibilities that Jesus lived out during His earthly ministry, which fathers and husbands alike are called to imitate.
I say this so we don’t get trapped into a simplistic way of thinking about what a Father is. In everyday life, we don’t think of fatherhood as one giant monolith representing only the male parent. We all recognize the title and position as multi-faceted at minimum… and hopefully also being incredibly complex, weighty, and honorable, because the title of father also carries the weight of its characteristics and responsibilities.

Passage
Isaiah 9:1–7 CSB
Nevertheless, the gloom of the distressed land will not be like that of the former times when he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the future he will bring honor to the way of the sea, to the land east of the Jordan, and to Galilee of the nations. The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; a light has dawned on those living in the land of darkness. You have enlarged the nation and increased its joy. The people have rejoiced before you as they rejoice at harvest time and as they rejoice when dividing spoils. For you have shattered their oppressive yoke and the rod on their shoulders, the staff of their oppressor, just as you did on the day of Midian. For every trampling boot of battle and the bloodied garments of war will be burned as fuel for the fire. For a child will be born for us, a son will be given to us, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace. The dominion will be vast, and its prosperity will never end. He will reign on the throne of David and over his kingdom, to establish and sustain it with justice and righteousness from now on and forever. The zeal of the Lord of Armies will accomplish this.

I - Clearing Up Confusion
Is Jesus also the Father?
This does not talk about the first person of the Trinity. Though seeds of the Trinity have been planted here (as we discussed last week), the mystery of the Trinitarian Godhead has not yet been revealed.
See it from a BC-era Jewish perspective. If there were no revealed distinctions in the Godhead, then the title of Father carries the divine characteristics and responsibilities of fatherhood.
And that is what I want us to explore together today to fully appreciate what the Messiah would do for His people.
So, as we have done before, let’s look at each word in the messianic title of Everlasting Father.

II - Everlasting
In original Hebrew, this means everlasting: Specifically, something or someone existing in perpetuity, without reference to either end of the timeline. So, it’s not just someone who came into existence and lives forever. The Everlasting Father is someone who existed from eternity past and will continue to exist into eternity future.
The Jewish mind would have no questions about this. The Old Testament is saturated with this understanding of God, even from the very first verse, "In the beginning, God created…” If God was alive and able to create, He existed BEFORE the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is even seen in the way the writers of some Psalms, Chronicles, and Nehemiah construct their praise of the eternal God by stressing that He is from everlasting to everlasting:
Psalm 41:13 CSB
Blessed be the Lord God of Israel, from everlasting to everlasting. Amen and amen.
1 Chronicles 29:10 NIV
David praised the Lord in the presence of the whole assembly, saying, “Praise be to you, Lord, the God of our father Israel, from everlasting to everlasting.
Nehemiah 9:5 CSB
Then the Levites—Jeshua, Kadmiel, Bani, Hashabneiah, Sherebiah, Hodiah, Shebaniah, and Pethahiah—said, “Stand up. Blessed be the Lord your God from everlasting to everlasting.” Blessed be your glorious name, and may it be exalted above all blessing and praise.

Divine Nature
This might seem trivial, but there is an important comparison for us to make in the text. The dominion of this Messiah will begin with His arrival (“now” in verse 7) and then forever. When He is coronated as King, the government will be upon His shoulders, and He will establish peace, of which “there will be no end.”
But, the Messiah HIMSELF does not exist only at that time of dominion or even at His birth. He has always existed. The person is from everlasting to everlasting, which reinforces the divine nature of the previous title of El Gibbor - the Mighty God.

Awe-inspiring
The eternal nature of His being can be seen in these verses but can still be difficult to grasp or comprehend. Its vastness and incomprehensibility should be awe-inspiring when compared to our finite nature. I love how The Spurge (Charles Spurgeon) puts it:
The Spurgeon Study Bible: Notes Chapter 9
As a gnat might seek to drink in the ocean, so a finite creature might seek to comprehend the eternal God. A God whom we could understand would be no God. If we could grasp him, he could not be infinite; if we could understand him, then he would not be divine.

So let’s embrace the infinite nature of this Messiah and even though we are like the gnat that’s drinking in the ocean, we are also an image-bearer that stands in awe of it.

III - Father
This is where the sticking point is, so I want to linger here for a bit because, again, it sounds awfully like Isaiah is claiming Jesus to be the Father, as in the trinitarian understanding of the Father.
We assume this because the triune Godhead has been revealed to us, but He wasn’t to Isaiah. This sort of distinction wouldn’t have even presented itself in Isaiah’s mind or the minds of his readers. If we want to grasp its meaning, we need to understand what a pre-Jesus Jew would have understood this term. And we’ll get there if we:
1. Educate ourselves on what they would have understood this term. The understanding of the original audience is an important interpretative principle.
2. Remember that the title of father also carries the weight of its characteristics and responsibilities.
However, before we get into the definition, let me show you an easy way to think about this word as something other than a literal father.
Answer these two questions:
1. According to the famous Sunday school song, who had many sons, and those many sons had…? [Father Abraham]
2. The Founding Father of our great nation is? [George Washington]
See, it wasn’t that hard, was it? Father Abraham wasn’t the father of Jacob; he was his grandfather, nor was the actual father of King David… but was his ancestor. George Washington isn’t your literal father, but he is, as we say it, a founding father because he was the founder… aka someone who causes something to begin. Already, we’ve recognized three other meanings other than a literal father.

(ʾāḇ) אָב
1. father, i.e., the male progenitor of an offspring, or male adoptive parent (Ge 2:24);
2. grandfather, i.e., the male progenitor of a child’s parent (2Sa 9:7; 16:3; 19:29[EB 28]);
3. ancestor, forefather, i.e., a person many generations removed from a current generation (Ge 10:21);
4. founder, originator, i.e., one who causes something to begin (Ge 4:20, 21; 1Ch 2:24, 42)
5. caregiver, formally, father, i.e., one who cares for persons in need, as a figurative extension of a father caring for a child’s needs (Job 29:16)
6. sir, formally, father, i.e., a title of respect of a lesser to a greater in authority, implying relationship and respect (2Ki 5:13);
7. Father, i.e., a title of God or a false god, as the progenitor and creator of persons he has relationship with (Dt 32:6; Ps 89:27[EB 26]; Jer 2:27).
8. Ruler, a person with authority over or an advisor to another. Joseph was “a father to Pharaoh” (Gen 45:8) because God put him there as his advisor and confidant. The title “Father” is thus used for one in authority (II Kgs 2:12), whether prophet (II Kgs 6:21), priest (Judges 18:19), or king (I Sam 24:11).
[*taken from the Theological Wordbook of the Old Testament and the Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains : Hebrew (Old Testament)]

So, as you can hopefully see, there are various ways the Jews would have understood the Messiah as a Father, but the one thing we know Isaiah didn’t mean is the first person of the triune God because that distinction had not yet been revealed. The title carried the characteristics and responsibilities. Contextually, it is most likely that the primary meaning in Isaiah 9:6 is that of a Ruler.
To go back to my opening story, I became a father when my first daughter was conceived, but I also had to grow in my capacity of a ‘father’ in terms of how I care for my kids, love them, lead them, teach them, provide for them, and protect them. These are also attributes of a father that go beyond DNA and adoption contracts. This is the vantage point I believe the pre-Christ Jews had because:
1. They knew God (scripturally and experientially) as possessing the various characteristics of a father as a ruler, founder, protector, and caregiver… and the God who created them and gave them life.
2. They lived in an era of Kings and kingdoms, and a King, at least a good one, would embody these fatherly characteristics in how he ruled his kingdom.

IV - Jesus is the Eternal Father
As I mentioned last week, Jesus is God, so it would be helpful to reiterate here that Jesus said, “I am the Father are One (John 10:30).” When He made this claim, the Jews knew exactly what He meant. He claimed to be Yahweh, their Father (in the 8th sense of the term listed above). And indeed, Messiah Jesus is Yahweh, but in more than just that one sense. He is the Eternal Father in almost every sense of the multi-faceted term:

1. He is eternal
Let’s be sure to see Jesus’ fulfillment in both words. First, Jesus said He was the Alpha and Omega. John goes all the way back to the creation account of Genesis 1:1 to fill in a bit more detail from the trinitarian perspective that Jesus is the Logos who was also present (He was with God in the beginning). Paul tells us that by Jesus, all things were created (through and for Him).
Just like an author of a story exists outside of the timeline they created, God transcends time because time is a creation, and He is the Creator and Author.

2. He is the Ruler, Founder, and Teacher
It is clear from Isaiah 9:1-7, Psalm 2, and other Messianic passages that God established the Messiah as the King and Ruler of His kingdom. So, similar to David calling Saul his father because he was subjugated to his king, the Messiah will be the Father of each and every citizen of His kingdom.
1. We know this from Jesus’ own proclamation that He has all authority in heaven and on earth, which has been demonstrated in human history ever since.
2. Jesus clarified this reality to both Pilate when he confirmed His kingship by declaring that His kingdom is not of this world, and to Caiaphas when He confirmed that he would see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven… which is a direct quote of the coronation of the Son by the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7.
3. Jesus is the founder of the New Covenant.
4. Jesus teaches each of us about His kingdom and how to conduct ourselves as Citizens and Ambassadors of it.

3. He is the Caregiver and Protector
This is expressed in the New Testament primarily in Jesus as the Good Shepherd in John 10. As I read the attributes of the Shepherd from this chapter, I want you to visualize Jesus reaching down and caring for you specifically in these ways when John says ‘the sheep.’ In doing so, you will be using this as a core takeaway.
• He is your shepherd
• He calls for you, and you recognize His voice
• He knows you by name
• He leads you
• He is your entryway into the herd
• He defends you from the thief, robber, and wolf
• He gives you life
• He lays His life down so that you may have that life in abundance
• He knows you as intimately as He knows the Father
• He unifies you with the rest of His flock

4. He is the Head and Leader
1. Christ is the Federal Head of redeemed humanity - Romans 5- Adam and the Second Adam.
2. Christ is the head of the church, who is described as His body here on earth. He is also described as the husband who leads and guides his bride (the church).
3. The church is also described as the new temple and Jesus the chief cornerstone on which we are built.

5. He is the source of Life
In God, we live and move and have our being in Him.
Baptism is the New Covenant sign of death to our old selves and new birth IN CHRIST.
Just as a human father is responsible for bringing a child into the world, Jesus is the Good Shepherd who “gives them [us] eternal life, and they [us] will never perish (John 10:28).

Takeaways
US - Once you receive Christ as Lord, you will always have his fatherly affection. If He is an Everlasting Father, then He is eternally yours. He never abandons His children. Every glorious characteristic… His leadership, love, care, protection, authority, and guidance… are yours to enjoy forever.
HIM - Behold Jesus in light of this title and meditate on His eternal nature and fatherly love.
OTHERS- Think through practical ways to live out the reality of Christ's Fatherhood in daily life, such as trusting His guidance, obeying His commands, and resting in His care.

Questions to Consider
What are the key biblical responsibilities associated with the title of 'Father' as discussed in the sermon?
How can understanding Jesus as a caregiver and protector help you in your personal struggles?
What steps can you take to reflect Christ's leadership in your relationships and community?
How does the concept of Jesus as the Eternal Father differ from the traditional understanding of the Father in the Trinity?
- - Isaiah 9:1–7CSB
- - Psalm 41:13CSB
- - 1 Chronicles 29:10CSB
- - Nehemiah 9:5CSB
Joy To The World (Antioch)
- - Bible Trivia
    Loading...

Main Idea

Passage

I - Clearing Up Confusion

II - Everlasting

Divine Nature

Awe-inspiring

III - Father

(ʾāḇ) אָב

IV - Jesus is the Eternal Father

1. He is eternal

2. He is the Ruler, Founder, and Teacher

3. He is the Caregiver and Protector

4. He is the Head and Leader

5. He is the source of Life

Takeaways

Questions to Consider

Isaiah 9:1–7CSB

Psalm 41:13CSB

1 Chronicles 29:10CSB

Nehemiah 9:5CSB