Sometimes a single word can be loaded with meaning: mom, dad, darling, champion, failure. Single words can be so important that Jesus said, “Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” As we continue our series on the titles of Messiah Jesus in Isaiah 9:6, both of the words that make up this title are loaded with a wealth of meaning, encouragement, and hope. The title is EVERLASTING FATHER.
One year when I was home from college on Christmas break, I asked my pastor, “What does it mean in the Isaiah 9 Christmas text that Jesus is the EVERLASTING FATHER? How can the second person of the Trinity, God the Son, BE the first person of the Trinity, God the Father?” He gave me an answer, that as a pastor, I have never forgotten: “I don’t know.” (I realized that pastors don’t have to have all the answers.) As I have dug into the word meanings and background of this messianic title of Jesus, it has become clear that this text is not using the Trinitarian title, Father, for the Messiah; rather, it is portraying the nature of the Messiah's kingship. Keeping this truth in mind we can identify four characteristics of his Messianic kingship contained in the title, EVERLASTING FATHER. Let’s begin with the word, FATHER.
A. King Jesus is not just a king who rescues us from oppression; he is a king who wants us to have a personal relationship with him. NIC commentator, John Oswald, observes that in the ancient near east, many kings claimed to be a “father” to their peoples. This claim, whether true or not, was an attempt to convince the people of the king’s benevolent protection and care for them. Messiah Jesus’ rule, says Isaiah, will be like that of a FATHER leading his home—personal. Another pair of commentators, Keil and Delitzsch, point out that the title, EVERLASTING FATHER “designates (the Messiah) as the tender, faithful, and wise trainer, guardian, and provider for his people.” Messiah Jesus would be that kind of king—personally engaged with his people.
More than one President of the United States was known for telling his staff that his children always had direct access to him. The Messiah would not be a ruler separated from his people by the veil in the temple. He would not remain set apart, cut off from direct access. He would be Emmanuel—God with us. In fact, the bond that King Jesus would have with his subjects was to be so personal that Jesus would later say to his disciples, “As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love" (John 15:9). Jesus spoke of this personal, relational knowledge of each other in his prayer to the Father when he said, This is eternal LIFE, that they KNOW you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent (John 17:3).
The concept that abundant life is having a personal relationship with Christ radically changed my life in high school. I grew up in a church era that not only used the King James Bible with all its “cometh”s and “goeth”s, and “thee”s and “thou”s—but such language was used in prayer. “Thank you that thou listeneth to us.” To put a positive spin on this experience, I learned about the transcendence of God—his greatness, his awesomeness, his holiness, his “otherness.” But it was Young Life and the J.B. Phillips modern paraphrase of the Bible that taught me about the imminence of God—that I could have a personal relationship with him. I learned that Messiah Jesus wanted an everyday relationship with me that was just as real as his relationship with Peter, James, and John when he walked the shores of the Sea of Galilee. Back then I memorized the Good News translation of Psalm 63. The more I remember that King Jesus is the kind of Commanding Officer that a father is—one who wants to enjoy me personally—the more Psalm 63 comes alive:
O God, you are my God, and I long for you. My whole being desires you; my soul is thirsty for you, like a dry, worn-out, and waterless land. Let me see you in the sanctuary; let me see how mighty and glorious you are. Your constant love is better than life itself, and so I will praise you. I will give you thanks as long as I live; I will raise my hands to you in prayer. My soul will feast and be satisfied, and I will sing glad songs of praise to you. As I lie in bed, I remember you; all night long I think of you, because you have always been my help. In the shadow of your wings I sing for joy. I cling to you, and your hand keeps me safe (vs 1-8).
King Jesus is not just a king who rescues you from oppression; he is a king who wants you to have a personal relationship with him.
B. King Jesus is not just a king who rescues us from oppression and has a personal relationship with us; He is also a king who is FULL OF FATHERLY COMPASSION for us. In studying Isaiah’s choice of the word FATHER to describe the coming Messiah, it is valuable to see how Isaiah uses the term father in other places in the rest of the book of Isaiah. In Isaiah 63, when Isaiah is trying to persuade Yahweh to stop holding back mercy from his people, Isaiah writes, Look down from heaven and see, from your holy and beautiful habitation….The stirring of your inner parts and your COMPASSION are held back from me. For you are our Father…. you, O Lord, are our FATHER, our Redeemer from of old is your name. Isaiah identifies fatherhood with compassion. The Psalmist does as well. He writes, As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
The Messianic King will not only rule justly; he will lead and rule with compassion. Jesus remembers our frame; he knows we are dust. Though Isaiah may not know that the Messiah would be the Great High Priest, his description of Jesus’ kingly rule matches that later description: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need. Jesus NEVER TIRES of hearing us pour out our weaknesses and requests for his strength. HE LOVES BEING THE STRENGTH WE NEED in our weakness!
The compassion of Jesus draws me to him. I suspect it draws you as well. The compassion of the Messiah is not only seen in his High Priestly role, but of course all through the gospel accounts of Jesus’ life. Last week, in studying John 9—the story of the man Jesus healed who had been born blind, I noticed two components of Jesus’ compassion that I didn’t mention last week—the first of which may not seem like compassion, but it is. Let’s look back again to the story.
As Jesus passed by, he saw a man blind from birth. And his disciples asked him, “Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind? Jesus answered, “It was not that this man sinned, or his parents, but that the works of God might be displayed in him…. Having said these things, he spit on the ground and made mud with the saliva. Then he anointed the man's eyes with the mud and said to him, “Go, wash in the pool of Siloam.” So, he went and washed and came back seeing….They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a Sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. So the Pharisees again asked him how he had received his sight. And he said to them, “He put mud on my eyes, and I washed, and I see.” Some of the Pharisees said, “This man is not from God, for he does not keep the Sabbath.” But others said, “How can a man who is a sinner do such signs?”
Why did Jesus heal this blind man in this particular manner? Here is a hint. It was the Sabbath, and the Pharisees’ extreme legalistic tradition forbade spitting on the Sabbath. Specifically, they cautioned that the spit might run downhill and make mud, and making mud is work. If we listen closely as the story unfolds we discover that as the Pharisees investigate the healing they are concerned specifically about the mud and the question of who made the mud on the Sabbath. In other words, it appears that Jesus deliberately chose to heal the blind man in this manner--by spitting and making mud from it--to pick a fight with the Pharisees! I LOVE IT.
The Pharisees had turned God’s revelation about how to walk with Him into an oppressive pile of manmade rules—destroying the concept that the essence of God’s covenant with his people was love. Yahweh had made it clear: The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for HIS TREASURED POSSESSION, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his LOVE on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord LOVES you (Deut 7:6-8). In response the covenant obligation of Israel was first to love God and second, to love God's image bearers, their neighbor. The Pharisees piled upon the backs of the people a ridiculous number of man-made rules—over 600, a legalism so severe that it perverted the religious leaders into caring more about spit running down hill and making mud than the tragedy of a precious human never having been able to see, who is wonderfuly given sight! Jesus cared too much for the people hearing the religious representatives of Yahweh pervert the Torah teaching to do nothing.
Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims. The perverted legalism of the religious leaders was destroying the people’s understanding of what Israel’s covenant of grace with God was all about. These victims pulled on Jesus’ heart. He could not DO NOTHING about it. So, he deliberately confronted the lie that the religion of Moses was about spitting or not on the Sabbath. Jesus makes very visible Jesus' view of the Torah and religion of the OT--caring for widows, orphans, the poor, and the destitute, sharply contrasted with the legalism of the Pharisees.
If Jesus were here in the flesh in our day, I believe his compassion would prevent him from walking past the poisonous ideas of woke subculture that are taking captive the rising generation inside and outside the church. Ideas have consequences. Bad ideas have victims, and they are the rising generation of kids from today’s Christian homes and church who are being catechized by the social media, and young adults outside the church being corrupted by destructive worldviews. They are being taught that gender distinctions are a social construct being imposed on culture by an evil patriarchy, the center of which is biblical Christianity. They are brain-washed into thinking that the problems of the poor are caused by the greedy cultural hegemony of the white, rich, capitalists. The delusions shaping the woke movement are so strong that they deny obvious, scientific truth—that there are only two sexes, shown by the fact that every one of the 30 trillion cells of the female body is marked XX, and the male body marked XY. (The extremely rare intersex birth disorder is not evidence of a new sex category any more than disorders of the cardiac or respiratory systems are evidence of new kinds of hearts or lungs.) Jesus’ compassion caused him to confront bad ideas head-on. We need to learn from his example.
But Jesus compassion was not just shown in his courage to pick a fight with those who were victimizing the everyday people of Israel through their false ideas about pleasing God; Jesus shows his compassion for the blind man by healing him and after the healing. It turns out that Jesus was not the only one who confronted the Pharisees. The blind man was amazingly clear sighted in his thinking. We read:
The Pharisees said to the formerly blind man, What did he do to you? How did he open your eyes?” He answered them, “I have told you already, and you would not listen. Why do you want to hear it again? Do you also want to become his disciples?” And they reviled him, saying, “You are his disciple, but we are disciples of Moses. We know that God has spoken to Moses, but as for this man, we do not know where he comes from. The man answered, “Why, this is an amazing thing! You do not know where he comes from, and yet he opened my eyes. We know that God does not listen to sinners, but if anyone is a worshiper of God and does his will, God listens to him. Never since the world began has it been heard that anyone opened the eyes of a man born blind. If this man were not from God, he could do nothing.” They answered him, “You were born in utter sin, and would you teach us?” And they cast him out. Jesus heard that they had cast him out, and having found him he said, “Do you believe in the Son of Man? He answered, “And who is he, sir, that I may believe in him?” Jesus said to him, “You have seen him, and it is he who is speaking to you.” He said, “Lord, I believe,” and he worshiped him.
We saw Jesus’ compassion in healing a man born blind, and in standing up to the false ideas that were destroying the peoples understanding of the true Old Covenant faith. Here we see Jesus’ compassion in seeking out a man who probably could not seek Him out very well since the blind man had never seen Jesus’ face. The healed blind man’s honesty about Jesus had caused him to be thrown out of the synagogue, a fate far worse than it sounds. It resulted in a person being kicked out not only from a building, but from Jewish life altogether. From this moment on his parents and friends will have nothing to do with him. He cannot purchase food from any loyal Jew. In his culture the healed blind man is now persona non grata. But Jesus pursues and finds the formerly blind man and leads him to faith. That is what fathers do. Jesus--the Messianic King has a heart of FATHERLY CONPASSION.
C. Messiah Jesus’ title, EVERLASTING FATHER also points to his role in shaping our character. Once again, to understand what Isaiah means when he uses the term father to describe the nature of the coming messiah, we need to see Isaiah’s other uses of father in his book. In Isaiah 64, we read his description once again of God as a caring father, engaged with his children, but this time focusing on his role of shaping his children. But now, O Lord, you are our Father; we are the clay, and you are our potter; we are all the work of your hand. Be not so terribly angry, O Lord, and remember not iniquity forever. Behold, please look, we are all your people. We belong to God and he, like fathers who have children born to them, trains those in his charge. King Jesus is not only committed to a personal relationship with us and full of fatherly compassion for us; he is also our personal trainer. My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights (Prov 3:11-12).
Trials and pain are the sharp sculpting tools that our CO uses to shape our character as a potter does his clay. Have you developed the habit of linking the pain in your life to the godly character God might be developing in your life? After first taking your feelings to the Lord (Jesus this hurts!), there is strength in identifying what character trait the Lord might be working on.
- For example, there is the pain of being taken for granted, not appreciated, which is the opportunity for the purity of our heart--selfless love to grow.
- Being discouraged by the way sin sees to be triumphing is the opportunity to deepen hope—the certain confidence in the good news of the gospel—that one day everything that is broken will be fixed.
- I’ve been trying to deal with my anger and frustration at things that go wrong—obstacles to checking off the items on my to-do list. When I am on my A game (which is way too rare) and remember James 1:2-4 When all kinds of trials and temptations crowd into your lives my brothers, don’t resent them as intruders, but welcome them as friends…and you will find you have become men of mature character, I smile inside remembering that MY approach to pleasing God is getting my to-do list done--I'm trying to be responsible for God. But GOD’S approach to pleasing him is looking at me and seeing Jesus in my character, (which includes having a good attituded in the midst of irritations).
- If you are married, you live in what Martin Luther called the school for character. If your wife fails to meet your need for respect, it is the opportunity to build your self-worth by remembering that God delights in you.
- When your wife’s flaws make your life harder, it is the chance to remember that in Paul’s description of AGAPE love in 1 Corinthians 13, patience is the first attribute mentioned!
The master you follow, Messiah Jesus is a CO who is like a potter shaping clay!
D. Our fourth observation about Jesus’ Messianic title, EVERLASTING FATHER is that, like the title we looked at last week, MIGHTY GOD, it points to Jesus’ divinity. As one commentary reads, “The third name EVERLASTING FATHER springs out of the second, MIGHTY GOD; for what is divine must be eternal. The title, ETERNAL FATHER, designates Him, however, not only as the possessor of eternity, but as the tender, faithful, and wise, trainer, guardian, and provider for his people even in eternity.” By pointing to the eternality of Messiah Jesus’ fatherly rule, Isaiah again hints that the Messiah would be God himself. This becomes clearer in Isaiah 63:16b, which says, You, O Yahweh are our Father; our Redeemer from of old is your name. To say that Yahweh is Israel’s father and that the coming king will be the EVERLASTING FATHER is a way of telegraphing that the Messiah would be God, himself. The Messianic title, the MIGHTY GOD (looked at last week), plus the tile FATHER, plus the adjective EVERLASTING—all point to the deity of Jesus.
In a culture that loves Jesus’ teaching about social justice, many like Jesus, but want to put him in the category of a great teacher like Gandhi, Confucius, or Buddha. But no other religious teachers claimed to be divine. In sharp contrast, Jesus unambiguously and repeatedly claimed deity.
- In the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “I and the Father are one,” and “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father,” and “Before Abraham was, I am.”
- In Mark 2, Jesus pardons sins in his own name, and the Scribes call this blasphemy, insisting that “only God can forgive sins.”
- Jesus constantly applies prophecies about Israel’s God to himself. The point wasn’t lost on his enemies, who took this as blasphemy and sought to kill him.
If Jesus claimed to be God and wasn’t, he was either a liar or a lunatic. In either case he could not be considered a good moral teacher. C.S. Lewis makes this clear in his trilemma argument in Mere Christianity:
“A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
For Further Prayerful Thought
- What are the differences that a person would normally have in his relationship with his king and his relationship with his father?
- Is it overstating the case to say that Christianity is best summarized by saying that Christ died to pay for our sins so that the guilt that blocks us from a relationship with the Holy One of Israel could be removed so that we can have an eternal personal relationship with him?
- Why would a compassionate leader be easier to follow than one who is not?
- What is the worst part of being a vessel that Jesus the Potter is cutting into? What is the best part?
- How would you persuade a non-believer that holding the opinion that Jesus was a great teacher is logically untenable?
