37. Rise of the Great Light (4)

Posted on Posted in Sermon Notes Tagged with , , , ,

Hymn: 173 There is a Fountain 179 The Way of the Cross Leads Home 227 O Glorious Day!

Isaiah 9:6-7

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. 7 Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this. 

Rise of the Great Light (4)

OUTLINE

(1) Light in Midst of Darkness (v1-2)

(2) Deliverance and Peace (v3-5)

(3) Coming of God’s Son (v6-7)

Continue…

6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father…

How complex is the person of our Lord Jesus Christ! Almost in the same breath, the prophet calls Him a “Child,” and a “Counsellor,” a “Son,” and “the Everlasting Father”.

He who is the Man of Sorrows should also be God overall, blessed forever. He who is in the Divine Trinity always called the Son, should nevertheless be correctly called “the Everlasting Father.” 

How forcibly this should remind us of the necessity of carefully studying and rightly understanding the person of our Lord Jesus Christ! We must not suppose that we shall understand Him at a glance. A look will save the soul, but patient meditation alone can fill the mind with the knowledge of the Saviour. 

Glorious mysteries are hidden in His person. He speaks to us in the plainest language, and He manifests Himself openly in our midst, but yet in His person itself, there is a height and depth that human intellect fails to measure. He must reveal Himself to us or we will never know Him. He is not discovered by research nor discerned by reason. 

“Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona,” said Christ to Peter, “for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee. “When it pleased God,” says the apostle, “to reveal His Son in me.”

Jesus is “Everlasting” and He is “Father”. 

He is firstly, “Everlasting”. The Babe was born in Bethlehem as united to the Word, which was in the beginning, by whom all things were made. He was revealed to John at the island of Patmos.

Revelation 1:8 (KJV) I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, the Almighty.

Revelation 1:14-15 (KJV) His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow; and his eyes were as a flame of fire; And his feet like unto fine brass, as if they burned in a furnace; and his voice as the sound of many waters.

He is indeed God from everlasting. Jesus is not dead but ever liveth to make intercession for us. He has not ceased to be; He hath not gone out of sight; but He sits at the right hand of the Father. 

Hebrews 1:10-12 (KJV) And, Thou, Lord, in the beginning hast laid the foundation of the earth; and the heavens are the works of thine hands: They shall perish; but thou remainest; and they all shall wax old as doth a garment; And as a vesture shalt thou fold them up, and they shall be changed: but thou art the same, and thy years shall not fail.

Jesus is truly the I AM, as the LORD who spoke out of the burning bush to Moses at Horeb. He lives! He lives! This is the foundation of our comfort! Because He lives you shall live also.”

Our Lord here in the connection of the word “Father” with the word “everlasting” allows us to remark that our Lord is as everlasting as the Father since He Himself is called “the Everlasting Father,” for whatever antiquity paternity may imply is here ascribed to Christ. 

According to our common notions, of course, the Father must be before the Son, but we must understand that the terms used in Scripture to represent Deity to us are not intended to be literally understood, and rendered in their exact terrestrial sense; they are only so far descriptive as they may compass the whole truth, for human language utterly fails to convey the very essence and fullness of celestial things. 

The relationship between the Father and the Son is a case in point; it is not precisely the same as the relationship between a father and a son on earth, but that happens to be the nearest approach to it among men.[1]

In what sense is Jesus a Father? He is federally a Father representing those who are in Him, as the head of a tribe represents his descendants. The apostle Paul comes to our help here, for in the memorable chapter in the Corinthians, he speaks of those who are in Adam, and then He talks of a second Adam. Adam is the father of all living; he federally stood for us in the garden, and federally fell and ruined us all. He was the representative man by whose obedience we should have been blessed, through whose disobedience we have been made sinners. 

The curse of the fall comes upon us because Adam stood in a relation towards us in which none of us stands towards our fellows. He was the representative head for us; and what a fall was there when he fell! For every one of us in his loins fell in him. “In Adam all die.” Since his day there has been but one other Father to the human race federally. It is true, Noah was the father of the present race of men, for we have all sprung of him; but there was no covenant with Adam in which he represented his posterity, no condition of obedience by which he might have obtained a reward for us, and no condition of disobedience for the breach of which we are called the smart. The only other man who is a representative of man, before God, is the second Adam, the man Christ Jesus, the Lord from heaven. Brothers and sisters, we call Adam father mournfully, for we are cast out of Eden by him, and we till the ground with the sweat of our face; in sorrow did our mothers bring us forth, and to the grave in sorrow must we go; but we who have believed in Jesus called another Man father, namely, the Lord Jesus; and we speak this not sorrowfully but joyfully, for He was borne Himself the pangs which were brought upon us by sin, He took our sicknesses and bore our sorrow; while death itself, the heaviest affliction. He has overcome, so that he that liveth and believeth in Him shall never die, but pass out of this world into the life celestial.

The grand question for us is this, Are we still under the old covenant of works? If so, we have Adam as our father and under that Adam, we died. But are we under the covenant of grace? If so, we have Christ to our Father, and in Christ shall we be made alive. Generation makes us the sons of Adam; regeneration makes us the sons of Christ. In our first birth, we come under the fatherhood of the fallen one; in our second birth, we enter into the fatherhood of the Innocent and Perfect One. In our first fatherhood, we wear the image of the earthy; in the second we receive the image of the heavenly. Through our relation to Adam, we become corrupt and weak, and the body is put into the grave of dishonour, in corruption, in weakness, in shame; but when we come under the dominion of the second Adam we receive strength, and quickening, and inward spiritual life, and therefore our body rises again like seed sown which rises to a glorious harvest in the image of the heavenly, with honour, and power, and happiness, and eternal life.

In this sense, then, Christ is called Father; and inasmuch as the covenant of grace is older than the covenant of works, Christ is, while Adam is not, “the Everlasting Father”’ and inasmuch as the covenant of works as far as we are concerned passes away, being fulfilled in him, and the covenant of grace never passes but abideth for ever, Christ, as the Head of the new covenant, the federal representative of the great economy of grace, is “the Everlasting Father.” 

Secondly, Christ is a Father in the sense of a Founder. You know, perhaps, or at least you readily remember when I remind you, that the Hebrews are in the habit of calling a man a father of a thing which he invents. For instance, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, Jubal is called the father of such as handling the harp and organ; Jabal first took upon himself a nomadic tent life, and set the example of wandering about with flocks and herds; and Jabal first put his fingers to musical strings, with flocks and herds; and his lips to pipes from which the wind is breathed melodiously. The Lord Jesus Christ is in this sense the Father of a wonderful system. Now, our Lord Jesus Christ, who brought life and immortality to light, and introduced a new phase of worship to this world is, on that respect, a Father; He is the Father of all Christians, the Father of Christianity, the Father of the entire system under which grace reigns through righteousness. Jesus is the Father of a great doctrinal system. All the great truths which we are in the habit of delivering in your hearing as the precious truths of God sent down from heaven fell first clearly and powerfully, from the lips of Jesus. These things were dimly hinted at in the ceremonies of the law, but Christ, first of all, put them into the plain letter so that he who runs may read. Practically it is Jesus who teaches us the doctrine of electing love; it is Christ who reveals to us redemption by blood; it is Christ who reveals regeneration by the work of the Spirit, saying plainly, “He must be born again.” It is Christ that reveals the perseverance of the saints. In fact, there is no doctrine of the Christian system which is not so clearly set in the light of His own glorious Spirit by His teaching that we may not fairly call Him the Father of it.

Our great Master is also the Father of a great practical system. If there be any in the world who “love their neighbours as themselves,” the Man of Nazareth is their Father; for, albeit that the law signified all that, yet men had not discovered it, but had misread the law. “Eye for eye and tooth for tooth” was their version of law; but Christ comes and says, “I say unto you, Resist not evil; if any man smite you on the one cheek, turn to him the other also.” If any man can suffer with patience and can return good for evil, heaping coals of fire upon the head of his foes, this man is a child of Christ. If men worship God in the spirit and have no confidence in the flesh, if they know no holy place, but recognize every place as holy where a holy man is found, such are the true children of Christ, for He said, “They that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.” He is the Father of spiritual worship.[2]

The system of salvation claims Christ to be its Father. Whoever said, “By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not yourselves, it is the gift of God”? Who but the apostle of this man, Christ Jesus? Who told men that it was not by works of righteousness which they had done, but the merit of His passion and His life that they were saved? Who revealed the way of faith to men but Christ, the great doctrine of “Believe and live”? and those who receive it may claim Christ as Father. He is the Father of the Christian faith.

Thirdly, Jesus is a Father in the great sense of a Life Giver. That is the main sense of “father” to the common mind. Through our fathers, we are called into this world. Now it is by Christ that there is a communication of divine energy to the soul, it is through Him, through His teaching, through the Spirit that He hath given, through the blood that He had shed, that life is given to those who were dead in trespasses and sins. He that sitteth upon the throne saith, “Behold, I make all things new.” If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things have passed away; behold all things have become new.” “This is the record, that God hath given to us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” “For as the Father raiseth up the dead, and quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth them; even so the Son quickeneth whom He will. Verily, verily, I say unto you, The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God; and they that hear shall live. For as the Father hath life in Himself; so hath He given to the Son to have life in Himself.” We know that through Jesus Christ divine life is given to us. “In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.” He gives the living water, and then it is in us “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” He is that living grain of wheat which was cast into the ground to die, that it might not abide alone, but become a root that bringeth forth fruit, which fruit we now are, receiving life from Him as the stem receives life from the seed from which it sprang. Jesus is our Father in that sense. It is the Spirit of God who operatively quickens the soul and makes us live, but Jesus Christ’s gospel is the channel through which the Spirit works, and Jesus Christ is the true life to us. Receiving Christ we receive life, and without Him, we cannot have life. “He that hath the Son hath life; he that hath not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him.” As though the energy of Adam this vast world is peopled till hill and dale are covered with teeming population, so through the life-energy of our Lord Jesus Christ the plains of heaven and the celestial hills shall be peopled with a throng that no man can number. Out of every realm, and people, speaking every language… Christ shall find a people into whom His quickening shall come, and they live through the energy of His Spirit, and He shall be their Everlasting Father. It is in this sense, because that life is everlasting, and can never die out, that Jesus Christ is called “the Everlasting Father”.

To be continued…

[1] CH Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Bible – III Psalm 112 to Isaiah, Baker Book House, 1988, His Name – The Everlasting Father, 436-442.

[2] CH Spurgeon, The Treasury of the Bible – III Psalm 112 to Isaiah, Baker Book House, 1988, His Name – The Everlasting Father, 437-8.