Sunday 12 • 30 • 18

Isaiah 9:1-7

But there will be no gloom for her who was in anguish. In the former time, he brought into contempt the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali. But in the latter time, he has made glorious the way of the sea, the land beyond the Jordan, Galilee of the nations. The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light. Those who dwelt in a land of deep darkness, on them has light shown. You have multiplied the nation. You have increased its joy. They rejoice before you as with joy at the harvest, as they are glad when they divide the spoil. For the yoke of his burden and the staff for his shoulder, the rod of his oppressor, you have broken as on the day of Midian. For every boot of the tramping warrior in battle tumult and every garment rolled in blood will be burned as fuel for the fire. For to us, a child is born. To us, a son is given and the government shall be upon his shoulder and his name shall be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and of peace there will be no end on the throne of David and over his kingdom to establish it and to uphold it with justice and with righteousness from this time forth and forevermore. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will do this.

Good morning, everybody. It is a real joy and a pleasure for me to get to stand up here and bring you God's word. Please pray with me.

Father, we thank you for your word. We thank you that it is a gift to us and that through it, you show us who you are. You give us your name. We pray that you meet us here this morning, that you would speak to us through your word, that you would reach us in the very places in our hearts where you have prepared your gospel to make room. In your name, we pray. Amen.

So as we've been looking over these last several weeks at Isaiah 9, we've heard this passage over and over again. We've been hearing these names. We've been building on this picture of who is this Jesus? Who is this promised king that was going to come? And as we've been looking, I've been asking a question to myself. I've been asking who is Jesus really to me?

In this kind of post mortem of Christmas, all the lights and the glitter and the gold, the holiday Instagram filters, they're all kind of fading into memory. It makes me wonder, who is it that we've been waiting for? What have we been waiting for? What has all of this been about? Who are we still waiting for, longing for, fighting to see as we participate in this Advent together?

Do you guys remember the 2006 movie Talladega Nights, The Ballad of Ricky Bobby? If you haven't seen it, it tells the story of NASCAR superstar Ricky Bobby, played by Will Ferrell. And in one scene in particular, Ricky Bobby and the family are gathered around the dinner table. Ricky Bobby goes to offer grace before the meal. And it gets pretty awkward and really uncomfortable. As he starts praying, he starts praying to baby Jesus. And he elaborates on it and it builds and it builds to the point that he's praying to "dear eight ounce, eight pound, six ounce, little infant God." And the family keeps stopping him, interrupting him. And they say, "You know, it's kind of weird that you're praying to a baby. I mean, he was a man. He had a beard. He grew up." And Ricky replies by saying, "Well, when you do the grace, you can pray to whatever Jesus you like best. I like the Christmas Jesus best."

So when I pray, I'm going to pray to the Christmas Jesus. And it spirals out into this whole drawn out scene where they're arguing about whether or not Jesus wears a tuxedo t-shirt because he's formal but also likes to party, or whether he's like a ninja fighting off evil samurai. It just spirals out of control.

And the reason I bring that up is, I think that if we're honest, doesn't this sometimes sound a little bit like us? When we go to the king of kings, do we really know who it is that we're talking to, or are we only grabbing ahold of the pieces that we like best? How many of us approach Jesus and say, "I like the Christmas Jesus best"?

But when the lights come down off the house, the tree gets all droopy and dies, and there's pine needles all over the floor, all the feels of the season go away. They go back to normal, and we turn from hope, joy, peace—happy everything—and we begin to look forward. We begin to look to next year, to 2019, and it's almost like we brace for the storm. We're going to face it head on. We steel ourselves. We make resolutions to be better, to do better, to try harder. This year, we're going to make real change.

We look back on the Christmas that was five days ago and the Christmas that was two thousand years ago, and we ask, what was that all about? See, this passage is so much more than just some words that we're used to hearing at Christmas. It's an invitation into something so much more. Isaiah, he gives us these four names that show us the nature and the character of Christ and who it is that is gonna be coming to save his people from the depths of their hurt and despair. That is our hope this Advent, that Jesus is the great rescuer, the God who would come to dwell with his people, that he would pull us out of our lostness and reunite us to the father. These names we've been looking at, wonderful counselor, mighty God, prince of peace, and today, everlasting father tells us that the king to come would be a king who represents all these things. See, Jesus will be our everlasting father.

Now for so many of you, this is great news. This sounds really good. For many of us, when we think of our own fathers, we've got really good memories of someone who was caring, who's strong, who protects us, who loves us, who plays with us, who roughhouses and tickles, who makes really bad, dumb dad jokes, a man who spent hours assembling Christmas presents, taught you how to ride a bike, picked you up when you scraped your knee, provided for you, loved your mom.

But for others, the opposite is true. For many, the word father brings up a host of emotions that we have spent a lifetime trying to suppress and move past.

The Weight of a Word

In studying for this sermon today, I came across an article by an author named Jonathan Edwards. Not the Puritan Jonathan Edwards. In fact, his website is actually not thepuritan.com. But Jonathan, he lives in Durham. He's the author of a book called The Struggle to Make Sense of Life When a Parent Leaves. And he wrote this article that got picked up in 2016 by the Gospel Coalition. And in it, he says this. I'm gonna read you a short excerpt from this article.

Jonathan says, I was 25 years old before I could say the word father while praying. The word was foreign to me. It didn't roll off my tongue the way it did for many other of my Christian friends. It felt like a word from a foreign language. In one regard, it meant nothing. It was gibberish. But in another, it meant a world of things. Amid the cultural barriers, it still struck a nerve because while it meant nothing, it meant everything. It meant broken things, scary things, hurtful things.

How was I supposed to use a word that, for me, brought to mind everything a parent shouldn't be when I was in conversation with a god whom I'd been told was everything my dad wasn't. How was I supposed to call God by a name I hadn't used for most of my life? A name that didn't mean to me what I knew scripture insisted God is.

Dads want to be with their children. They want to spend time with them, to care for them, to love them. They want their children to know how much they would risk to protect them. Dads want children to know what they'd do if they lost them. That is what dads do. So for a child of God, it should be pretty great that God is like a dad. Right?

For the fatherless, this isn't good news. We're fearful of the shadow God has set in place. The result? We're frightened by God the father because we're terrified of our earthly fathers. How can we come to God without fear when we're scared to go home when dad is there? How can we understand God's love and faithfulness when dad left town because he loved someone or something more than us? How can God be a mighty fortress of protection when dad hit instead of hugged? How can God be a firm foundation of trust and assurance when dad built in us a mountain of disappointment and insecurity?

It's devastating that the very thing God has given to reflect his love and mercy and faithfulness is the very thing keeping many from crawling into their heavenly father's lap.

When I first read this article a few weeks ago, I wanted to weep hearing this man be so vulnerable, allowing us in to his heartbreak, telling us a piece of his story, willing to peel back the layers of his own heart to show us what has been keeping him from being able to fully embrace God. See, this is the way that the people in Israel felt. God had been their deliverer. He had been the redeemer from slavery in Egypt, the one who led them into the promised land. He had defeated their enemies. You guys remember a few weeks ago when Jeff told us about the battle of Midian and how they had whittled down the army to just 300 soldiers. And against overwhelming odds, God conquered the enemy. You remember that? This is what God does. He defeats the enemy. He defeats things against unspeakable odds.

But the problem for the people is that they had a bad king. We've talked about how Ahaz, the king of Judah, he went against the Lord and made his own plans.

He made friends with the superpowers in Assyria who were like the neighborhood bully who promised to be their friend but then still punched him in the mouth and took their lunch money. The people had walked in darkness because they had a king that had allowed darkness to come.

God had given the kings of Israel a job. God had established a covenant as a treaty with his people, and the king was the person who was supposed to represent them in that treaty. When the king was good and obedient, the nation walked in the ways of the Lord and they flourished. But when the king was a disobedient king, the people would fall away into sin.

We see this in Isaiah—the darkness that's mentioned in Isaiah nine verse two, as Anderson pointed us to on Christmas Eve, it's brought to them in just the previous chapter. If you flip back just a couple verses, in chapter eight verses twenty-one and twenty-two, it says this:

They will pass through the land greatly distressed and hungry. And when they are hungry, they will be enraged and will speak contemptuously against their king and their god and turn their faces upward. And they will look to the earth, but behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish, and they will be thrust into thick darkness. — Isaiah 8:21-22

The king didn't do his job. The king was supposed to be like a father to his people, to protect them from the neighborhood bully, to be strong in the face of adversity, to be present in the lives of his people, and the king blew it. He distanced himself from God, and he allowed his family, his people to fall into sin, worshiping other gods, desiring the stuff of God, and not trusting in the relationship and the promise of God.

The problem for Israel was that they had a deadbeat dad. For some of you in this room, this might actually sound like your story. Every single person in here can picture something every time they hear the word father or dad or daddy. Some of you who are sitting right here very soon will become or have very recently become fathers. Some of you are still grieving the loss of your father. Some of you have estranged relationships with your father. Some of you are just coming home from spending Christmas with your father, and that might have been great, and it might have not been.

The range of emotions and experiences that every single person in this room has is vast. The word father is one of the most emotionally laden terms in the whole Bible. There's none of us that can clearly see the Father without that image being clouded by our own experiences. It's kind of like being at a concert and there's that guy who's in front of you who's really tall. And no matter how hard you try, how many times you lean around the side or look around, your view is always obstructed because that guy who's in front of you just seems larger than life.

This isn't only for those of you that have had difficult relationships with their dads. It applies to those of you that even have great dads. I'm fortunate enough to be one of those people that has a great dad. He checks a lot of the boxes when it comes to how we evaluate fathers. He was present in my upbringing. He took an interest in what I was interested in. He painstakingly and lovingly suffered through really cold mornings of hockey practice. He taught us amazing, cool things. He built our toys. He loved my mom. He loved my sister. He loves my kids. He's gracious, kind, patient. He's wise. I love my dad. But my dad, he can't even compare with the unspeakable glory that is our God the Father.

It reminds me of a little story that happened this week. My son Luke, who's three years old, for Christmas, he was gifted this really cool toy leaf blower. He loves this thing. It looks really cool. It's orange and gray. It's got Husqvarna written right on the side. You push the button and it jumps to life, and it even blows air out of the front a little bit. It's got these little fake grass clippings that move. It's really cool. He loves this thing. He marches all around the house and tries to blow the leaves away and clean up with it. He'll point it at you and you're like, what? He thinks it's great. He loves his toy.

Well, this week, when the weather turned a little nicer, I took the opportunity to go out into my yard to face down the never ending pile of leaves that is my yard. And Luke, he wanted to come with me. I said, sure, buddy. Let's go clean up the leaves together. He grabs his leaf blower and he wants to go out there and tackle the leaves. It was so cute. He's out there kicking the leaves, doing his thing. We're doing it.

And everything was great until I brought out my leaf blower—gas engine, 200 mile per hour, hurricane force winds. You could watch him. You could see the realization dawn on his face. It's like, what he had was a toy, and it was not up to the task to clean up the leaves in our yard. The only thing that was capable of doing it, to actually handle the mess in our yard, was a real leaf blower.

See, we face this same problem every day with the problem of our own sin. So often, as the people in the time of Isaiah did, we look to the world. We look to our own relationships. We point the blame on the people who have impacted us, and all we see is gloom. We look at the people around us, the people who lead us, those who have and continue to shape us. We look to them to help clean up the mess in our own lives. And we forget that so much of the gloom we see every day isn't just personal relational dysfunction, but stands as a model for just how dysfunctional our relationship with God has become.

See, because of sin, because of this problem, we have a broken relationship with God. And we need someone who can bring us home, someone who can restore that relationship. What we need is this promised king that we've been reading about, this promised everlasting father, this true daddy. Who we need is Jesus.

See, Jesus provides us a better way to look back, a better way back to the Father. He is our great light to bring an end to the darkness and the gloom that we face. Jesus is the only king that can truly point us back to God because he is God.

The Trinity and God's Nature

Now I want to clear up one thing. The terms heavenly father and everlasting father are not the same thing. They're not the same person. Jesus is not the heavenly father. See, we believe that scripture is really clear about this, that it's really clear about what we call the trinity. We as a church are really comfortable in knowing and using the words, the names, father, son, and holy spirit when we refer to the trinity.

James Montgomery Boyce is really helpful in helping us understand this. And he says, we know that there is a distinction between God the father and God the son. But here in Isaiah, you have God the father speaking through the prophet Isaiah calling his son the everlasting father. See, this does not blur the distinction between the two, but it is a way of telling us that Jesus is divine, that Jesus is God. What God is saying is everything that I am, my son is. They're not the same person in a new form, like a shape shifter or like water changing properties from liquid to ice to gas. That's actually an ancient and a very wrong teaching called modalism.

Rather, they have a perfect relationship in themselves of father and son and spirit. There's a perfect unity of three in one. But to us, God's will is that Jesus, to us, would be our everlasting father. And like a father, he wants to welcome us into his family.

See, this term is talking about becoming a member of God's family. It speaks of belonging. Our king is not a king marked by might, not marked only by his might and his wisdom or the inauguration of his peace, but he is a king who brings us family. He makes this so clear.

Jesus does, as recorded in the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verses 6 through 11:

Jesus said to him, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

Philip said to him, "Lord, show us the father and it is enough for us."

Jesus said to him, "Have I been with you so long and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the father. How can you say, 'Show us the father'? Do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? The words that I say to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the father and the father is in me, or else believe on account of the works themselves." — John 14:6-11

See, the language in this passage is a little bit tricky for us to understand. But when he says, "I am in the father, and the father is in me," what Jesus is saying is that the mutual indwelling of the father and the son illustrates to us completely the complete unity of the father and the son. They are distinct but totally inseparable.

And here, Jesus invites us back home to the father. He says, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the father except through me." He is the access. He is the car that gets us home. He isn't saying, "I will show you the way," like turning on the lights on a dark street. Here's the path that all you have to do is follow. Here's these do's and don'ts, this checklist that gets you into heaven, that you do these right things to restore your relationship with your father. No.

He's not saying that at all. What he's saying is I am the way. We don't get dos and don'ts in a checklist that tell us how to be good and good little Christian boys and girls. We get a relationship. We get a relationship through Jesus Christ with the father. What was broken is made whole. We get access. We can come to the father not as aliens or as enemy combatants, but as sons and daughters, the children God made in his own image.

We're encouraged to go to the Lord Jesus and lay our anguish at his feet because he perfectly understands and knows us, and he loves us. He promises to answer our prayers in perfect love according to his wise and wonderful counsel. This point is so important. Please don't miss this. Unless you know Jesus, the Son of God, as your king and as your savior, you have no place in the family of God. Unless he is your father and you are his child, you are still walking in darkness, looking to the world to give you value and hope which it cannot provide.

Hear this. God made a way that he would not be a distant, far away god, but through Jesus' incarnation, God in the flesh, Jesus zipping his glory up inside a skin suit, he would be present. We need not look at shadows and types to see him. We need not look at our own fathers and their successes and their failures to see him. He came to show us what kind of father he is, and he is a father who loves and delights and keeps and protects and defends and comforts and ultimately lays down his own life and dies for his children.

This promise isn't something that just happened long ago or a nice thing we tell ourselves at Christmas, but this is a promise that is still happening for us. In this same passage in John 14 verses 18 through 20, Jesus tells us that we are promised to receive his fatherly care.

I will not leave you as orphans. I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world will see me no more, but you will see me because I live. You also will live. And in that day, you will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you. — John 14:18-20

Think about, if you would for a moment, in literature, pop culture, there are tons of main characters that are orphans. I've got a list here. Oliver Twist, Pippi Longstocking, Huckleberry Finn, Tom Sawyer, Harry Potter, Snow White, Mowgli, Cinderella, Sophie from the BFG, James and the Giant Peach, Heidi, Anne Shirley, Batman, Superman, Spider Man, Luke Skywalker, Frodo Baggins, Anna and Elsa and every Disney character who loses their parents in the first five minutes of the film.

I even see this play out in my own house. My kids are six and three and they've got amazing active imaginations. They love to play pretend. But there's one theme that recurs over and over again and it's that in their play, they go to live with grandma because dad is dead. I mean, they're plotting my demise. But why is this? Why as a culture do we seem to identify with orphans? Why do you think this is? Do you think it could be that because of our spiritual condition, we tend to relate to and empathize with orphans?

I mean, what is it that orphans do? They scrounge. They fight. They steal. They hurt. They hide. They cower in fear. Hurting people so often hurt other people. And Jesus is telling us, you are not an orphan. See, in Jesus, we're invited to become a part of the same mutual indwelling that Jesus has with the father. Do you hear that in verse 20? You will know that I am in my father, and you in me, and I in you. Through Jesus, we are given permanent unity with the Father. He is making us into a new family. He is inviting us to come home, to come off the street. You don't have to beg and steal and hurt and kill to get what you need. Come home to your father, who is your father forever.

See, Jesus, by his life, his death, and resurrection, welcomes us into his family once again. He is the door by which we have access to God. We are blessed with all the rights and privileges of being his children. We're no longer separated. We're not lost. We're not alienated and alone. We get to live forever as sons and daughters of the king of kings and the lord of lords. His reign will never ever end. His blessings will never run empty. His grace will never grow weary. It'll never run out. He will rule in grace, and he gives us all the grace we need for eternity.

You know, Jonathan Edwards, who I read his story a little bit ago, he concludes it by sharing how it was that he came to be able to call God Father. And for him to be able to do that, he says what he needed was a recalibration. He says, Instead of looking at dad first and then at God, I learned to look at God first. If I didn't start with God, then he would always be the replica rather than the original. Through Christ, he has made a way for me to know him and enjoy him.

He can be found. He isn't hiding. He didn't leave. In fact, he came looking for me to rescue me from brokenness. He hasn't given up on me. On the cross, he proved he came for me. He proved that he alone always keeps his promises.

Look, if you were struggling to embrace God as father today because of the scars left in your life by your own father, I invite you to try this. I invite you to a recalibration. I'm not trying to minimize your real hurt or apply a churchy, religious Band Aid over the gunshot wound that's been inflicted upon your life. But know that Jesus is big enough to handle your pain. And by looking to Him before you look to your earthly father, you can know what God is really like. And he's nothing like what you think.

We all have a broken relationship with the father. But because of Jesus Christ and his work on the cross, he has mended what was broken, and in his death and resurrection, He offers life and restoration in the family of God. You can also let go of the brokenness in your own relationships.

You know, we get this at Christmas time. This is like the storyline of almost every Christmas movie out there. One of my favorites is, do you guys remember Old Man Marley, the South Bend shovel slayer from Home Alone? In this film, it turns out that he's not a serial killer, but he's just a sad old man who is estranged in his relationship with his son. And through the sage advice of nine year old Kevin McAllister, he's able to call his son and make peace the next morning. And you see this beautiful scene on Christmas Day as the snow is falling and the house is cleaned up. They're hugging and embracing and there's gifts bought and wrapped. The family has mended. They've come together. It's amazing.

We want this. We long for this. This hope of reconciliation in our relationships is such a major theme in Christmas movies, and it's there because we all have places that sin and hurt have brought pain into our own stories.

This year, as you're spending time with family, remember that you don't have to look inside yourself to settle your differences, but that you can look to Christ. This isn't meant to be trite or simplistic, but as we've spent Advent waiting for the promise of the coming Messiah, celebrating his birth and yet looking forward to his return, it means that you can grieve the loss of your dad. You can sit with boldness in your hurt relationships. But you can also know that because of Christ, it does not define you.

To Parents

Speak the truth to your children how much you need Jesus every day into their lives. Show them that you're crazy for them. Be a king in their eyes that is always pointing not to how awesome you are as a parent, but to how majestic a father they have in Christ. Be a parent who knows how much you need Jesus, and then bring your kids with you to his feet.

The most humbled that I think I've ever felt in my life to this point is the moment I first held my daughter, Alice, moments after she was born. I was, for the first time in forever, going to be a father. And I felt really overwhelmed by the pressing need to raise her, teach her, hope that she'll walk with God and know him. But I realized I am far more like King Ahaz than I am an everlasting father. I make bad plans. I make dumb decisions. I think about myself first and my own comfort.

The only way that I can show my kids Jesus isn't by being Jesus or replacing Jesus, but by bringing them with me to him. Because he is the everlasting father forever and ever. Amen.