Key Text: Isaiah 9:6-7
Everlasting Father refers to Jesus’ father-like character. He will provide and protect His children with wisdom and compassion.
But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.Galatians 4:4-5
Jesus is likened to an Everlasting Father. And as an Everlasting Father, He offers us the gift of security. A good father provides safety, protection and security. The security He offers means that He plans on loving us forever. As Everlasting Father the guarantee is that there is nothing we can do to make Jesus love us more and nothing we can do to make Him love them less. He loves us as only an Everlasting Father can do.
James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.
He is the one who will never leave us or forsake us.
…be content with what you have, for He has said, ‘I will never leave you nor forsake you.’ Hebrews 13:5
We can feel secure with Him. We can know that He is going to be there all the time. He will spend as much time with us as make for Him. He gives us good gifts. He delights in us. He cheers for us and will do whatever it takes to make us understand that He loves us unconditionally. In fact He already has in coming as a man in the person of Jesus
Because He is the everlasting Father, the Father without end. Isaiah is able to say 9:7 …of the increase of His government and of peace there will be no end.
In ancient times, the ‘father of the nation’ was viewed in much the same way as the father of a family. It was the father who was to protect and provide for his children.
In the same way, this Child to be born, this Jesus that Isaiah talks about will become a king who will be a father to the children of Israel. He will protect and provide for them. And His role as protector and provider will not be limited or curtailed by aging or death.
Jesus, God in the flesh the one who would protect and provide for His people through His death and resurrection would also make provision in the sacrifice, so that Gentiles could also be grafted into the family of Israel.
He Inhabits and Possesses Eternity. For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: “I dwell in the high and holy place and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite. 57:15
His Name is Eternal. May his name endure forever, His fame continue as long as the sun. May people be blessed in Him, all nations call Him blessed! 72:17
He is The Eternal Provider. “It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give from the spring of the water of life without payment. The one who conquers will have this heritage and I will be His God and He will be my son. 21:6-7
He is Eternal in All That He Is And All That He Does.
This implies two imprtant truths claimed for God’s Messiah in both O.T.and N.T.
He Is Pre-existent. Before the mountains were brought forth or ever you had formed the earth and the world, from everlasting to everlasting you are God. Psalm 90:2
He is Self-Existent. In Exodus 3:14 God calls Himself ‘I Am who I Am.’ This name defines the God who is.
He is totally independent of His creation and of time. He is the God who is Alpha and Omega, the God of the eternal present tense. He is the uncaused Cause, the uncreated Creator. He is the source of all things, the One who originated everything and who sustains everything that exists. He is the One in whom all other things find their source, existence and continuance. From Him and through and to Him are all things Romans 11:36
…He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. Colossians 1:17
He is the ever-present Power that sustains all life. There is no other source of life and none other like Him:
“For I am God, and there is no other; I am God, and there is none like Me” Isaiah 46:9
This child that Isaiah spoke of 700 years before His birth would manifest both the power of the Mighty God and the heart of the Everlasting Father.
The greatest manifestation of His power and compassion was at the Cross.
In case we worry that His fatherly compassion will wax and wane like, so many other fathers who have disappointed their children, we rejoice that He is the Everlasting Father.
His compassion is constant and everlasting, and therefore will not fail.
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. Psalm 103:13-14