Turn back in your Bibles where
we read in Isaiah chapter 9. Isaiah chapter 9. The Bible gives this instruction. It says, your father and mother." And we are certainly to do that,
not only when we are young, but also when we are older. If you
remember, Christ told us that the Pharisees pretty much abandoned
their parents and did so in the name of God. They couldn't spend
anything on them because they had supposedly dedicated all
that to God. But it says that a man who will
not provide for his own house is worse than an infidel. I know there are many of you
in this building this morning that If you did have your earthly
father here, you would be glad to spend the time with him, and
you would certainly, as I would, honor them as your earthly father. But when we are come together
in this place, and when we are gathered together as the church
It is to honor another. It is to honor God and to honor
Him most especially in the person of Jesus Christ. In Him dwells all the fullness
of the Godhead bodily. And this being true, it is no
wonder that we find him spoken of in so many ways in Scripture,
that we see him and his work pictured in a multitude of things
and ways in this book, or that we find him given by God so many
different names and titles. If you look down here in verse
6 of Isaiah 9, we have a number of those names given in one verse. This child that was born, this
Son that was given, His name shall be called Wonderful." Marvelous. Not only that, Counselor. All of these in capital letters,
the mighty God. The Prince of peace. But look at the next to the last
one. He is here called by the Spirit
of God through the prophet Isaiah, the everlasting Father. Christ is not called by this
name in his relations to the other persons of the Godhead. He referred to God the Father
distinctively, and he called Him, My Father. Many would translate the name
here The expression that we find in this verse as the Father of
Eternity. That's who I want to talk to
you about this morning. The Father of Eternity. Christ is here called this Father
of Eternity as he is in his relationship to a particular people. You see, from old eternity, he
has been their life, they have been in him, and he shall be
their life, even the one who gives unto them eternal life. He is the Father of eternity,
or the Father of the world to come. And these people were chosen
in Him, chosen in Him before the foundation of the world,
and given to Him as His children His spiritual seed, His portion,
if you will, His offspring. They bear His name. And He was their Father from
eternity, and their care and charge was at that time given
to Him. The work of the Spirit of God
in time, giving them life and faith, does not make them His
children. It simply manifests to them and
to others that they are His children. How did they become His children. How did He become this Father
of eternity? Well, if you look back in Isaiah
chapter 8, down at verse 18, this is what it says, Behold I and the children whom
the Lord hath given Me. They are His children, given
to Him in that everlasting covenant, brought into union with Him by
the free and sovereign grace of God, loved in Him with an
everlasting love. Behold, I and the children whom
the Lord hath given Me are for signs and for wonders in Israel
from the Lord of hosts who dwells in Mount Zion." They are the
true inhabitants of this Mount Zion, the church. And when our
Lord, whenever this Father of eternity came into this world
He declared again and again this very same thing. Listen to His
expressing it in John's Gospel. It says, "...but as many as received
Him, He gave to them authority to become the children of God
to those who believe on His name, who were born not of blood, nor
of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." This is all about something God
has done. He says again in John, All that
the Father giveth me shall come to me, and him that comes to
me I will in no wise cast out." Again in John, he says, my Father
which gave them me is greater than all, and no man is able
to pluck them out of my Father's hand. And then he says in John 17,
as thou hast given him power over all flesh, that he should
give eternal life to as many as thou hast given him. He said, Father, glorify me. as this Mediator, Redeemer, in
order to give eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Me. And the thing is, when you find
this out in Scripture, you find out that His goal and His glory
as this Father of eternity is inseparably joined to these children. In other words, his goal for
being such, his role as being such, and his glory as being
such, all depends on what he does for these children that
the Father gave him. Turn over to Hebrews. And the
second chapter, Hebrews chapter 2, and listen to what he says
here in Hebrews 2 and verse 10. This says it all. It says, For
it became him. Now, you ladies know all about
that, I believe. Because it means in many ways
the same sense that we speak of a dress or a coat or some
article of clothing not to be coming of us if we are of a certain
size or shape or whatever. My wife says that I don't need
to wear a lot of cross stripes. Because it's not becoming to
me. I need to wear dark things and
vertical stripes. Well, as this one is who He is,
it says, for it became Him, or suited Him, or fitted Him, for
whom are all things, and by whom are all things in bringing many
sons." Do you see that? In bringing many sons under glory
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through suffering. In other words, contrary to what
men claim that we believe, that the elect of God being called
such by the Scripture that we are talking about just a handful
of people? No. While we know that it is
not every person, we believe what God says, that it is many. And while it may be few compared
to the great masses, of men and women that will have lived on
the earth, it is nonetheless that he gave his life a ransom
for many. Many. Absolutely many. And it is in this that he brings
these many sons to glory. He doesn't offer them something.
He knows exactly what they are in themselves. He knows all about
the difficulty in doing so. But He will bring every one of
these children to glory. He is the Father of eternity. This is his goal, and he will
accomplish that. He has accomplished that through
his sufferings. Isn't that something? In other
words, what appears to the natural mind, the natural man, as the
way of utter defeat is the way he brings these many children
to glory. And this is the means by which
he does it. And as a father, Christ provides
for them and cares for them and pities them and saves them. He does many things concerning
how they are, but as a father, most of all, it has to do with
him giving them life. He says, I give unto them eternal
life, and they shall never perish. There's no wonder about that.
There's no ifs, ands, or buts about that. And these sufferings
have to do with these children, and they have to do with His
glory, And the life of His children and the glory of this Father
are both brought about through His death. Look back in Hebrews 2 and verse
9. He says, we don't see all the
things purposed and promised of God in Christ. We don't see
all those things yet brought to pass. But we see Jesus, who was made
a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death. crowned with glory and honor
that he should, by the grace of God, taste death for every
period. Not every person in the world.
As a matter of fact, in the original there, that ends right there
with every. He tasted death for every. And that is a word that, like
every pronoun, has to be identified with another word or a proper
name somewhere in the context in order for it to have any meaning
at all. Who is He talking about here?
Well, every here means the all or the whole. of the people,
all of these children. And it specifically means, as
it is identified in this text, with these sons. He is going to bring every one
of these sons to glory. Another word that we find here
is in verse 13. That is, the children that God
has given him. Another word is in verse 10,
when he speaks of these who are the sons, or in verse 16, it
says that he did so for the seed of Abraham. But in any way that it is described,
either here or elsewhere in the Scripture, he is the father of
eternity, Because He did all these things, He accomplished
all these things for the children that the Father gave Him. What did He do? Taste death. And that doesn't mean that He
simply, like a cup wherein death was, just sipped it or tasted
it. It means literally that He drank
it dry. All that was required to save
these children, which was to save them from their sins, all
that divine judgment was to come upon them. He said He drank, as one man
said, He drank damnation dry. They thought, those disciples
thought, that they could in some way participate in His suffering
or His sacrifice. But He said, I have a cup to
drink. I have a judgment to face that
you can't help Me with. And when He went to that cross,
He had to go in such a way and do such things that in order
to accomplish their salvation and their redemption, He had
to do in their nature. He had to do as a man for men. He had to do as flesh and blood. He had to be like Boaz had to
be to redeem Ruth. He had to be their kinsman, their
near kinsman. For the life of the flesh is
in the blood. And I have given it unto you
upon the altar to make an atonement for your souls, for it is the
blood that maketh an atonement for the soul." He had to have
blood. He had to have perfect, sinless
blood. But He had to shed that blood. He had to pour out that life
in the salvation of His people. And if you notice here, everything
that is said, especially there in Isaiah 9, 6, it tells us that
He is the pre-existing One. This Child that was made flesh. He is, first of all, the Son
that is given. He was, and then He became flesh. And what He became is that He
took on human nature, yet being born of a virgin, being born
without sin, and He otherwise became what the children were. Christ became just like us, sin
excluded. He became so much like us that
when He lived here on this earth, a multitude of people looked
Him in the eye, saw His face, watched His movements, heard
His voice, and they did not think that He was any more than they
were. But if we have any doubt as to
what he came to do, look down in this fourteenth verse of Hebrews
2. For as much then as the children
are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took
part of the same that through death he might destroy him that
had the power of death, that is the devil, and deliver them who through
fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage." This real being that we read
about in Scripture is always associated with death. Death. And not only is He associated
with death, but we naturally are associated with Him in that
death, and it's likened to a bondage. He speaks of us having the fear
of death. And I guess I'd have to be honest
and say that one of the first feelings that I can remember
as a child was the fear of death. I remember laying on my bed as
a child in the night, in the darkness, and you hear all these
creepy sounds all about you and on the outside, pulling the cover
up to your chin. Fear of death. Somebody said, well, I'm not
afraid to die. A dead man's not afraid to die.
Too stupid, too blind, too ignorant of what it is. It says, it is
appointed unto man once to die, and if that was it, there'd be
no reason to fear. But he says, and after this,
the judgment. He that committed sin is of the
devil, for the devil sinneth from the beginning for this purpose,
The Son of God was manifested that He might destroy the works
of the devil." How did He do this? In His humanity. In His sinless humanity. He did so in His humanity as
God manifests in the flesh. And yet, at the same time, being,
as Isaiah said, the mighty God, He did so to destroy the works
of the devil. And that means literally to render
powerless. To render powerless. to deprive him of all ability
to hurt these children. You see, the devil led our race,
led our nature into captivity when Adam fell in the garden
and sinned against God. So Paul says, by one man sin
entered into the world, and death by sin. And so death passed upon
all men, for that all have sinned." We are all these captives, these fearful
subjects of bondage to the devil. But He came. He came. And the Scriptures say that He
is now made manifest, our Savior, Jesus Christ, who hath abolished
death and hath brought life and immortality
to light through the gospel. An old preacher said, Christ
being come has destroyed the devil, not as to his being, but
as to his power. He has done, as it was prophesied,
he has bruised his head, destroyed his works, disarmed his principalities
and powers, and took the captives out of his hands and saved those
he would have devoured, and this he has done by his own death. I cannot imagine what the great
adversary of our souls might have thought when he felt like
knowing that Jesus was nailed to that cross and dying. What
a thrill of victory he thought he experienced in himself. But it was through death that
the Father of eternity destroyed the one who held his children
captive, and delivered everyone." Did you know that's one of the
first things that God tells us in this book? When He's talking
to the very devil himself, after Adam and Eve have just sinned
and fallen, He speaks concerning the woman's seed. And he tells the devil, he'll
bruise your head. Oh, you'll bruise his heel. But he'll bruise your head. He'll
crush your head. And all the prophets foretold
this, such as Isaiah, who says in chapter 25, he will swallow
up death in victory, and the Lord God will wipe away tears
from all faces, and the rebuke of his people shall he take away
from off all the earth, for the Lord hath spoken." And it just struck me this week,
something he says in Isaiah 53. He says, he was taken from prison
and from judgment, and who shall declare his generation? Who's going to identify his people? Who's going to save his people?
How is he going to have any people? For he was cut off out of the
land of the living, and for the transgression of my people was
he stricken." If he's dead, how can he declare his generation?
Because God raised him from the dead. Because his very death
on their behalf is what declares and delivers and redeems all
his people. And John says in the Revelation,
the great dragon was cast out. That old serpent called the devil
and Satan which deceived the world, he was cast out into the
earth, and his angels were cast out with him. And I heard a loud
voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation and strength,
and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ, for
the accuser of our brethren is cast down." which accused them
before our God day and night, and they overcame by the blood of the Lamb." You know, men, go to this book
of Revelation. I don't think you could hardly
flip the channels on TV or go a lot of places where you wouldn't
find somebody speculating on what these symbols and things
in the book of Revelation, what they mean. As a matter of fact,
every time something happens in the economy, or something
happens by the way of disasters, or something happens by war or
change of governments or something like that, somebody runs to the
book of Revelation and tries to speculate on it and sensationalize
on it. when the truth is that the book of the revelation
is the revelation of Jesus Christ. And it is a panoramic view in
many different pictures and scenarios and scenes. It is a picture again
and again of the adversary of not only Christ, but the adversary
of these children rising up against them, but Christ being victorious over
him every time. And these people being delivered
by him every time against every enemy, not only the devil, but
his angels, his messenger, they are delivered every time by the
victorious Christ. They overcame by the blood of
the Lamb and by the word of their testimony, and they loved not
their lives unto death. How did Christ deliver these
children? He did so lawfully. by putting
away the sins of these children which brought forth death. He did so by satisfying God's
justice which demanded their death in the matter of sin. He
did so by dying a substitutionary death in their place, by putting
away their sin by the sacrifice of Himself. He did it by burying
it. suffering for it in his own body
by being made a curse for us. Paul says, So when this corruptible
shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put
on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that
is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where
is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin, and
the strength of sin is the law, but thanks be to God who gives us, hear that, who
gives us the victory. through our Lord Jesus Christ. Not offers us the victory, not
makes possible the victory over death, hell, and the grave, over our sin, but who gives us
the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Who do they do this for? These
sons? These children? These elect? But wherever you read about them
in the New Testament, there is always something else that identifies
them. Look down here in verse 16. For verily he took not on him
the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." This is another name by which
they are called. His children are also called
the seed of Abraham. What does that mean? Does that
mean they are only those people who are born naturally Jews or
a natural lineage? No. Turn over to Galatians 3. Look down with me in Galatians
3. Look down at verse 26. You see, there's a picture of
sovereign mercy there in that 16th verse in Hebrews 2. He said,
not the angels. These angels that fell, a third
of the angelic hosts that followed Satan in his rebellion, did they
not sin? But he didn't redeem them. that He redeemed these children.
Alright, look. Verse 26, Paul writing to these
believers at Galatia, he says, For ye are all the children of
God by faith in Jesus, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as have been
baptized into Christ have put on Christ. He's not talking about water
baptism there. He says, there is neither Jew
nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male
nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you be Christ, then are
you Abraham's seed. and heirs according to the promise." What identifies the children
of God, most especially as they are described as the children
of this Father of eternity? They believe on Him. They believe His gospel. Somebody says, well, I know lots
of folks do. I've got family members and such. They believe in Jesus. No, they
don't. Because the way to know is just
to read to them what this book says about Christ. And check their response. They
believe on a Jesus of tradition, a false religion of their own
making. I'll never forget hearing a man
say years and years ago, when he got into discussion with a
barber who was cutting his hair, he got into discussion with a
man concerning God's people, divine election. And so, he just stopped. The man was the barber, that's
the way it goes. The man was the barber, and he
was cutting the man's hair, and got to talking about this, and
so the man just stopped. And he read him a verse out of
Romans. He said, do you believe that?
You claim to believe it. Do you believe that?" The man
said, not the way you read it. My friend, the Bible says what
it says. Those who are these children
of the Father of eternity, they are brought to believe on Him. That means they repent of everything
else. They repent of what they thought
they knew about God that was wrong. They repent of trusting
in their own self and their experiences and such as that. And they believe
the gospel which gives to Him all the glory. They throw aside. This gospel
that says, we believe that salvation is by grace, but. We believe
that salvation is in Christ, but. No. There is no but. It is all in Him, and they confess
Him. And I like these preachers who
say, You know, I believe that too, I just can't preach it in
my church. No. We confess what we believe. Couldn't do otherwise. And not
only that, they, in their believing, not only identify with Christ
and His gospel and confess it, they identify with His people. You see, his people are as close
to Christ as you can get here on this earth. He indwells him. These politicians who say they
love this country, and they've got far better things to say
about other countries than this one, I don't believe a word of
it. They say they love this country. Don't anybody question their
patriotism, but they're doing everything they can to undermine
it and the principles upon which it was based. I don't believe
a word of it. And all these people who say
they believe Christ, they believe sovereign grace, they believe
in the five points of grace and such as that, and they never
come to hear it, never identify with the people of it? No. These children follow Him. And
they keep on following Him. And they're going to continue
to follow Him. He's not called the Father of
Eternity for no reason. He loves. He gives life to His children. And He brings every
one of them to confess Him, to love Him,
to identify with it. You parents, you fathers in particular,
if it was in your power, what would you do for your children?
I'll tell you what, if it had been in my power this morning,
both my children would be here. If it had been in my power, I'll
be honest with you, both my children would have perfect health, perfect
families, perfect jobs. It's not my power. But it's in
His power to do what He will for His children. Is His love
for His children less than our love for our children? Honor your father and mother. Thank God for them. I thank God
for my father, my earthly father. I wish he was here today to sit
down and have lunch with him. But I know it's God who gave
him. It's God who took him. But this Father, He said, I'll
never leave you or forsake you. That's a marvelous thought. We thank you this day, Lord, for your great mercies
to us in Jesus Christ. We can hardly think of the love
that has been bestowed upon us that we might be called the sons
of God. Lord, we just pray this day that
you would call out one of your children Make that relationship manifested
in their heart and mind, that they might rejoice in it, that
they might thank you for it, that they might praise you with
all the others of your children, both now and for eternity. Glorify yourself. in all things. Enable us to believe on you. Give us courage to confess you,
to forsake all else, every other hope, to plead nothing but your blood,
your sufferings, your righteousness. as all our hope and all our salvation. Help us to live these days thinking
about that hour when the family reunion will
take place. And Lord, even though maybe all
or some of our earthly families not be present, Lord, all those
earthly relationships will have faded away at that hour, and
we will realize that all our family is there, gathered around
the Father of eternity to be with Him and worship Him,
be blessed by Him, worlds without end. We pray and we thank you in Christ's
name. Amen.