Amen.
Well, thinking about the world around us, some of y'all might have noticed that everything
changes.
Everything changes.
A season shift right before our eyes.
What used to be trees filled with vibrant green leaves are now what?
Dry and in our gutters and in our streets and on our house and everywhere.
The leaves have fallen and summer has turned to autumn and winter approaches.
Right?
We're not officially at winter yet.
21st.
Okay.
Thank you.
The calendar down here.
If you're a technology junkie like my family was growing up and extended into my later
years, then you also know that technology changes all the time.
Right?
As soon as you walk out of the store with the brand new iPhone, it's already obsolete.
They've already put out another one and they're marketing it and they want to get it into
your hands ASAP.
Right?
And for some of you, you know, you still have that nostalgic feeling over that flip phone
you once owned.
That fit nicely into your pocket.
It was your treasure.
It was your baby.
It was probably your first phone.
It has changed.
It has gone away.
Left to the landfill covered with dirt.
And you guys know too, our bodies testify to this.
Our bodies testify.
We grow older.
We break down.
We need oil changes.
We change in ways that we can't control anymore.
We witness it.
There's an MIT physicist and humanities professor, Alan Lightman, and he was considering this
reality of change in a writing and a reflection that he published.
And he was thinking about his daughter's wedding day.
And this is how he wrote about his reflections upon this reality.
It was a perfect picture of utter joy and utter tragedy.
Because I wanted my daughter back as she was at age 10 or 20.
As we moved together toward that lovely arch that would swallow us all.
Other scenes flashed through my mind.
My daughter in first grade holding a starfish as big as herself.
Her smile missing a tooth.
My daughter on the back of my bicycle as we rode to a river to drop stones in the water.
And now she is 30.
I could see lines on her face.
As he's reflecting on this, he further goes on to say, I don't know why we long for permanence.
Why the fleeting nature of things so disturbs us.
With futility we cling to that old wallet that has long fallen apart.
We visit and revisit old neighborhoods where we grew up.
Anyone do that?
My family is like notorious for that if we're driving around.
It's like, oh, we've got to swing over here and take this detour.
And that's where I was born or that's where we grew up or that's where I stayed when I
was working here.
We visit and revisit and we're searching for those places.
He says, searching for that grove of trees or that little fence.
We clutch for our old photographs.
And then he says, but yet in every nook and cranny, nature screams at the top of her lungs
that nothing lasts.
That it all passes away.
All that we see around us, including our own bodies, is shifting and evaporating and one
day will be gone.
Where are the one billion people who lived and breathed in the year 1800?
Only two short centuries ago.
Where have they gone?
And then Alan Lightman says something that I think is pretty profound.
He says, to my mind, it is one of the most profound contradictions of human existence
that we long for immortality, indeed fervently believe that something must be unchanging
and permanent when all of the evidence in nature argues against us.
And then he says, I certainly have that longing.
Either I am delusional or nature is incomplete.
Either I am being emotional and vain in my wish for eternal life for myself and my daughter
or there is some realm of immortality that must exist outside of nature.
Isaiah chapter nine, verse six, for a child will be born for us.
A son will be given to us and the government will be on his shoulders and he will be named
wonderful counselor, mighty God, eternal father.
Today we're looking at that third title given to this royal King, the promised Messiah who
as the Christmas song says, all our hopes and fears are met in him.
He will be called eternal father.
The first point of clarity is this, that Isaiah is not talking about the first person in the
Trinity, the father, when he says that he will be called eternal father.
What he is saying is that the reign of the Messiah King will be marked by these characteristics,
that Jesus will personify the fatherly love, care and provision of God toward his people.
The Bible clearly teaches that God is one in essence, three in persons, father, son
and spirit and that God is one unified being who shares a single divine nature, we call
his essence, but he exists as three distinct, co-eternal persons, father, son and Holy Spirit.
Each person fully possesses the one divine essence or nature and yet each is uniquely
and personally different from the other.
In taking on humanity and coming to live with us, Jesus fully reveals the divine nature
of God to us.
In John chapter 14, Jesus said, whoever has seen me has seen the father.
And this doesn't mean that Jesus is the father, but that he perfectly reveals the father's
character and the nature he shares with the father and the spirit.
And so he is, as Colossians puts it, the image of the invisible God.
In Christ, we experienced the fatherly love and care and provision of God.
If you have your Bibles and you want to turn somewhere else, turn over to Psalm 103.
We're going to spend a little bit of time in Psalm 103 today.
The psalmist in Psalm 103 gives us some great insights into God, God's character as our
eternal father revealed in Christ Jesus.
Psalm 103 verse 13 says, as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion
on those who fear him.
As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear
him.
How does God treat us?
He pities us.
Now we don't like the word pity.
None of us want to be pitied, right?
We're strong, independent.
We don't need your pity.
God pities us.
God pities us in his compassion.
Because this is what is true of any parent.
I'm a father and I have three kids.
And when they were much younger, especially before they grew up and got really big, I
had great pity for them in their plight.
They were hopeless, helpless.
Oftentimes they couldn't tell their right shoe from their left shoe.
They needed my help and love and care deeply.
And so I pitied them as any good father would have compassion on his child and didn't leave
them to their own.
But instead, tried to bring care and love and provision to them.
He pities us.
He's a good father who has compassion on us.
Well, how does he treat us?
He treats us with pity and compassion.
How do we see the father, the eternal father in Christ Jesus?
Well, the first way, and I'll have you write this down, is he saves us completely.
We see the eternal father, the compassion and care of God, revealed it through Christ
Jesus in that he saves us completely.
Psalm 103, I'm going to read a selection of verses, verse 3, 4, 10, and 12.
It says, he forgives all your iniquity.
He heals all your diseases.
He redeems your life from the pit.
He crowns you with faithful love and compassion.
He has not dealt with us as our sins deserve or repaid us according to our iniquities.
As far as the East is from the West, so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
Here's something that we don't like, but it's true.
As moral beings created by God, we know what is right and wrong.
We know what is right and wrong.
That knowledge has been planted within the heart of every man.
We know what is right and wrong, and this is not something we can claim innocence on.
We know that wrong is wrong, and we know that wrong behavior, that sin at its core brings
about condemnation.
If you've ever had kids or younger kids or teenage kids or even as adults, I was trying
to deflect it onto the kids, but it even happens among adults.
I've seen it.
That when we've done something we know is wrong, what do we do?
We hide.
We lie.
We deflect.
We don't want the consequence or the condemnation that comes from it.
We know what we were doing.
We already know ahead of time that condemnation awaits those who do wrong.
And God is not some benevolent Santa Claus in the sky, as some might want to claim, who
just doles out forgiveness like Oprah giving away a free car to everyone in the audience.
Everyone check underneath your seats really quick.
You might find something there.
It'd be awesome to get a free car, but God is not doling out forgiveness in the same
way.
He is not a benevolent Santa Claus who all you have to do is wish and then it is yours.
But the other truth is that we can't deal with our wrong.
We can't deal with our sin.
We can't do anything about it and God can't simply overlook it.
God can't simply overlook it because God is holy and his holiness and his justice demand
that it must be dealt with.
And so God can't overlook it and we can't do anything about it.
So what can be done?
Well, this is the amazing part.
Notice in Psalm 103, who is taking all the initiative?
Who's doing all the things?
God is doing it.
God is taking the initiative.
He's forgiving our iniquities.
He's healing our diseases.
He's redeeming our life from the pit, crowning us with faithful love and compassion.
He's the one not dealing with us as our sins deserve or repaying us as our iniquities deserve.
He is the one casting our transgressions as far as the East is from the West.
We can't deal with it.
God can't overlook it.
God's taking the initiative.
He is having compassion on his children.
He is forgiving and healing, redeeming.
He is removing sins, stain.
But how is he doing it?
What's the means by which he's doing?
Is he just overlooking it?
Is he saying, oh, it's not that bad.
It's okay.
No, he's not.
Jesus reveals to us that the eternal father, the characteristics of God, his care and compassion
and provision for us, that Jesus is our means for salvation, that it is Christ who is taking
the initiative to become our substitute on the cross, that God would not simply overlook
sin and dole out forgiveness, but that God would stand in our place in Christ Jesus and
take upon himself the just penalty for our sins, that he would redeem us from the pit
by crawling into the pit himself.
That he would remove sin and stain from us by bearing its shame on his own body, perfect
though he was.
That he would lose his life so that we might gain life.
And this salvation would last.
It would take.
It would go on and on.
It wouldn't need a refresher ever so often.
Yeah, this is something we just recently had a baptism, right?
And oftentimes we'll get a question.
I was baptized, but I did all these things in between there.
I was trusted in God.
I was believed in God, but I did these things.
Do I need to be rebaptized?
No, you don't need to be rebaptized.
His redemption, his salvation is secure and complete.
You don't need another baptism.
You don't need a redo ever so often.
It was sufficient.
It would be sufficient once for all, for all who had become his children.
And it would be sufficient once for all time.
It need not be supplemented by human work or endeavor or anything else.
He will save.
He will take the initiative.
He will take it upon himself to pay the price.
We also see God's characteristic as an eternal father revealed in Christ in that he knows
us fully.
Chapter two, he knows us fully.
Psalm 103, 14 says, for he knows what we are made of remembering that we are dust.
As for man, his days are like grass.
He blooms like a flower of the field.
When the wind passes over it, it vanishes and its place is no longer known.
God is compassionate toward us because he knows us fully.
We are not a mystery to him.
You are not a mystery to God.
He knows we are dust.
He knows our days for he numbered them himself.
He knows us because he has made us.
In Psalm 139, just a little bit later in the book of Psalms, we hear that God, we hear
this prayer that God would search and know our innermost thoughts, that he knows who
we are at the deepest level, behind what everyone else knows, at the deepest level of our thoughts
and our will, God knows us.
That he knows when we will rise and when we will sleep, that nothing is hidden from him.
Not only our present, but he also created us in our, he created our inmost parts and
he knit us together in our mother's womb.
We're told in Psalm 139 that we are remarkably and wondrously made.
The psalmist went on to say, my bones were not hidden from you when I was made in secret,
when I was formed in the depths of the earth.
Your eyes saw me when I was formless.
All my days were written in your book and planned before a single one of them began.
All of them were written in the book and planned before a single one of them began.
He knows us fully because he made us completely.
Do we, do we need to be preoccupied with endless worries and anxieties if this is true?
If we have an eternal father who knows us and cares for us and has turned his face toward
us in compassion and love, who has taken the initiative to save us, then do we need to
be preoccupied with endless worries and anxieties?
If we have this father eternal, do we need to count these days and moments and hours
as if they are the totality of reality?
Do we need to spend our life as if the bills that are stacking up, you know, on our mantle
or the anxieties and stresses in our relationship are everything in life?
Or can we see that God eternal who knew us before has numbered our days and our life
is fleeting and yet he loves and is compassionate and cares for us, that he knows us before,
he knows us now, and he knows where he is taking us for he has made us for a purpose.
Did you know you were made for a purpose?
Did you know that you were made to love and to glory in him and to enjoy him forever?
Just think about it.
You were made, created, fashioned by God.
He in his great wisdom, his wonderful counsel, decided and determined beforehand to make
you and to fashion you so that you might glory in him, love him and enjoy him forever.
You are not a product of random chaos.
You are not merely the product of human choice or even human sin.
You are not a mistake, a burden or worthless.
Our father knows us and he gives us value.
Psalm eight, the psalmist is writing this Psalm and he is just captivated by this idea.
He asked this question, what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you
care for him?
Who are we?
Why would you, the God of all creation, why would you, the one who flung the stars into
place and created all the planets, why would you look upon me and care?
There are a lot of things that I have owned in my life, a lot of things.
But I also came from a family that moved upwards of, it was over 30 times by the time I became
adult.
And since I was an adult, probably another 15 to 20.
So I don't know exactly where we're at, but we've moved a lot.
And you know one of the characteristics of people who move a lot?
You just don't keep a lot of things.
You may have them for a while, but you know what's really hard is to move them from house
to house, especially 30 times.
And so my dad had this thing that he would do.
When it's time to move, we just threw everything away.
He just threw it away.
Now in the early days, that included my mom's memoirs and her boxes of pictures and stuff.
And I remember crying, a lot of crying going on at the house.
But it's like, you haven't visited that box in the three years we've lived here.
And now we're gonna move it to another house and then to another house and then to another
house.
And so you just don't keep a lot of things.
But the things that you do keep, they mean something to you.
Nowadays, at least at this moment in time, there are things that I keep and that I like
and I enjoy and I know exactly where they're at.
But if you've had teenage boys, they're never exactly where they're supposed to be.
And so it's really weird because I'm not even premeditated.
I'm not coming home going, I'm gonna check where all my stuff is, you know, as I'm driving
home.
But I get home and I'll walk into the room and in a moment I'll notice my hat's gone,
my baseball hat.
And immediately turn around.
And I hate this.
We've had the conversations husband and wife here.
It's like, when you get home, the first thing they don't need to hear is correction and
things like that, right?
It's true.
So maybe I'll give it a one minute reprieve before I go and find them.
But then you, oh, it's missing.
And then you go to find it, right?
Well, I've got three boys, but I always start with one.
99% of the time, that solves it.
It's on his head, it's hanging up there, it's on his bed or he left it outside.
A lot has gotten left outside.
But see, I'm mindful of that thing.
Even subconsciously I'm mindful of my hat.
And when I come in, I look at it and it has value.
Its value is not in its material.
Its value is what I give to it.
At this point in time, I'm giving it value and so therefore I treasure it and I keep
it safe and I look for it.
God knows us and he gave us value.
God knows us and he stamped us with value.
He was mindful of us.
He was considerate of us.
He cared for us and in his care and mindfulness, we took on infinite value.
Not intrinsic, not in and of ourselves, but because of his value for us, because of his
face looking upon us, smiling upon us and showing us care.
You are not worthless.
You are not a burden.
You are not a mistake.
Because the God of all creation looks upon you and smiles.
You have infinite worth and then you think, what would God do?
What links would he go to show that love that he has for me?
Would he step down from heaven, take on the flesh of humankind, go through all of the
suffering and burden of being a human who was hated and reviled even though he was perfect?
And would he go to a cross and take on my sin upon himself so that I might be reconciled
back to him so that he might care for me and love me and I might love him and enjoy him
forever?
What a God we serve.
Our identity is not in what we can muster up in our inmost thoughts.
It's not about our positive self-talk.
I'm telling you, there are good days and bad days for positive self-talk, but it always
… It's fleeting.
It's not permanent.
All it takes is a muff up or a mess up or to sin in some way and pretty soon you're
condemning yourself and Satan is right there whispering in your ear how terrible you are.
I need something outside of myself to give me value.
I need something to tell me I'm valuable when I don't feel valuable.
And all the internal dialogue, the inmost thoughts, even on my best days or my worst
days is not sufficient.
It is because my Father is mindful of me that I have infinite value.
We are the objects of his love and compassion and that fills us with value.
The most important questions a person can ask are, who am I?
Where did I come from?
And where am I going after this?
And I believe that God has answered each one of these for you and I and that proof is in
Christ Jesus.
That for his delight and glory, you were worth saving.
That for his delight and glory, you were formed and shaped and crafted by the master craftsman.
No mistakes, no errors.
And that for his delight and glory, he invites you in desires that you would worship, love
and enjoy him forever and ever and ever.
My final point is that we, this eternal Father revealed in Christ is that he loves us endlessly.
He loves us endlessly.
I'm going to invite the worship team to come on up as we take this final point to the end
of the sermon.
Verse eight of Psalm 103 says, the Lord is compassionate and gracious.
He is slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.
This is one of the most common ways that God describes himself in the Bible to his people.
He describes himself as the Lord who is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding
in love.
That he abounds or overflows with love.
That John tells us later that God is love.
And we are told that his kindness, his kindness that you who deserve one thing don't get what
you deserve, but instead he takes it upon himself, instead of receiving what you deserve,
because of his love, that he provides a savior for you in your place.
So that as we sang earlier, that by his all-sufficient merit, he might give to me a status change,
a position change, his child, his son, his daughter.
His kindness leads us to repentance.
It leads us to turn away from this world.
Some of you may feel like you're tied up and sucked into sin, that you can't get free of
it, you're entangled by it.
And what you think you need to do, and what we are so naturally trained to do is that
we think we need to make a list of the things that we're doing wrong, and we need to figure
out a strategy to stop doing them.
And I think there's a better way, and that is to start looking to Christ, to first look
to Christ and be filled with the gratitude and joy that comes from knowing that you did
not receive, you did not get what you deserved.
To know that he took upon himself that which you deserved, the penalty which is yours because
of your sin and your failure.
He took it on himself.
Remember that.
Look to him.
And if you still don't get it, if it still doesn't do anything in you, keep looking.
It is an endless, dead-end pursuit to try to chase down all your failures and correct
them yourself.
But something happens when you catch a vision of Christ.
Something happens when you catch a vision of the gospel, the good news that Jesus took
upon himself, your rightful penalty.
And when it really drives deep and deep and deep into your heart, pretty soon you don't
want to sin.
Your desires change.
Not just your behavior, your desire to sin change.
That's the goal.
That his kindness would lead us to repentance.
That the gospel reality at work in our lives would lead us to turn away from our sin and
recognize that he loves us endlessly.
In verse 17 of 103 he says, from eternity to eternity, the Lord's faithful love is toward
those who fear him.
This is covenantal language, like a marriage covenant.
Although in our day and age that may not mean as much anymore.
It's covenantal language.
What it's saying is, I took the initiative to save, and I have bound myself to my people,
to my children, and I promise eternal fidelity that I will be faithful, for I am faithful.
This is God's promise.
It's to live or to love, the love that he has brought us into a family.
He has made us sons and daughters and coheirs with Christ.
He's adopted us by his grace.
This is his covenant with us, his people.
And this Christmas, this truth about his love may be especially important to some of you
for whom family and holidays are difficult.
Maybe your family has a lot of expectations on you and they let you know that you don't
live up to any of them.
Maybe they're just people that you want to avoid and you want nothing to do.
Or maybe some of you just have no one this year because everything has changed and nothing
was permanent.
Maybe you're disappointed and left high and dry by the things that distract us and keep
us from facing the reality of our brokenness that ultimately turn us to Christ.
But now is the time because in Christ, in Christ we meet a love that seeks you out and
saves you.
In Christ, we meet a love that declares you more valuable than you dare believe.
And in Christ, we meet a love that invites you to join a family and to never be forsaken
or alone.
Never ever, ever, ever.
And this love has a name, Jesus.
And he has done this for us.
And he wants us to come to him.
It's only apprehended all of this salvation, the value that he puts upon you as a child
of God, the love that he invites you into as a family.
It is simply apprehended by faith.
That you would take your life and instead of orienting it around whatever you've oriented
it around, you would shift direction and say, I trust fully in Christ.
I trust fully in his salvation.
I trust fully in his redemption.
I trust fully in his word on my value over my own word.
I trust him fully.
And then it's yours.