Episode Transcript
[00:00:05] Speaker A: Welcome to Roots of Faith, where we journey together through the depths of God's word, growing in understanding and maturing in Christ. In today's episode, we reflect on a powerful message from Isaiah 9, 6 Titles given to Christ that speak directly to his nature and reign. Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, and the Prince of Peace. Our hosts will unpack these titles showing how they bring us peace and assurance in life's uncertainties and point us towards the ultimate hope we have in Jesus. So grab your Bible, open your heart, and let's dig deep into the truth of God's word.
[00:00:47] Speaker B: Wednesday we had the Thanksgiving Eve service up at Fontana Chapel, and an opportunity was given for people to share what they're thankful for.
One young man, I'm guessing he had to be somewhere around in his later teens, he stood up and he says, I'm thankful that there's no war here.
Why would a teenage young man be so cognizant that he would appreciate the fact that there is no war here?
I could understand it when I was a young man because then we had something called the draft.
And you went especially chasing after your deferment if you had other plans.
And then you had those wonderful letters when you were 1A.
It said you friends and neighbors.
I always wanted to find those friends and neighbors that would send me that letter.
And you were called and you went through that draft physical, and even if you couldn't see the chart, they still passed you.
There were things to be concerned about in times of war.
You were concerned about where you were, what you were doing, where you were being sent, what your MOS was.
But you know something?
There are still wars today. What would it be like for you or I to live in Israel?
You think about it.
Hezbollah is on the north launching rockets. We're close to a peace deal, they say, but there's still rockets coming.
On the west side, there's Hamas, who is still trying to harass and launch military action.
On the east, there is the Palestinian Liberation Organization, the PLO that still throws rocks and anything else that they can throw at the Israeli soldiers, at the idf.
And surrounding them is supportive nations as well as those nations that are called Iranian proxies.
And can you imagine what it's like if you had your children with you and you're walking down the streets of Tel Aviv and all of a sudden the sirens go off and you head for an underground shelter and you don't know how long you're going to be underground?
You know something?
It hasn't changed because exactly 2,750 years ago, that was the exact position that the two tribes of Judah found themselves in.
Exactly that way.
In Second Kings, the 15th chapter and the 29th verse, it says, in the time of Pekah, king of Israel, that was the ten northern tribes.
Tiglath Pileser, king of Assyria, came and took Eon, Abel, Beth, Maacah, Jana, Kadesh, and Hazor.
And he took Gilead and Galilee, including all the land of Naphtali.
And he deported the people to Assyria.
Now, I want to put you in mind of what this was like.
We know the harshness that Hamas did in October to Israel.
It has been over a year.
That still sits in my mind.
What Judah was looking at was Tiglath Pileser had a beautiful stele in which he wrote all his great accomplishments on. He was the king of Assyria. It was the reigning nation. It was the defining government in the area, and it was conquering everybody.
And he was so kind to even put up a good news story for everybody. He says, well, I cut off their heads and I piled them up into a pyramid.
You're a graphic person.
How would you want to live in Judah 2,750 years ago, knowing that this cheerful fellow was right on your border?
And he had taken the larger group, the ten northern tribes, and took them into captivity in Judah.
There was a prophet.
God had sent Amos, Joel, Obadiah, all of them to the 10 northern tribes over a period of 200 years, from the time that Israel, the kingdom of David, was divided and fractured, to the 10 northern tribes and the two southern tribes. And for 200 years, God had sent his prophets to Israel.
But Israel kept perverting their faith, turning people away from the true God.
Jeroboam and his following kings had established all of these godless or idols throughout the land.
Judah, the two southern tribes were sitting down there. It's just a little tiny group.
We're down here and Tiglath Pileser is knocking on the door saying, I'm coming.
As a matter of fact, King Ahaz was very concerned.
And in Isaiah the ninth chapter and the sixth and seventh verse, put yourself in Isaiah's position.
Isaiah is still reaching out, giving God's prophecy to all 12 tribes except he was in Jerusalem.
And Isaiah, in chapter 9 and verse 6 and 7, it says this.
For to us a child is born, and to us a son is given. And the government shall be upon his shoulders, and he will be called wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of peace, of the greatness of his government and peace, there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever.
The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
God had promised that he was going to complete this.
And this is a clear Old Testament prophecy concerning the coming of Christ.
We sang the hymn Come Thou long expected Jesus.
Israel had developed an idea of what they wanted for a Messiah.
They had developed an idea of what they thought would be the great king that would free them from Tiglath pileser standing in the north.
I honestly have this crazy thought in my mind. I wonder if people in Tel Aviv today have the same idea as Jewish people. I know they don't, but I wonder if a few of them sit there and think about it.
A promised king, a promised deliverer that will come and free them, that will make them great as a nation.
King Ahaz was king in those southern two tribes in Judah.
And as king he was a little bit disturbed.
It says In Isaiah, chapter 7 and verse 1 it says, Israel and Syria against Judah, when Ahaz son of Jotham, the son of Uzziah, was king of Judah, King Rezin of Aram and Pekah the son of Remaliah, king of Israel, marched up to fight against Jerusalem.
But they couldn't overpower him.
Think about that.
The 10 tribes in the north got an army together along with the people from basically the Syrian group.
And they came and they marched on these two little tribes down in the south.
And they couldn't conquer them, they couldn't overcome them.
Ahaz was a bit concerned.
And in verses 3 and 4 it says that Isaiah told King Ahaz it will not happen. It says there. Then the Lord said to Isaiah, go out, you and your son Sherjahashbad to meet Ahab Ahaz rather, at the end of the aqueduct of the upper pool, on the road to the launderer's field. So they were going out to meet the king where he was standing, probably with his military people, very concerned, looking to the north and say to him, be careful, keep calm and do not be afraid.
I can almost hear Ahaz in his mind saying, easy for you to say, you're a prophet.
He says, do not lose heart because of these two smoldering stubs of firewood.
Verse 7 says, yet this is what the sovereign Lord.
It will not take place, it will not happen.
And then you go down to verse 10 through verse 14, and again it comes back to a promise.
Because Isaiah 7:10 reads Again, the Lord spoke to Ahaz.
Now this is the Lord speaking to Ahaz.
And he says, ask the Lord your God for a sign.
Whether in the deepest depths or the highest heights, Ahaz was a very humble guy. Ahaz said, I will not ask. I will not put the Lord to the test.
Isaiah was standing there.
Then Isaiah said, hear now, you house of David.
It is not enough to try the patience of humans. Will you try the patience of my God also? Therefore, the Lord himself will give you a sign.
The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son and will call him Immanuel.
God with us.
How many times do we look at the checkbook or we look at something else? Maybe it's an illness, maybe it's family situations. And we begin to sit there and say, I'm concerned, I'm afraid I am.
Yeah, even the best of us are tempted that way sometimes.
Say, lord, don't you listen, I'm here.
And what God do we have?
Everything that Isaiah spoke to Israel and Judah, and particularly to Judah had to do with something that was yet future.
At the time when Tiglath Pellezer took all of Israel captive was in the year 722 B.C. there would still be another almost 250 years.
That's almost as long as the United States has been around that God was still ministering, and primarily through Isaiah to the two tribes to give them comfort and to promise them that the king, the Messiah, Emmanuel, God with us, all those concepts, God in person with us, would be there.
And I want to turn back to the text that I want to share with you today, because in Isaiah chapter six is where I want to focus.
It says, for us a child is born, and unto us a son is given.
When he says that, that actually spoke not just to Judah and not just to Israel, but all the other nations around them would understand that those words were a proclamation concerning a king.
When a king or queen was going to take power, a lot of times they would come up with a new backstory and they would take on these great names and they would publish their names on a stele or on a wall and they'd give these great names that showed that they belonged to this God or that God and they had the power.
This is exactly the same format that these verses take.
Because he says, unto you a son is given. That was I'm going to pass down to you out of the lineage of David, a Messiah, a king.
Can you imagine the people in Jerusalem standing there and saying, really, we're going to have a David king soon, maybe in another 700 years.
But that was the time frame.
It outlines that God's time is not our time frame, but the same God is the one that we depend on. And Isaiah was saying this to Judah to say, look, I know you're afraid. I know it looks bad. You look to the north and you see armies. You look to the west and you see armies. You look to the east and you see armies.
You look to the south, which was Egypt.
And he said, you're looking to them for help, not the place to look.
And what you find in verse six is the names, the kingly titles that go into the names that he says will be the son that's given to you.
Now, if you look in the NIV and you look in a number of different translations, it says, wonderful, Counselor.
But if you look in the King James Version, you'll see a comma there.
And it's wonderful, comma, counselor. Maybe I did it like Victor Borgi. And his phonetic punctuation a comma was.
So it's wonderful, counselor.
It's actually two names.
And I was very thankful when I went back and looked in one of my commentaries that deals with the Hebrew. I found one of the commentators that agreed with me. He's another commentator like me, but he agreed with me that this is two separate names. They're actually two separate nouns. All of the other names, like Mighty God and all of those, it's an adjective and a noun put together, so they naturally go together.
But think about what these words meant.
It says, the first name is wonderful.
When I say that in English, it's kind of anemic.
I looked at a lot of other translations.
I came across the German Bible, and the German Bible said wunderbar.
I went over to my shelf and I pulled off my German dictionary because I knew what wunderbar meant.
And I opened it up, and sure enough, the word in German even means miraculous.
It's a miracle. What he is saying here is that the son who is given has the power to make people amazed at what he can do.
When I was looking through the use of this word, I came across the story of Manoah and his wife.
They were the parents to Samson.
And the angel of the Lord appeared to Manoah's wife and gave her instructions as to how Samson was to be raised as a Nazirite.
He was not to cut his hair. He was not to drink any wine, anything from the grape.
And his wife. Manoah's wife came to him and told him hey, this man came to me and told me these things.
Can you imagine a husband? The first thing. What man came and talked to you?
She says, really? This is what he told me.
He says, well, the next time he comes, you come and get me.
So sure enough, she was out in the field, and the angel of the Lord appeared to her. And she said, wait a second, wait a second. I gotta go get my husband.
She ran and got Manoah.
When Manoah came, it says, then Manoah asked the angel of the Lord, what is your name for when all this comes true? We want to honor you, buddy. The guy up, the angel of the Lord said, why do you ask my name?
And he replied, it is too wonderful for you to understand.
Well, that's a nice thing to say.
The angel of the Lord also told him, when Manoah said, can we prepare a meal for you? Let's sit down and talk about this.
He says, no, you can prepare a sacrifice.
And so it says, manoah took a young goat and a grain offering, and he offered it on a rock as a sacrifice to the Lord.
And as Manoah and his wife watched, the Lord did an amazing, a wonderful thing.
As the flames from the altar shot up toward the sky, the angel of the Lord ascended in the fire.
And when Manoah and his wife saw this, they fell on their faces to the ground.
That is how awesome that is.
I want to remind you that Israel saw many wonders, starting back when God led them out of Egypt.
They saw the waters come over and cover the chariots.
Egypt.
They saw God produce water from a rock.
They saw God provide manna. They said, what is it? That's what manna means.
They saw all of the mighty power of God time and time again, even through the book of Judges.
And actually, the psalmist David said, in Psalm 77, 1114, the NIV, it says, I will remember the deeds of the Lord. Yes, I will remember your miracles of long ago. I will consider all your works and meditate on all your mighty deeds, your ways. God are holy.
What God is as great as our God.
You are the God who performs miracles. You display your power among the peoples.
I want to put that in juxtaposition to the book of Matthew.
When Jesus is talking to the Pharisees and he's confronting them, and it says, in Matthew 11:20, 24, then Jesus began to denounce the towns in which most of the miracles had been performed. Because they did not repent.
It says, woe to you, Chorazin. Woe to you, Bethsaida.
For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.
Now I will confess that I had to quick go back and double check myself because I didn't know of any miracles recorded in the Bible that talked about Chorazin.
But we know that John says in the Gospel, in the end of the Gospel of John, it says many other things to Jesus that are not recorded in these books, but if they were, you wouldn't have room enough to record them.
But Jesus went on, he says, but I tell you, it will be more bearable for Tyre and Sidon on the day of judgment than for you speaking to the Pharisees.
He goes on, he says, and you, Capernaum, if you go and look in your Bible and you search through on Capernaum and you look at all the miracles that were done in Capernaum, what did Jesus say? And you, Capernaum, will you be lifted up to the heavens?
No, you will go down to Hades.
For if the miracles that were performed in you had been performed in Sodom, remember what God did to Sodom.
If those miracles that you saw were performed in Sodom, it would have remained to this day.
What a powerful statement.
Jesus says, but I tell you that it will be more bearable for Sodom on the day of Judgment. You he was speaking to the Pharisees who were perverting God's word and turning the people to man's rules.
What power has God demonstrated in the church? What has he demonstrated in your life that he has redeemed you?
He has removed your sins as far as the east is from the West. For the simple statement that we come and confess before the Lord, that we trust in him and accept his gift and confess his name, believing in our hearts, confessing with our mouth.
How many times have I said that over the last couple of weeks?
And to realize that that was God's way of dealing, it calls him counselor.
What's a counselor?
Well, a counselor provides guidance, gives direction, tries to make sense of things.
In Isaiah 11, 2, 1:2 it says, and a shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse from his roots, a branch will bear fruit. Speaking of Christ, verse 2 says, the Spirit of the Lord will rest on him. The Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. In other words, this counselor is a counselor because of the gift that the Spirit of God brings.
That's obviously at the baptism of Christ.
The Spirit came down as a dove. The Father proclaimed, this is my Son in whom I am well pleased.
And the ministry of Christ began.
For three years he proclaimed, Immanuel, God with us.
Do you realize that when you turn in the New Testament to First Corinthians chapter 1 and verses 30 and 31, it says, it is because of him that you, you and me are in Christ who has become for us wisdom from God.
That's a counselor being in Christ. Because the Holy Spirit dwells within us, we have the very wisdom of God available to us in us because of the redeeming work of Christ. It is powerful.
It is wonderful.
Colossians, chapter 2, verses 2 and 3 says, My goal. Paul said this. My goal is that you may be encouraged in heart and united in love so that you may have the full riches of complete understanding in order that you may know the mystery of God, namely Christ.
He wants to be known in us so that we can make him known.
Do we ever go back and study God's word, long for God, Ask in prayer, Lord, that you would make me understand you are.
Give me that wisdom so that I might know how to live and reflect your glory.
So that I come to depend upon a wonderful counselor for the times when I get a little bit uncertain, when that checkbook balance doesn't look quite right, when there are things coming against me and you say, lord, what am I to do?
It says, he is the one who lives in us.
He is the as we saw back in Ephesians, he is the seal of our inheritance as children of God.
Do you want to protect your children?
Sometimes I don't want to, but there are times I love my children and yes, I would want to protect them.
How much greater is the love of Christ for us?
The third name is he calls him the mighty God.
Jeremiah chapter 32:18 says, you show love to thousands, but bring the punishment for the parents sins upon the laps of their children after them.
Great and mighty God, whose name is the Lord Almighty. Or to take it directly to the Hebrew, it says, the Lord Zebaoth, the Lord of armies.
Micah chapter 7:18 says, who is a God like you, who pardons sin, forgives the transgression of the remnant of his inheritance. You do not stay angry forever, but delight to show mercy.
Scripture says his mercies are new every morning.
Do we depend on that?
In Matthew chapter 9 and verses 7:5 to the 7, it says, what is easier? This is where God displayed his power.
There was a lame man there, and he says, your sins are forgiven and of course the Pharisees were standing around the scribes and the Pharisees, and they said, easy for you to say.
Jesus said, which is easier to say your sins are forgiven, or to say, get up and walk.
But I want you to know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins.
So he said to the paralyzed man, get up, take your mat and go home.
Then the man got up and went home.
What has God done in your life?
He has all authority in heaven and in earth.
The next word or title is Everlasting father.
In Isaiah 57:15 it says, for this is what the high and Exalted One says, He who lives forever, whose name is holy.
I live in a high and holy place, but also with the one who is contrite and lowly in spirit. To revive the spirit of the lowly and to revive the heart of the contrite.
Isaiah 63:16 says, but you are our Father through Abraham, though Abraham does not know us or Israel acknowledge us, you Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer. From of old is your name.
You see, not only do we have a mighty God, but we have an everlasting God.
It is a forever God.
The word that's used as everlasting has the idea of an unseeable distance looking backwards or forwards. It is forever and we who have put our trust in Christ will be with him forever.
Wonderful counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father.
It says Prince of Peace.
And I'm going to stop right here because this is where I want to pick up next week and talk about peace.
Perfect peace.
But let me conclude with this thought with you.
Resting from fears and anxieties is possible in our lives because of the assurance found in the title names of that king.
That is the King who comes to reign in us.
That's what you say, that Jesus would come and reign.
He is wonderful in his power, the counselor who provides divine wisdom to guide us, ensuring we're never alone in a decision making.
He's the mighty God whose power is unmatched, able to overcome any fear or obstacle that we face.
And as our everlasting Father, he offers unending care, protection and the love of a Father over you and me.
And next week, Lord willing, we're going to look at what that last name means. In other words, giving us the peace that passes all understanding.
Why should I worry?
Why should I fear when my Lord is near?
You see, that is the Lord that we have to serve and who wants to live out in our lives that we are to serve Him.
I challenge you today that as you look this week, even at the small minor things that disturb you, that you look to the title names of the King and say, lord, I want to apply that.
I know you are the one who gives wisdom. I know you are the one who works mightily beyond whatever I can think or ask and rest in him, because he is the God who reigns and who will yet come and call us home to be with Him.
Where is your heart today?
In depending upon such a mighty King, let's bound.
[00:43:58] Speaker A: Thank you for tuning in to this episode of Roots of Faith, a ministry of Lawn Evangelical Congregational Church in Lawn, Pennsylvania. We hope today's message has uplifted you and deepened your relationship with the Lord Jesus Christ. Remember, whether you're new in the faith or have walked with him for years, God's Word is always fresh and powerful to transform. If you were blessed by this episode, share it with a friend. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss an update. Until next time, stay rooted in the Word, stand firm in faith, and keep growing in Christ.
