Walk of Life – Day 8 – December 2020 – Thoughts from the Book of Proverbs
JESUS CHRIST – OUR EVERLASTING FATHER
“The Lord possessed me at the beginning of His way, Before His works of old. I have been established from everlasting, From the beginning, before there was ever an earth.” Proverbs 8:22. 23
In Isaiah 9:6 the name “Everlasting Father” is the most intriguing. Is the Lord Jesus Christ being represented as the first person of the trinity?…definitely not. It is not the role of the Messiah in the Godhead but His character toward us. Concerning the language of “Everlasting Father,” Sam Storms calls it “a descriptive analogy pointing to Christ’s character . . . he is fatherly, father-like, in his treatment of us.”
This term speaks about the divine nature of the Messiah. Jesus Christ is the “I am the Alpha and the Omega,” says the Lord God, “who is, and who was, and who is to come, the Almighty.”(Revelation 1:18)
Isaiah 9:6 is a powerful prophecy of a child to be born 800 years later and that child is the author of eternity, the father of time.
The Lord Jesus removes our guilt and opens the way to the fatherly heart of God. The Lord Jesus will be everything to you that a father can be, everything that you expect from your earthly father. Your living Savior will be father-like in the way He leads you and guides you. He is from everlasting to everlasting, the one who will be the best father you have ever known forever and ever.
In today’s world not all fathers are the ideal kind, some are passive, distant, aloof, selfish, uncaring and many a times rude, very strict, and cruel. It is really sad that many Christian fathers do not emulate the Lord Jesus in their walk and talk. The Lord Jesus entered this sin-stricken world to fill our hearts with heaven’s love and to show us how to live pure, blameless and spotless lives.
Once you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior He becomes all unto you. We are His and He becomes ours forever. He will never leave you nor forsake you. He will lead you like a shepherd, love you more than any earthly father, correct you, instruct you, comfort you, and be there for you always. He will never say goodbye. Nothing, absolutely nothing can separate you from His love. Nothing, not even death itself, rather it will draw you nearer to Him. To be absent in the body is to be present with the Lord.
Is the Lord Jesus that best closest friend, that loving Father, that caring shepherd personally to you? DO you seek His face on your knees every day for guidance? Does He speak to you clearly through His precious word? Do you pour out your heart, your needs, your worries, your concerns, your questions at His feet? Do you have the calm sweet assurance that one day He will come and will take you home? This world is not your home, your everlasting father is preparing a beautiful place for you in eternity. Are you storing up treasure in heaven or are you gathering treasure on earth that will be gone forever? You will never be disappointed if you trust in Him, if you believe in Him wholeheartedly.
Charles Spurgeon said “There is no unfathering Christ, and there is no unchilding us, He is everlastingly a father to those who trust in him. Everything in us calls Christ ‘Father’. According to the old Jewish custom, the elder brother was the father of the family in the absence of the father; the firstborn took precedence of all, and took upon him the father’s position; so the Lord Jesus, the firstborn among many brethren, exercises to us a Father’s office. Is it not so? Has he not succoured us in all time of our need as a father succours his child? Has he not supplied us with more than heavenly bread as a father gives bread unto his children? Does he not daily protect us, nay, did he not yield up his life that we his little ones might be preserved? Will he not say at the last, “Here am I, and the children that thou hast given me; I have lost none”? Does he not chastise us by hiding himself from us, as a father chasteneth his children? Do we not find him instructing us by his Spirit and leading us into all truth? Has he not told us to call no man father upon earth in the sense that he is to be our true guide and instructor, and we are to sit at his feet and make him our Rabbi and our authoritative Teacher? Is he not the head in the household to us on earth, abiding with us, and has he not said, “I will not leave you orphans (that is the Greek word); I will come unto you”? As if his coming was the coming of a Father. If he be a Father, will we not give him honour? If he be the head of the household, will we not give him obedience, and say in our hearts, “Other lords have had dominion over us, but henceforth, thou everlasting Father, we will give thee reverence.” If he be in all these senses “the everlasting Father,”
“Then let us adore, and give him his right,
All glory and power, and wisdom and might,
All honour and blessing, with angels above,
And thanks never-ceasing, for infinite love.”
Praise God for our eternal security in Christ, our Everlasting Father.
