Embracing Jesus as Our Everlasting Father

"So, well, thank you all for having me here today. It's a joy to be here. My name is Scott Brazer, as Ethan said. A few things about me, I serve on the preaching team here at Village, and I serve as an elder at our Sugar Grove campus as well. And that's a really cool opportunity for me to get to do fun things like lead a small group out of our home. And I help teach the baptism class every month at the Sugar Grove campus and get to hear stories about what God's doing in people's lives. I also have the privilege of serving as the jail and prisons ministry coordinator throughout all of our campuses." [00:00:00]

"And what that looks like, if you're curious, is two times a month, a group of men go to the Kendall County Jail, and we give their jail services at the jail. We preach God's word. We pray to them, and we minister to them, and we pray with them, and it's a blessing. And we also do, as a church, I'm sure you've seen this advertised from time to time, we do a couple of missions trips every year to the Danville Correctional Facility. And actually, we have one coming up on January 14th that I'll be going on with six or seven other men from Village, and we'd appreciate you guys praying for us." [00:00:45] (39 seconds)


"Isaiah prepared them for, for example, in the passage we're going to be looking at today, what he would be like and how he would be born, and the characteristics he would already have. He wanted them to know he's coming, he will be born a child, and this is what he will be like. This is how he will seem. This is how he will act. These will be his characteristics and his attributes. He also pointed later in the book of Isaiah to things that the Messiah would do, things that he would do. Things that the Messiah would say, things that he would fulfill." [00:04:18] (32 seconds)


"But the point of God giving these prophecies at that time was for the people of God to have hope. They were living in a time of darkness and of sadness and of fear and of anxiety. They were living in a place where they were watching the Assyrian Empire rise up next door to them, and they knew the Assyrian Empire would soon come and conquer them. This was a very vast empire. They were war -hungry. They had basically promised that they were coming to take over Israel. And meanwhile, Israel had shrunk in power and influence." [00:04:50] (36 seconds)


"And these prophecies work for us today in a different way because we look back on these prophecies and we see that they have been fulfilled by Jesus Christ. We see that he was the Messiah, and we find hope, but we also find assurance in that. And today we reflect on, as we have been for the past couple of weeks here at Village, on Isaiah 9 -6, the four names that were given to Jesus, to the Messiah, by the prophet Isaiah. Isaiah 9 -6 reads like this, For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder." [00:05:47] (40 seconds)


"And it means simply to have no beginning and no end. And so in some ways, I think that's a stronger title even than everlasting. It would be almost like if you could imagine a timeline that starts at the creation of the universe and goes on to eternity, you could place me on that timeline. I was born in 1988. So you could put a dot on 1988, and now this timeline goes on forever. And I believe what the Bible says is true, that my faith in Jesus Christ means I will have everlasting life. So you could say from 1988 until forever, I will exist. In some form." [00:07:53] (43 seconds)


"And in some ways, you might say, well, that's also everlasting, right? I have everlasting life. And yet, the way in which we describe Jesus in this passage as everlasting is somehow bigger than that. For example, that timeline also goes that way. But when you go that way, it doesn't go forever. Does this make sense? It starts at the creation of the universe. Some of you might be able to place yourself on the timeline before me, right? And say, well, I'm older than you. I'm greater than you. My eternity is somehow greater than you." [00:08:44] (37 seconds)


"And importantly then also, in John 1 -1, we see, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And of course, we know this Word that John is talking to is referring to Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ as the Son of God. And what he's saying is that God the Father and God the Son were there present at the moment of creation, both active in the creation, and they were totally unbound by any limits within time and within creation itself. This is why we say they're self -existent." [00:10:09] (38 seconds)


"And this leads to kind of a fancy theological definition that I'll give you. It's called the aseity of God. What the aseity of God means is that this is the belief that God is completely self -sufficient, independent, existing from eternity past, and dependent on nothing other than himself. This is what it means when we say God is everlasting. God is eternal. He's bigger than just being infinite, bigger than just being forwardly infinite." [00:10:47] (30 seconds)


"And now, importantly, when we think of Jesus being the everlasting Father, when we go to John 8, verses 56 through 58, Jesus is in one of these very common scenes that we see in the Gospels, where he is speaking with the Pharisees, and they're objecting to him, essentially calling him, saying, I am, and I am, and I am, and I am, and I am, and I am, and I am, and I am, claiming the title. They actually go as far as to say he's working for the devil, or he is demonically possessed. And Jesus rebukes them, and he says, Your father Abraham rejoiced that he would see my day. He saw it and was glad. And the Jews said to him, You are not yet fifty years old, and you have seen Abraham? Jesus said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I am." [00:13:13] (48 seconds)


"And so Jesus being the everlasting one, the ever existing one, the way in which we understand how he came to us, it says in the Bible, he put on flesh. So he didn't enter into the world the same way that you and I did. We weren't, we were created. We became a part of the world. Jesus, instead, it says, as in John 1 14, and the word became flesh and dwelt among us. And so Jesus being the everlasting one, the eternal God, he vacated his throne in heaven, his righteous, the place where he truly belongs. And he came to earth. And how did he do that?" [00:15:15] (43 seconds)