His Name shall be called the "Everlasting Father"

Father God tends to get a bad rap. I hear people say Jesus is okay, Holy Spirit is okay, but you have to watch out for Father God. But in the mystery of Trinity one of the Names of the child born, of Messiah, of Jesus, is the Everlasting Father. And it is easy at this point to fall into heresy. I mean to call God One, but not three! If Jesus is the Father and nothing more and nothing less, how come He prays to Him, and how come Jesus does only those things which He sees the Father doing (John 14:16; 5:19, 20)? I am not saying I can get my head round this, and as I have said before, if we can understand God we would be God! Having said that part of what it must mean that the Name of the Son is Everlasting Father, is that the Father and the Son have the same character, the same DNA. In particular, Philip asks Jesus to show him the Father and Jesus replies “He who has seen me, has seen the Father (John 14:9).

There is another misunderstanding here that I believe Trinity can help us come to terms with, if not fully understand. I mean the Father sent the Son to die in my place, and your place. I hear people saying, that that's barbaric, and that they would not ask their son to die for anyone! Well neither would I! But Jesus and the Father are One and, in danger of being overly repetitious, one of the Names of the Son is the “Everlasting Father.” We don't know exactly what that means, but it has to mean that the relationship between Trinity is different from our earthly relationships. And also that because of Trinity, when the Father sent the Son He was, in a real sense, sending Himself. Yes I know it sounds like foolishness, but then the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and was not the wisdom of the cross foolishness to us when we were perishing (1 Corinthians 1: 25, 18)? See 1 Corinthians 8:2!

The final thing that I want to say this morning, and it is part of why Father God gets a bad rap, is that we tend to confuse the character of Father God with that of our earthly fathers. In my own case I knew my dad loved me, but only from a distance. Being a workaholic he had little time for me. And this is how I thought about God for the longest time. If your father was abusive, it is likely even worse, but the Lord wants to restore the hearts of the fathers to the children and the hearts of the children to the fathers (Malachi 4:6). And He wants to restore His relationship with you, and for that you need to stop believing the lies the Evil one tells you about Father God, and to start believing that He is just like Jesus, and that He loves You with an everlasting love (Jeremiah 31:3).

Father, there are so many things I do not understand, help me not to lean on my own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). Please help me to be child like, and teachable. Forgive us Lord for the lies we have believed about You, and show us what we are still believing that's not true. Thank You that You have told us that if we draw near to You, You will draw near to us (James 4:8) in Jesus Name Amen