Title: The baby you gave us
Contents It has already entered December. According to the church calendar, this is the season of Advent, which commemorates the birth of Jesus. It is a season to look back on the great event that God sent to this earth by incarnating His only begotten Son 2,000 years ago, and to pledge hope for the day of the Second Coming of the risen Lord.
The first coming of Jesus as the Messiah is prophesied several times in the Bible. The most representative Bible in the Old Testament that records prophecies about the birth of the Messiah is the book of Isaiah. The book of Isaiah is the Gospel of the Old Testament.
Isaiah, the prophet who wrote the book of Isaiah, was a prophet who was active about 700 years before the coming of Jesus, and he was bright in the international situation at that time. God opened the spiritual eyes of Isaiah to see that He would send the Messiah, the Savior of mankind.
The text Isaiah 9:6 introduces the names of the Messiah, the anointed servant who is to come as a baby, and through this, we get various information about the Messiah.
“For to us a child is born, and to us a son is given, and government is upon his shoulders, and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.”
During the season of Advent, I hope that we will share grace by looking at who the Messiah is and what He did through the text.
1. The Messiah is fully man and fully God
Verse 6, “For to us a child is born, and a son is given to us, and government is upon his shoulders…”
This verse is particularly related to 7:14, among several prophecies of the Messiah's birth.
“Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, a virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and he shall call his name Immanuel.”
However, in verse 6, the expressions ‘one child’ and ‘one son’ are used for the Messiah.
The expression ‘baby’ here refers to the fact that the coming Messiah will come as a perfect human being. The word ‘born’ refers to the birth of the Lord. This Messiah is a perfect man who comes as a descendant of David with perfect humanity as promised.
And the expression 'Son' does not mean the son of a normal man, but the Son of God with complete divinity.
Saints! The coming Messiah is both fully human and fully God. He has both humanity and divinity. He is unique among all mankind.
Why did the Messiah need to have both humanity and divinity? Why does the coming Messiah have to be both God and man?
The reason is that in order to represent sinners in God's work of redemption, one must be a human being.
Since sin entered the world through the sin of the first man, Adam, all human beings have come under the power of sin. But in order to save mankind from sin, we need someone who can take on the punishment for sin that mankind deserves, and he must be a perfect human being.
At the same time, he must be innocent. Because he who is guilty of his own sin cannot bear the punishment of other sinners.
But the problem is that no human being is free from sin. The Bible says that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God (Romans 3:23).
Therefore, in order to take on the sins of mankind, it is necessary to have a Holy One, who is free from sin (Hebrews 7:26). In other words, in order to bear the guilt of sinners as a sinless human being, there is no other way than God Himself becoming a human being.
Thus, the Messiah, the Son of God, forsook the heavenly throne and came as a human to this lowly and lowly earth. Hallelujah!
Saints! In order to distort this very truth, the enemy Satan has created numerous heresies over the past 2,000 years of church history. The Lord's Church did not hesitate to shed blood to keep this truth. What is clear is that claims that deny Jesus' humanity or weaken His divinity are still continuing, and are growing more and more as the end draws near.
But the Bible clearly says. Jesus Christ is fully human and fully God. If you deny this fact or try to weaken it in any way, you are a denial of the Bible and a denial of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
1 John 2:22, “Who is the liar? Does he not deny that Jesus is the Christ? He who denies the Father and the Son is the Antichrist.”
Dear saints, Therefore, we must clearly recognize this fact and keep the right faith.
2. Messiah's Names and Their Meanings
Verse 6, "...for his name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, Almighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace."
Let us now look at the names of the Messiah in this verse. These names implied what the Messiah was and what he would do. Hebrew ‘name’ (