2021 Christmas Advent Day 6: The Mighty God

• Main Passage: Isaiah 9:6
  • For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
• The name of The Child that is going to be born shall be The Mighty God. The name of someone refers to much more than just a title, and the title is more than just letters and sounds. The name(s) of Jesus refer to His character, His essence, who and what He is. And what Jesus is, is this: The Mighty God. Make no mistake, The Mighty God is an exclusive title for YHWH. Psalms says, “The Mighty God, even The LORD, hath spoken, and called the earth from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.” [Psalms 50:1] In this Psalm The LORD says, “O Israel…I am God, even thy God.” [Psalms 50:6-7] And again, “…the world is Mine, and the fulness thereof,” and, “call upon Me in the day of trouble: I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” [Psalms 50:12; 15] So all the power and status of YHWH, The Mighty God, who owns all of creation, who is the God of Israel, who is of power to deliver all who call upon him; yes, this same God will be the child. The Child will be “The Mighty God.” What an incredible statement! God Himself will humble and lower Himself, to become a child! The Psalms says that God must “[humble] Himself to behold the things that are in heaven, and in the earth!” [Psalms 113:6] The God who has to humble Himself to behold even the mightiest Cherub, in whose sight even “the heavens are not clean,” humbled Himself to the highest degree when He became a man. Philippians says that Jesus, “who, being in the form of God, thought not equality with God a thing to cling to: but emptied Himself, and took upon Him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.” [Philippians 2:6-7] The Mighty God has visited us; He has become a man – Wow!
  • But that is not all the Bible says regarding “The Mighty God.” The LORD tells Israel regarding the enemies in the land they were to conquer, “thou shalt not be affrighted at them: for The LORD thy God is among you, a mighty God and terrible.” [Deuteronomy 7:21] As mighty God, He has the power to subdue all enemies and give victory to whomsoever He wills: He has complete authority over the outcome of every situation; He is “God of gods, and Lord of lords, a Great God, a Mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward.” [Deuteronomy 10:17] He is “mighty, and despiseth not any: He is mighty in strength and wisdom.” [Job 36:5]
  • He is also the God to whom Israel will one day return: the one who holds all power to restore and give hope. Isaiah writes, “And it shall come to pass in that day, that the remnant of Israel, and such as are escaped of the house of Jacob, shall no more again stay upon him that smote them; but shall stay upon The LORD, the Holy One of Israel, in truth. The remnant shall return, even the remnant of Jacob, unto The Mighty God.” [Isaiah 10:20-21]
  • Jeremiah calls The LORD, “the Great, the Mighty God, The LORD of Hosts, is His name,” [Jeremiah 32:18] and says “behold, Thou has made the heaven and earth by thy great power, and stretched out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee.” [Jeremiah 32:17] And in Habakkuk we learn that The Mighty God is “from everlasting.” [Habakkuk 1:12]
• What an incredible statement Isaiah makes here; how can it be possible that the eternal God, The Most High, who is “from everlasting;” who “has made the heaven and earth by [His] great power;” for whom “nothing [is] too hard;” who raises and sets the sun each day; who “is judge Himself;” who possesses the fulness of all the universe; and who is “God of gods, and Lord of lords, a Great God, a Mighty, and a terrible;” how is that He could inhabit a baby? A Child? Who ever heard of such a thing?
• The glories contained in this Name are unfathomable. There are no words to describe this; our puny language flexes underneath the weight of this until it finally snaps underneath the pressure; the fact that God Almighty, The Creator Himself, Who is Who He is – The I Am could inhabit a human body is amazing. Truly there is nothing too hard for Him.
• In the Child, in Jesus Christ, “dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead in bodily form.” [Colossians 2:9] Jesus is The Mighty God.

Questions for Day 6

1. The Mighty God has entered humanity! The very one who spoke all creation into existence with His word. The One who commands the sun and it obeys; the one who instructs the waters of the ocean where to stop; the one in whose hand is the breath of every single living thing, and whose hand spans the heavens; who gives food to every beast, and every man; whose goodness endures continually: this Mighty God has entered humanity. But He has not done it with grandeur or spectacle; He did not do it with explosions or trumpets or magnificent lights: He did it as a lowly child, born to a poor-as-dirt teenager in a feeing trough for stinking pigs. This Mighty God, who is above all and fills all and owns all and controls all and upholds all, who makes alive and who kills, who creates light and darkness, whose eternal name and characteristics span the lightyears of space and then crash through their edge into another trillion universes; this very God of Gods, our Almighty Savior, was given to us as a child. He grew up poor, lived poor, died poor: the one who owned everything and upheld it with His very word and power didn’t own a single stinking thing; He never had His own home and didn’t even own his own grave. He was hated and despised and spit on and mocked and slaughtered, an outcast, a nobody, who for His perfect life hung as a bloody naked mess on that dirty wretched cross. And while He hung, every cry and word met a heaven of brass without answer, and an earth of iron without comfort, until that worm of a man died. And when darkness thought it had won, Jesus made an open mockery of all its plights, rising in triumphant and glorious and magnificent victory out from that grave, never to die again! He crushed every power of sin and death and evil, and by Himself purged us from our sins once and for all! Yes, it is this holy child, this Jesus, who has come: The Mighty God indeed! No question for day 6.
   • Reflect: The glory of God found within this name ought to provoke us to worship and praise; the glories of Jesus Christ in this name alone are worth more than a trillion books on how to live a better Christian life. Nothing can motivate man like the infinite magnitude of God’s blessed glory.