The Father

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Transcript:

Matthew chapter 6. We’re continuing on with our study on the Baptist faith and message and what it says, what we teach, what we believe, and more importantly, where we see those things in the Bible, what the Bible says about each of these things. If you’ll recall, two weeks ago, we talked about who God is, and I said that we would come back, and in the coming weeks, we would look at each of the persons of the Trinity.

Now, there’s a little less to say about the Father, perhaps, than the other two, because I think a lot of times when we use the term God, if we don’t specify who we’re talking about, we generally mean the Father. Normally, we’ll say Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit, and by God, we mean the Father. We don’t mean that Jesus or the Holy Spirit are any less God, but we sort of default to talking about Him.

So many of the things that we looked at two weeks ago are things that also apply to the Father as well. And we’ll come back. We won’t be here next Sunday night, but we’ll come back in two weeks and look at the Son and then look at the Holy Spirit and move on from there.

But if you have the booklets that I’ve given you in the last few weeks, the part that we’re going to look at tonight in the Baptist Faith and Message is section 2A, and it’s on page 8. And here’s what it says. Even this is a very short paragraph compared to what it says about the Son and the Holy Spirit, because, again, we do tend to default to the Father when we just refer to God without specifying.

It says, God as Father reigns with providential care over His universe, His creatures, and the flow of the stream of human history according to the purposes of His grace. He is all-powerful, all-knowing, all-loving, and all-wise. God is Father in truth to those who become children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. He is fatherly in his attitude toward all men.

And some of those things could be said of the Son and of the Holy Spirit as well. That they are all powerful, they’re all knowing, they’re all loving, they’re all wise. God the Father is sort of at the top of the hierarchy.

He’s equal to the others. He’s co-equal. He’s co-eternal, but his role is sort of that of being the one who leads, if we can put it that way, and oversees things as a father would do. I don’t think it’s by accident that the Bible refers to him so many times as the father.

I don’t think it’s by accident that he refers to himself as the father. And I’ve told you many times that my understanding of God himself has grown since I became a father. I still don’t pretend to have him all figured out, but I understand a little bit more of the way he relates to us because it’s similar to the way I relate to my children.

And I think he designed us to do that because it reflects his character. But God the Father is sort of the one overseeing everything. And again, he’s equal with the Son.

He’s equal with the Holy Spirit. but he holds this unique role within the Godhead. And we believe, as you look at what this teaches, we believe that the Father rules over heaven and earth.

We believe that he cares for his creations as a father does in a providential way. And we believe that he’s always at work to reconcile us to himself. And that’s the reason why he sent Jesus to come to die.

And Jesus was a willing participant in this, but it’s the reason why he sent Jesus to die for us. God the Father was trying to reconcile us to himself. It’s the reason why he and the Son gave us the Holy Spirit as a comforter, as one who would convict men of sin and of our need for Jesus Christ and draw us to Jesus to be reconciled to the Father.

He’s the one orchestrating all of this, again, with the help of the Son and the Holy Spirit. At no point should any of this be taken as saying that the Holy Spirit or Jesus are less or somehow less of God or less powerful than the Father. I don’t mean to imply that at all.

But it’s sort of like in a family. I know it’s not politically correct to say this nowadays, but men and women are different, right? Men and women are different, but we have the same inherent value before God.

And we have different roles within the family, but not one of us is any less valuable than the other. My wife and I do different things to keep the family running. And if one of us is not available, things don’t run right.

And we have these different roles, and yet we’re totally equal before God. I’m not more valuable than her, and vice versa. It’s the same thing.

The Father, Son, and Holy Spirit each have these roles that they work within the Godhead, but they’re all equally powerful, and they’re all equally God. As we’ve talked about the roles the Father plays, he’s the one overseeing everything. This is reflected not just in our doctrinal statement.

It wouldn’t be worth anything if it was just our doctrinal statement. It’s reflected in Scripture. It’s taken from Scripture.

And we see it in Matthew chapter 6, if you haven’t already turned there with me tonight, where Jesus gave his disciples the model prayer. Just like two weeks ago when I talked about God as a whole, I said there are many passages that I could have gone with tonight to talk about this. In Matthew chapter 6, when Jesus gives the model prayer, it’s not really one that I had ever thought about before outside of the application of prayer.

We know it as the Lord’s Prayer. And any time I’ve ever taught that text before, it’s been on the subject of prayer. There are numerous passages in the Bible that I could have turned to tonight to talk to you about the Father.

But I thought this one teaches us not just about prayer. It teaches us about who the Father is because we see the Son addressing the Father. and we see it throughout this model prayer where he’s saying, these are not the exact words you need to say, but this is the kind of thing that you need to pray.

And if you recall back to the beginning of the series we did on Hebrews, Jesus came to reveal the Father. He came to make the Father known. And so I thought, who better to look at for an understanding of the Father than to go to what the Son says about the Father.

So we’re going to look tonight at the Lord’s Prayer, specifically what it teaches us about God the Father. So Matthew 6, starting in verse 9, going through verse 13, it says, And after this manner, therefore, pray ye, our Father, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.

And again, this is what Jesus told his disciples. He said, this is how you should pray. These are not the exact words you should say.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with reciting the Lord’s Prayer, but we shouldn’t just assume that by reciting these words without putting feeling behind them, without meaning them, that we’re doing some kind of religious ritual that God is interested in. These words honor God, but they’re more than anything, they’re a pattern for us to follow. that these are the kinds of things that we should pray for.

And they teach us, as I said, about who God is, who God the Father is. And so let’s just take this a little bit at a time, a little piece at a time, and look at what it shows us about God the Father. He starts out by saying our Father, our Father.

I mean, that’s pretty much what we’re here to talk about tonight. He relates to us as a Father. And I realize that that has caused a lot of problem and a lot of misunderstanding for a lot of people, especially in our world where now we’re multiple generations in of people growing up without fathers.

Either their fathers were physically absent or they were emotionally absent. That word father doesn’t, for everybody, conjure up the warm memories that it does for me. Some of you have warm memories of your father.

For some of you, the word father may be off-putting. Well, if God relates to me as a father, I’m not interested in that. Lots of people have expressed similar reservations and said, if God relates to us as a father, why would I want that?

You see, God is the ideal father. Just because human beings are often poor reflections of what he intends for us to be doesn’t change anything about who he is. He’s the ideal father.

He’s what we are supposed to shoot for even though we fail miserably a lot of the times. And so he relates to us as a father. This ideal father is someone who loves his children, is someone who is there for his children, who is doing what’s best for his children.

I would submit to you that an ideal father is someone who disciplines his children. We’ve got the aspect of God where he loves us and he cares for us, but he’s not just trying. The Bible calls him closer than a brother, but he’s not trying to always be our friend all the time.

He’s willing to discipline us. He’s willing to chasten us because he loves us. It’s like I tell my kids, I love you, and I love you too much to let you get by with this.

Well, because I don’t want my children to grow up to be horrible people in as much as I have any control over it. At some point, they make their own decisions. But as I told the lady who didn’t like it when I spanked Benjamin in the Fayetteville Library, you can thank me when he doesn’t grow up to be a serial killer.

And so unless you’d like to be next, I’d stay out of this. I don’t say things like that anymore. I was a little more brazen in my 20s than I am in my 30s.

But he relates to us as a father. He loves us. He’ll discipline us.

But he does it all from the place of love because he cares about us. And he wants us to be the people that he created us to be. God created us with the potential that we have, and he wants us to use it in his service.

So Jesus says our Father, and he says, which art in heaven. And that’s just very simple. He reigns from heaven.

There is never a time when God the Father is not glorified in heaven. One thing that I remember a lot that Brother Tim has said, Brother Tim Green, has been that when a situation comes up, when a circumstance comes up that catches me by surprise or catches us by surprise, that he says God didn’t wake up and say, whoops, when he saw this. You know, this didn’t take God by surprise.

God has not abdicated his throne. God is still in charge. And that’s a comforting thought.

Sometimes that’s the only comforting thought. Sometimes that’s the only thing you can say that brings you any comfort, is that God is still on his throne. Everything around me may be spinning out of control, God, or spinning out of the appearance of control, but God still has it well in hand.

God has never once been knocked off of his throne. And I think we would do well to remember that. Our Father reigns in heaven.

He reigns in heaven. And he says, hallowed be thy name, in verse 9. Hallowed be thy name.

That tells us that he’s infinitely holy. That word hallowed means that it’s holy, it’s to be honored. By hallowing his name, we are proclaiming, we are declaring his holiness to the world around us.

When we hallow his name, when we treat his very name with respect, we’re pointing out to the world that he is a holy God, that he is infinitely righteous, he’s infinitely just. God never sins. God never does wrong. God never makes mistakes.

And we’re going to talk about that in the coming weeks as we look at the life of King Saul. there’s some stories that we’re going to look at where people say, well, I wouldn’t want to serve a God like that, because they’re looking at things that God allowed or commanded in this one instance in the Old Testament, and they’re assuming my moral code is higher than God’s, and we, on the contrary, look at God and say, you’re higher than we are. You’re holier than we are.

There’s no way I can stand in judgment over the Father. There’s no way I can look at God and say, my morals are superior to yours. That’s ridiculous.

I heard a news show this week where they were talking about Nixon, and he famously told somebody years after he left the White House that if the president does it, it’s not illegal. I didn’t believe that the first time I heard it. I don’t believe it now, but you know what? I can apply it to this situation.

If God does it, it’s not wrong. It may be that in my finite understanding, there’s something that I’m not getting that that his ways are higher than my ways and his thoughts are higher than my thoughts. I may not be seeing it from his angle, but God is incapable of sinning.

By his very nature, he’s incapable of doing anything wrong. He is infinitely holy. And to hallow his name doesn’t mean that we write his name on a picture frame somewhere and we put it up in the corner of the house and look at it all the time, like the portraits of Kim Jong-il that they have in North Korea.

We just worship these. It means that we proclaim by the way we live our lives, by the way we view God, that we are proclaiming his holiness. And then Jesus said in verse 10, thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.

And we’re going to take that verse all together. That verse tells us that he is the sovereign king of the universe. He’s in charge.

And there is a day that’s coming when his sovereignty is going to be acknowledged on earth the way that it is in heaven. You know, what we see on earth today is God says what we’re supposed to do, and he’s in charge, but people ignore him, right? A lot of times people just ignore what God says.

There’s none of that that goes on in heaven. There was a time when the angels, when a third of the angels rebelled, but God put that down pretty quickly. And in heaven today, when God says something, there’s no back and forth, should we do this, should we not?

God says it, and it happens. You look back at the creation of the universe, what happened there? God spoke it and it happened.

God said, let there be light. There was no light beside himself at that time. Something that didn’t even exist, God commanded just to come into existence and it happened.

God commanded, God took the world which did not exist and commanded it to come into existence. Even the non-existent things in the universe suddenly existed because God said so. and you look at the end of things and you look at how God commands by the word of his mouth and he judges by the word of his mouth and we see that when God says it it’s going to be done.

There’s coming a point where Jared will no longer argue with God when he tells me to do something. There is coming a point where God’s will will be done down here the way it is up there and even though in my flesh, I don’t always do down here what he tells me to. In the spirit, I look forward to that day when God’s will is done.

It’s unquestioned. It’s done because we trust him, because we believe him, because we bow to his authority. And I think that verse teaches us, or I think that verse, we should be amazed by the power of God when we read that verse, that God is so sovereign that his every word is obeyed right then in heaven.

And Jesus is praying for a day, and we should be praying for a day, or even down here. All things are done as God says for them to be done, just as they are in heaven. Then he says in verse 11, give us this day our daily bread.

God the Father is someone who cares for us and provides for our needs. God takes care of us. God meets our needs.

I’ll be honest, I’ve been troubled in the last couple weeks by some things I’ve seen online put out by atheists, where they talk about verses such as the one where it says that God never forsakes the righteous, that their offspring never beg for bread. And, of course, they put these verses up against photos of starving children in Africa, and the implication as well of God’s real, why are there starving people. And I won’t pretend that I can answer that, I won’t pretend I can give a satisfactory answer at all.

I definitely won’t pretend I can give an answer to you for that in 15, 20 minutes. But what I can say is that God’s provision is part of the reason why he’s called us to be his hands and feet. If the church would do what God put us here to do, there wouldn’t be starving people.

And I say that realizing I’m somebody who, again, going back to thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. I’m somebody on earth who doesn’t always do the things that he’s called me to do. But God put us here to be his provision for things like that.

And many of the times that the greatest evils have been perpetrated on this earth, it’s been those who are really obeying God, who have gone into those situations and have dealt with them and brought comfort and brought hope to people in Jesus’ name. Now, there have been a lot of people who have abused the word of God and done terrible things. But many of the greatest catastrophes have been addressed by people who were being obedient to what God’s word really says.

God cares for his creations. God cares for people. And that’s why he takes care of us.

That’s why he’s provided us with homes. That’s why he’s provided us with food. He’s provided us with clothing.

And that’s why he calls us to go to those who don’t have it. To go and be his provision. Because God loves us.

Give us this day our daily bread. We’re talking about a father who we can trust to provide for us. He says, and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.

God is gracious. The father is gracious. If the father was not gracious, here’s what you and I deserve from God.

Okay? But sometimes we’ll say, God, I don’t deserve this, whatever bad thing’s happening in our lives. God, I don’t deserve this.

Let’s talk about what we deserve from God. Death, hell. That’s pretty much it.

Well, I’m not that bad. Look inside yourself. Because I know what goes on in my heart, and I think, yeah, that sounds about right.

I just deserve to be separated from God. And yet I look at all the ways God has blessed me, and I see God’s grace all throughout it. I don’t deserve my wife and my kids.

I don’t deserve the home I live in. I don’t deserve all you wonderful people. I don’t deserve all the things that God’s blessed me with.

You know what that’s called? Grace. When God gives you kindness that you don’t deserve, that’s called grace.

And Jesus prayed, forgive us our debts. Not that Jesus had any debts to be forgiven, but he’s showing the disciples how to pray. God is somebody that we can reach out to.

The Father is somebody that we can reach out to for forgiveness, for grace. He teaches us, folks, he forgives us and he teaches us to forgive because grace is his nature. If you recall, I don’t remember if it was two weeks ago or prior to that that I talked about Whether right is right because God says so or does God say so because it’s right.

Do you remember that discussion? And I told you everything goes back to it’s neither of those. It’s neither of those extremes.

Right is right because it’s God’s nature. And God’s nature is to be gracious. He can’t help himself.

That’s who he is. He’s a God who’s gracious to us, who forgives and teaches us to forgive. And it says in verse 13, And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

He’s a God who frees us from the bondage of sin so that we can walk in righteousness. You know, I’ve said many times too that because of what we deserve from God, if I was God, I’d look at us and say, yeah, I’m done with you people. Just enjoy your sin, enjoy hell, all that.

God doesn’t look at us that way. God loves us, and God is willing to free us from the bondage of sin. I’ve told you before, God wasn’t obligated to save us.

The Father was not obligated to craft this plan whereby he sends the Son to die for us. He wasn’t obligated to actually send the Son. He wasn’t obligated to do all these things and orchestrate human history where it came together at just the right moment where the Romans and Jews put Jesus to death.

He wasn’t obligated to do any of that. But he looked at us, and because his nature is love and because his nature is grace, He looked at us and was willing not only to forgive, but to set us free from the bondage of sin. He’s not a God who leads us into temptation.

He’s not a God who points us toward evil. He’s a God who frees us from those things and enables us to walk in righteousness. And then finally in verse 13, it says, For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever.

Amen. A few things that we can take from this verse. He’s eternal. Number one, he’s eternal. That’s part of him being God.

If he ever came into existence or stopped existing, he wouldn’t be God. Because by definition, by nature, God is eternal. He always exists. It’s impossible for him to not exist. He’s eternal not only in his existence, but in his rule and in his perfection.

What I mean by that is not only has he always existed, but he’s always been on the throne. And he’s always been good. He’s always been exactly who he is.

And not only in eternity past, but eternity future. He will always be there. He will always be God.

He will always rule over all that there is. And he will always be the same God of love and of holiness and of compassion and judgment and all the things rolled into one. He will always be the God that he’s always been.

So Jesus tells us that when we pray, we should acknowledge his rule and His eternal existence. Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. All these things that He deserves, all the honor, all the praise, all the glory that we could ever give Him does not begin to scratch the surface of what He deserves.

And what He deserves, He deserves because of who He is. And who He is, He’ll be forever.