Behold No.6 My Father and Your Father

The reading for this morning is Luke chapter 15, very well-known reading, starting at verse 11. Jesus continued, There was a man who had two sons. The younger one said to his father, Father, give me my share of the estate.

So he divided his property between them. Not long after that, the younger son got together. All he had was set off for a distant country and there squandered his wealth in wild living.

After he had spent everything, there was a severe famine in that whole country, and he began to be in need. So he went and hired a voucher to a citizen of that country, who sent him to his fields to feed pigs. He longed to fill his stomach with the blood that the pigs were eating, but no one gave him anything.

When he came to his senses, he said, How many of my father's hired men and food to spare! And here I am, starved to death. I will sit and go back to my wife and say to him, Father, as I have sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worth to be called your son. Make me like one of your hired men.

So he got up and went to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him, filled with compassion for him, and he fed his son and threw his arms around him and kissed him. The son said to him, Father, as I have sinned against heaven and against you, I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

But father said to his son, Quick, bring best robe and put it on him. Put a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Bring fattened calf and kit.

Let's have a feast and celebrate. For this son of mine was dead and is alive again. He was lost and is found.

So they began to celebrate. Meanwhile, the older son was in the field. When he came near the house, he heard music and dancing.

So he called one of the servants, asked him what was going on. Your brother has come home, he replied, and your father has killed the fattened calf because he has him back safely found. The older brother became angry and refused to eat.

So his father went out and ate with him. He answered his father, Look, all these years I have been slaving for you and never disobeyed your orders. Yet you never gave me even a young goat so I could celebrate with my friends.

When this son of yours, who has squandered your property with prostitutes, comes home, you kill the fattened calf for him. My son, the father said, You are always with me and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate and be glad because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again.

He's lost and is found. He's our Lord and he's with us. One of his most distant followers.

And he's just revealed himself to Mary. Jesus said, Do not hold on to me. John 17.

Do not hold on to me for I have not yet returned to the father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them I am returning to my father and your father to my God and your God. The story is told of a young Scot minister.

And there he is in the northern part of the United Kingdom. Wet behind the ears, as they say in profession, as far as just having completed his theological course. Demanding a vocabulary that no one but theologians can understand.

For they are theologians. They are men always seeking to answer questions that nobody is asking. And he's praying to the Lord.

And he's saying, Father, you're immortal, invisible. You're ineffable. You're transcendent.

You're omnipotent. You're incomprehensible. By what name shall we call you? And an elderly Scottish man at the back of a cuckoo said, Call him father, laddie.

Call him father. It was Vaughan's who said that if you fully understand what it is when you refer to God as father, then in effect you have grasped the whole of the gospel. For you cannot say father to God in just the theological sense.

If it's conveying a relationship which you have with him, it goes beyond the mere mental and embraces the heart. It's intellectual. It's experiential.

And when we call him father, we call him by his name. Now here in the tab during the last few sentences, it's been a tremendous privilege of both Pastor Tim and myself to lead you in this series that Tim first suggested we embarked upon in the character of God. On the general heading, Behold your God.

I led our opening thoughts as we came around that revelation of the name of God in the Old Testament, Jehovah Jireh, the Lord will provide. Or prior to that, El Shaddai, the Lord Almighty. Then Tim led us in considering the Lord, Lord Shepherd, and the Lord as a creator.

And then we thought of Jehovah El Kosh, Jehovah the Holy One of Israel. But this morning, we have a scripture that stuns. I am returning to my father and your father, not just Jehovah Jireh, El Shaddai, Jehovah Roy, Jehovah El Kosh, but Jehovah the Father, the one who will engage in a relationship with you that can only be illustrated at its best in the way that the human father will enjoy his children and the children enjoy their father.

So we move from the Old Testament into the New Testament and here standing astonishingly in front of us, almost on every page, is this disclosure that God is a person who wants to enter into a relationship with us in a most intimate fashion. So for those of you who take notes, number one, the timing of the revelation. There is a scant reference to the divine fatherhood in the Old Testament.

There you find him as creator and as judge and as son-in-law to whom we're accountable. It's left to the New Testament writers to say that God is love and that that love is best illustrated in the form of father. There is, if you like, progression of the revelation of God.

A preacher of early centuries said, the wonderful truth of that divine fatherhood is not safe for fallen man to possess without earlier expression of God's awesome power and holiness. In nothing is the wisdom of heaven more clearly observable than in the progressive intuition of man and the postposed disclosure of the heavenly father. The moral necessities of the case are that it is only safe for man to say, our father who art in heaven, when he has learned immediately to say, hallowed be thy name.

Do you see the point? If at the beginning of this holy book we have the revelation of God as father, if that was prime in its disclosure, if it had not said that God is the creator of the heavens and the earth, that God is God's judge, that God is the holy one, then we might write into our understanding of father the rather anonymous definitions that we have of indulgent fathers sometimes in the twentieth century. It is dangerous to say that God is father without recognizing that there is a holiness that is part and parcel of his character. And you cannot trip lightly into the presence of this God.

So, the disclosure is at the right moment. You're two-thirds of the way through this divine book. Before you have emphasized time and time again that the Lord God is his father.

The divine father, says another theologian, was a remarkable advance in all previous views of God and provided an indication that Christian teaching was going to revolutionize man's concept of God. No idea so dominates the theology of the New Testament than that God is father and has a paternal care for you and for me. And perhaps you find it most wonderful illustration in the Sermon on the Mount when we are advised that Jesus actually read the advice not to be over-concerned.

Don't worry about your diary. Remember my address from many years ago? Don't worry about your wardrobe. Don't worry about the pantry.

Why? Well, because your heavenly father knows and he's numbered the hairs on your head and he's aware of the requirements of the birds and is able to clothe the lilies in the field in greater apparel than King Solomon was able to dress. Put all those things together and what does it mean? Your heavenly father cares for you. Time and again you discover this in the Sermon on the Mount.

It goes further in Matthew's treatment of the ministry of our Lord Jesus. Matthew, the unique disclosure of the Saviour, who is one and one unto the Lord. I can only quote the author's version.

In some times and in others manners spoke unto the fathers in times past as in these last days spoken unto by his son. Now what does Jesus say when he comes speaking on behalf of God? Well, he tells us who God is. He is Father.

And it's to the Lord Jesus Christ, this full revelation of God as the Father belongs. He exploits it. He wrings every bit of meaning that there is out of it.

One hundred and sixty-seven times the name Father falls from the lips of our Lord Jesus. You find early in the morning in Cuckoo, Father I come to you. You find him imitating his disciples to the air of God.

And he does so using the paternal name. And when Father discloses himself and his concerns and his appreciation for the Lord Jesus, he calls him my son. And there is this lovely relationship that is emphasised and illustrated almost on every page of the Gospels and certainly on every page of John's Gospel which pins the point dangled in front of you that the disclosure of the name of God as Father is uniquely given to us by our Lord Jesus Christ.

Jesus comes from the Father. Jesus speaks to us. Jesus acts on the Father's behalf.

Jesus has exclusive rights to the Father. I am the way, the truth and the life. No man comes to the Father but by me.

And the closeness that our Lord Jesus has to the Father is such and here it strains our abilities to understand. He says to his disciples on one occasion Have I been so long time with you you have not known me. And their request was, Lord, it's the Father.

Because from the heart of the Father the Savior proceeds. And when you see the Lord Jesus you see God first person of the Trinity in all his personal and wondrous activities. Behold your God.

Him who within the manger lies it is him who built the starry sky. He who on the cross will offer his life as an atonement for the world is the author of life who flung the stars of the planets into space. This is our God and he reveals himself to us through the Lord Jesus Christ as Father.

Climbing of the revelation the unique disclosure of the Savior's teaching. But I hear a little novel in my thinking but I believe that I have scriptural observation number three. The cause of his death.

Okay, I often quote from Kurt Hummel was written centuries ago by Bishop Anselm. Why, odd man, that's basically the Latin means I wish he'd written another book. Why did God die? And my answer to the question why Jesus has died is not completely all along the conservative line of reason.

It embraces that but it goes further. Why did Jesus die? Well, you tell me and with this I'm I gladly believe there was no other good enough to pay the price of sin. He only could unlock the gate of heaven and let us in.

That's sublime and wonderful. It's the poetry of a lady and a lady inspired, I believe, by the point of writing it. Bit of a novel.

Why do the authorities the religious authorities do to death the carpenter from Lebanon? And my answer is this. They did so because they could not tolerate his teaching as to who Father is. In the Old Testament there's no reference to God as Father.

In Judaic theology this very day there's only a faint hint of that. And if you were to compare Christian teaching in all its uniqueness with the bankruptcy of Abraham you'll discover that the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is poles apart from Allah. The Jehovah of Judaism does not have a king for his children.

Neither does Allah though he is to be the merciful one. Here, our blessed Lord, you read of him in Luke's Gospel in the 15th chapter. His religious opponents are at the edge of his vast congregation.

They're muttering about Jesus. Well, the reason for their difficulty is this man who claims to be us. He acts in fellowships with publicans and sinners.

How can he do such a thing? Then Jesus starts to tell them a story in three separate passages. And those stories of the last coin and the last sheep and the last son are stories which when taken together define the character of our Lord in the most remarkable fashion. He's like a shepherd.

He's also like a woman. Now, don't jump out of your seat. There is femininity within the person of God.

A woman may forget a child at her breast when the child and she are old. But our God will not forget that our tithe in the Old Testament brings together the great truth of femininity. And is prepared to say that all that is grand and wonderful in that plus all that is grand and wonderful in masculinity at its best is traced back to itself in this great God.

But I digress and come back. The third story of the triplet of illustrations which our Savior gave talked about the prodigal son. A young man who left home and spent all that was his by transfer from his father's bank balance.

And at the end of the story at least just in the middle of the story you've got the picture of the son coming back to the father and the father embracing him. And our Lord Jesus Christ evidently depicts the old man with legs bared as he's taken up his outer garments and put them on his waist and done something that you would not do as an older man in the Middle East. He's exposed his legs.

He's ran through the village that he trolls. They've all seen him. This is the head man.

Head men do not behave in this fashion. But he comes down the path to where his pig smelling son is shuffling back up the hill and before son can get anything out in terms of his apology father embraced him. But the son was dead.

That son had bankrupted himself a possible claim of family allegiance and relationship with the father. Now the reason why Jesus tells the story of the shepherd that looks for the lost sheep and the woman who looks for the lost coin and the father who's ever vigilant towards the singing city where his son has been consumed. The reason why Jesus tells the story hear me is because he is telling us what father is like.

Now those Pharisees and scribes they were not primitive theologians. They were canny men. They knew what our Lord Jesus was saying.

He was disclosing his doctrine to God and their assessment. It was necessary. I'll come back and underline the point in a moment.

But the reason why our Lord Jesus at the religious level is suspended on a Roman gibbet is because he taught a doctrine of God the father which was unpalatable as far as contemporaries were concerned. Not before. God's fatherhood is universal.

Ephesians 3b tells you all fatherhood takes its name from Heavenly Father. Evangelicals at least extreme fundamentalists have always had problems with this doctrine that God is the father of all men and women. The reason for it is that they can consist point.

Then the suggestion is made that everyone will automatically be sustained. But it seems to me that the acknowledgement of one is not the consequence of the other. When our Lord Jesus Christ teaching on the Sermon on the Mount he's addressing Jewish people who have not necessarily aligned themselves with his particular disclosure.

And yet he refers to the Heavenly Father as though he is their father. At the point of them hearing what he has to say. I'll give you an example.

Matthew's Gospel chapter 5 and verse 44. I say you love your enemies. Pray for those who persecute you that you may be sons of your father in heaven.

He causes his son to rise on his evil and the good and his reign on the righteous and the unrighteous. You go to Malachi the prophet the last prophecy in the Old Testament. And in the second chapter the prophet is saying in the first Have we not all one father? Did not one God create us? I tell you there is a very real sense in which scripture affirms that God is the father of every intelligent being in our world.

He's the father of the Chinese orphan and he's the father of the destitute on the streets of Bombay. He's the God who sends his son and his reign on the just and the unjust. Although men do not see him as father, he still remains.

The son still remains as a son even when he's clouded by the clouds. When our Lord Jesus talking to the Samai woman you remember the Samai were half-breed. In other words, they weren't within the covenant of Abraham and Moses and David and so forth.

And the Orthodox Jews would not speak to Samaritans. Here is this woman. Here in the story.

It's in John's Gospel chapter 5. Our Lord is thirsty. He's tired. He sits by the stonework as well.

And the disciples have got to buy food. And he starts to engage this woman in conversation. And she puts up one or two theological theological theological items.

And our Lord is eventually he pinpoints what he's trying to say when he says to her that the day is coming when the Father will be worshipped. Not one particular moment in which he was debating was it Zion or Jerusalem that was really the most displaced in the promised land. But no, says our Lord Jesus Christ, the time is coming when the worshipped Father shall worship him in spirit and in truth.

So here is the Lord addressing a Samaritan and referring to his Father and in effect inferring that he is the Father of this woman as I believe the Bible indicates that God in a sense is the Father of all intelligent people intelligent beings in our world. But now listen to this. As the competition outside increases.

For those who are listening to this it's a red-red tape. It's Remembrance Sunday. And we have an open air service outside the church.

Five. Universal fatherhood does not imply universal sonship. Do you hear that? Universal fatherhood does not imply universal sonship.

Now you say that's a difficult thing to understand. I'll never know you until I take you back to the prodigal son. Now in one sense that parable is not healthfully entitled in terms of the prodigal.

The word prodigal actually is not in the text whatsoever. I would suggest to you that a better title might be the parable of a lost sonship. Did you hear that? The parable of a lost sonship.

When that fellow was in the sinking city he lived as though his father was dead. Indeed, that as I told you a few moments ago is exactly what the father says of the son. This man was lost and he was dead.

But he has been found. He's alive again. Now the son had lost by deliberate carelessness any claims to sonship.

But father still was father is affections towards his prodigal child. You understand? Father never had this lad out of his mind. Father was ever concerned about the weighing of the boy even though the boy had thrown over any claims of authority that his father might have upon his wife.

Even though the boy does not recognize father as being his father. No less the Lord Jesus teaches us that the father in the story of the prodigal always remembered the boy always remembered his son. One theologian says if man leaves Eden under a curse it is to a father's smile that the people return.

Now why did our Lord Jesus Christ engage in a ministry first of all amongst his own people? Well you'll recall in John's Gospel there is a prediction of the ministry of the Savior. We're told that he came unto the moon but his own received him not. But to as many as received him until then become the sons of God.

In other words our Lord Jesus comes along with the authority of the father and he dispenses sonship afresh to the four sons of Abraham I indeed and Adam who wish to be repatriated with God the father. Now there's no one else who can do that. This is a choice and unique ministry of our Jesus's.

If you confess me before men on earth I confess you before my father who is in heaven. It doesn't matter where you go the beginning of the ministry the end of the ministry the middle of the ministry of our Lord Jesus he is doing this he is issuing authority for men and women to be repatriated with God to bring them back to the family circle. And is it not interesting that when he speaks to men Magdalene and and taught his soon ascent into heaven he says go and tell my brethren my brothers the first time he ever used that expression after his death and resurrection go and tell my brothers what's the significance? Well he has made it possible to bring fallen men and women Jew and Gentile into the family circle of God in other words he dispenses sonship and he can introduce them to the heavenly Father.

So my fifth point was the universal fatherhood my universal son you have to accept what he offers you God will remain father even if you don't accept the day will come when you stand before Father not as a redeemed son but as a hell deserving sinner and a father before whom you stand is not the indulgent father sometimes there is in the 20th century he's a father whose name is hallowed he's a father who is a judge he's a father who is a creator and his father will not turn a blind eye on the sin of the unrepentant unbeliever last and sixth point the discernment of God his father comes via charismatic gift and that should have loosened the safety belts of a few more somebody has quipped that the charismatic movement is an experience looking for theology sometimes conservative evangelicalism is theology looking for an experience there are two specific promptings of the Holy Spirit that cause men and women to recognize the essentials of the gospel let's go on to 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verse 3 and you'll see where I'm coming from and going to in a moment 1 Corinthians 12 verse 3 here is the apostle Paul and he's speaking of the folk who have the Lord Jesus and he says therefore I tell you that no one who is speak by the spirit of God says Jesus be cursed and no one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit it is impossible to enter into the Christian experience apart from through the charismatic dimension the Holy Spirit causes a man or a woman to recognize the Lordship of Jesus Christ that's one that's the first function of the Holy Spirit with the lives believer that's chapter 2 let's go to Romans chapter 8 and verse 15 here are references being made to the indwelling God's spirit and the revelation that he brings Romans chapter 8 and verse 15 for you who did not receive the spirit that makes you a slave again to fear you have received the spirit of sonship alright? you have received the spirit of sonship that means you're back in the circle, so continue, proceed it's a charismatic belongs to the whole of the church not the ones so categorized within the body of Christ the latter part of verse 15 you receive the spirit of sonship and by him we cry Abba Father by the Holy Spirit he gives us the ability to ejaculate this particular term Abba the Father we've confessed Jesus as Lord how do I know Jesus as Lord? well the Holy Spirit has brought this revelation and in my humility and in my repentance I have acknowledged the Lordship of Jesus Christ he is the one who dyes Calvary's cross for me, he's not just a carpenter, he's not just a rabbi he is the expression of God in this world and because of his death and in his mighty resurrection I am taken into the family circle of the redeemed so am I, a child of the king, I'm a subject of the king I'm a creation of the creator but more wonderful than this I am the son of the Father and therefore I cry stimulated by the spirit Abba Abba Father our Lord Jesus this term and there is no trace in the Old Testament or in Judaic intertestamental literature at all that any would bar the man from Nazareth that dares to take upon his lips the word Abba and address it to God you feel intimate uncomfortable in the presence of the Lord then that is an indication that you have received the charisma of the spirit Bible are you understanding what I'm saying you see these things are so utterly vital for you and me to latch onto here is I say the doctrine of the Father of God the timing of the revelation you don't get it very much in the Old Testament the unique disclosure of our Lord Jesus it is he who tells us that God is Father the reason for his death because of that disclosure they thought he was guilty of theological heresy that's the reason you see why Jesus never finishes the parable of the prod you've got the elder son and he's going to come back into the Father's house but will he come back into the Father's house will there be a reconciliation will Judaism accept what Jesus claims is the truth and the sequel to the parable of the prodigal son the sequel to the parable of lost sonship at the cross of Christ where there are representatives of Judaism who with their hostile shouts of abuse will not have a man rule over us we do not acknowledge that he is a son of God, neither do we acknowledge the Father that which he claimed his his death God's fatherhood is universal God is the Father of all men and women, universal fatherhood does not imply universal sonship we have to be taken back into the Father's circle how does that come about by the charismatic endowment of the Holy Spirit who allows you to see Jesus Christ as his Lord and the context is you go on to say of the creator of El Kadosh Israel by my name my Father my God Yehovah let's listen to a song and then we will sing a final hymn and break before we come around the Lord's table we are moving on into a deep appreciation for the love which flows from the Father to every child of God of the grace with which he handles every minute situation how he earns the best for everyone who gives to him his all grace it seems is all he has and one big open heart and so could be loved by you my Lord we will know and understand his purposes more clearly more than his faith in Jesus in making us more with his love he woos us by his grace he sets us free we can only trust him and hold on to his power grace it seems is all he has and one big open heart the Father of heaven profound a ransom for us souls have found before thy throne we sit as bend to us thy heartening love extend 107 to us thy heartening love extend 107 our great God in all your many attributes this is a source of delight you are our Father and your arms open and you take us on no other basis not servants not slaves but sons and daughters lovers help us our response in our attitude towards one another and in this thoughtful and careful way in which we bread and wine in a moment stand please our love O O Party gone gone gone gone gone gone ♪ O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave ♪