Family of God No.4 Pleasing our Father

Welcome to my lecture, and thank you for joining me. Welcome to my lecture, and thank you for joining me. Let's read together from the Word of God, and I'd like you to turn to Hebrews, and chapter 2 and 3. This is a remarkable letter written to the Jewish converts in the early church, and the objective is to show how the Lord Jesus is a key to the Old Testament revelation, how he's superior to all the great patriarchs and prophets of the centuries gone by, and how he has established for himself a family, a people, whose father is his father, the Almighty God.

So let's read from verse 9 of the second chapter. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor, because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone. In bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering.

But the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. He says, I will declare your name to my brothers in the presence of the congregation.

I will sing your praises. I will put my trust in him. And again he says, here am I, and the children God has given me.

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity, so that by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death. For surely it is not angels he helps, but Abraham's descendants. For this reason he had to be made like his brothers in every way, in order that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.

Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. Therefore holy brothers who share in the heavenly calling, fix your thoughts on Jesus, the apostle and high priest whom we confess. He was faithful to the one who appointed him, just as Moses was faithful in all God's house.

Jesus has been found worthy of greater honor than Moses, just as the builder of a house has greater honor than the house itself. For every house is built by someone, but God is the builder of everything. Moses was faithful as a servant in all God's house, testifying to what would be said in the future, but Christ is faithful as a son over God's house, and we are his house, if we hold on to our courage and the hope of which we boast.

God will bless that reading from his splendid, inspired word, and we're going to look at that in a few moments' time. When you read verses of scripture like that, that speak to us about the great inheritance that is ours through our Lord Jesus, it makes us want to worship our God more and more in everything that we do. So as Brother Ted said in his prayers, maybe you had a pretty rough week last week, or maybe it was a good week.

Then let's just bring the roughness of the week, or our praise for the success of the week, before the Lord. All come, let us worship and bow down. Let's listen to that being played through gently on the piano, and then we'll sing it together in a moment.

390 if you can't see the overheads. Now let's sing this feeling fully to our great God and Father. We'll stand and sing it.

He is the Apostle Paul, and in jail he has an awareness of the presence of God, and he says this, for this reason I kneel, I kneel before the Father, from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name. You may recall that in previous studies from the pulpit here on a Sunday, earlier this year we were looking at the doctrine of the fatherhood of God. I locked my remarks into the parable of the prodigal son, in fact I had to express that I think a little more carefully.

The doctrine of the fatherhood of God flows out from that parable, and then I took you to those lovely verses in John's gospel where our Lord speaks about the vine and the vineyard and the heavenly father being the laborer or being the vineyard keeper, the husbandman. And from those addresses, although I didn't really plan them to link together, standing out in relief was this great person of God the Father. Now I know that many people here didn't have a father at the human level like mine, and one has to be very careful about preaching on the subject of father these days, because I'm helped to think of the Father God by projecting the character of my own father to an infinite degree and seeing God as someone who was far more kind and far more loving and far more consistent than even he.

But those of us who don't have this fond memory of a human father, nonetheless from Scripture and from the illustration, the parable of the prodigal son, and from what Paul tells us here, and from what we've gathered together from Old Testament and New Testament, we've seen in relief standing out this great God and Father of our Lord Jesus. Nothing more wonderful in your prayers than to call God Father. Nothing more wonderful than to explore the character of God, as the old theologians would say, study the attributes of God.

And yet it seemed to me when I was bringing these addresses, and I delight to preach on the character and the person of God, that one ought to go further. And my reasoning was twofold. One, it's logical to move from the doctrine of the fatherhood of God to the familyhood of the likes of you and me.

It's logical. But my second reason for bringing these addresses to you is this, that I can't for the life of me think of any occasion when I've ever heard anyone preach on the familyhood of Christian men and women. And so what I've been bringing to you is the distillation of my own thought as I've been coming before the Lord and asking him to lead me further into a grasp of what it really means to know him as father, and in consequence, exercise responsibilities as his son, and some of you here, of course, as his daughters.

Now, I say there's nothing more wonderful in the world than to recognize that God is father, and we are part of his family circle. When I was in Washington, one preacher started up, and I almost did the same this morning, but I'm not as bold as he was. He started off his address by coming to the microphone and speaking to two and a half thousand people and said, how many here want to have a sense of personal dignity? And everybody stood.

They're Americans. They all stood. And he was arguing that the dignity that we have is really traced back to the fact that we're not the free product of an evolutionary process.

You're not some sort of protoplasm, or your ancestor wasn't some sort of indeterminate act that happened, and you, as a result, are an accident caused by forces that really have got no divine power behind them at all. If you think that way, if you're an evolutionist, I'll tell you something. You will have a very low view of man, but if you recognize that God is father, and if you go beyond that and appreciate that God has revealed himself to you spectacularly through the Lord Jesus, and brought you to himself, even after creating you, there's a sort of double love which father directs towards you.

If you appreciate, my brother and sister, this morning, that that is your position, you're created by the father, you are born again by the love of the father, then you have a dignity that no one should ever be allowed to take from you. You are what you are by the grace of God, you're a son, you're a daughter of God. You may be a cog in the machine of the 20th century, according to people outside, people with whom you deal, but I tell you this morning on the authority of the Bible, that in God's estimate you have worth, you have value.

Why? Well, because you're part of the family, of whom God is father. And I've been going on to knock out from your thinking any clumsy conclusions that perhaps you may have had as a result of not understanding this doctrine right. I mean, I spent some time in dealing with the fact that being part of the family of God has nothing to do with the building where God's family meet.

In fact, I think that most architects hadn't got a clue about the doctrine of the church and how buildings should have been erected for the sake of the people. The building in which we worship has very little to do with the concept of the family of God. We don't go to church, we are the church.

The church ceases to exist the moment all of us are outside this place. Please do believe that. Of course, it exists as we go back home, as little entities of it, but when we come together as a called out people of God and we take our seats somewhat comfortably in this rather lovely old building, then we come as the family, we come as the church.

Neither is the family of God just a group of people, you remember I argued, called together to hear sermons. Now don't draw a breath and let it out with a sigh of relief at that moment and think at least he's got the message that sermons aren't terribly important. They are, they're desperately important, particularly if they come from the Lord.

But pulpiteering, coming to hear a man, whoever he be, however eloquent, however educated, even however godly, is not all that's involved in being part of the family of God. You remember I was having to qualify that last time. The family of God makes allowance for and is grateful for the word of God being spoken into it.

But the family of God also has a concern for every member that makes up the household. So someone challenges us. What realistic care can be given to the single parent, the widow or the widower, to the numerous single or divorced members of many churches? What about those who have suffered mental illness, those who have been emotionally crippled by deep hurts or starved of love, those who find forming relationships most difficult? What practical measures can the local church take to see that the love of God is actually directed towards them? Now that seems very socially orientated, doesn't it, as a sort of objective that we're looking to find within the family of God.

And yet I think that that is biblically argued because when the apostle James, the brother of our Lord Jesus, when he defines what religion is and what should go on within the family circle, he says this in the 27th verse of the first chapter of his epistle, religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this, to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. So you see, it's got a lot to do with listening to addresses. But if that's the sum total of what you understand by being part of the family of God and coming to church, a church building, then you're light years away from what the New Testament is teaching.

So what I've tried to do is to biblicize, if you like, our understanding of the word father, or rather our understanding of the word family. And I've tried to show you that even the immediate notion that comes into our minds of mum, dad and the two children, assuming that they are children, is not a comprehensive enough definition. Because that use of the word family, you remember I was arguing this two months ago, that use of the word family is very, very modern.

You can only trace it back really to the 19th century. When the Bible speaks about family, you folk here would perhaps be best reading into it the word clan, or if you like, household. You see, when you go to the Old Testament and you read of David's house, it's really the household of David.

Those who were belonging to David, close relatives, friends of the household. Now the New Testament takes this terminology, family and church, ecclesia, and in the epistle to the Hebrews, the word house itself, and it shows us that when Paul and the others are writing their letters to the family of God, they are thinking of brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers in the faith, who congregate together in small or large numbers in various parts of the Roman Empire, and the New Testament is very, very concerned about relationships which exist amongst those people. The New Testament is not just doctrinally saturated, it is that, but it is more than that.

And if you stop for the former, then you haven't got a biblical representation of the New Testament faith in the 20th century. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus is very possessive in the way that he looks down upon those who belong to him. You say, what do you mean? Well, go back to the 14th verse of Ephesians 3. For this reason I kneel before the Father from whom his whole family in heaven and on earth derives its name.

Now, if you're working from the authorised version, you'll find that unfortunately the translators there missed out the possessive pronoun his, and used as the definite article thee, but they were wrong. The word family there in the Greek, and I've checked the lexicon of this, certainly allows the translation that's in the NIV, his whole family. Now, I'm not just making an argument there in defence of the NIV over against the AVI, I couldn't really care which.

Quite frankly, they both have their blemishes and their advantages, but the point that I'm trying to make is this, that when Father looks down upon his family, he's concerned for his whole family of whom you are a member, within which you are a member, and therefore, I argue, you have great significance. See God delights in his people. Did we not learn that last week when I took you into Exodus, and then through into Revelation, one of the opening books of the Bible speaks about God calling the Israelites out of Egypt as his own people.

And in the book of Revelation, you remember that tremendous penultimate chapter where reference is made to the new Jerusalem, the new heavens, and the new earth, and those words are formulated, and they shall be my people. You may not have had cause to have been proud of your dad, although I think probably the majority of you did, or your mother, but one thing that you can be proud of is your heavenly father. Now, a heavenly father wants to take pride in his children.

You see, that's not just a natural characteristic. If God had given us children at the natural level, I would have wanted to have been proud of them. I can understand when one of my fellow elders is moved in a service when he sees the second of his two sons committed for mission service.

Now, there is a degree of, well, not perhaps pride so much as gratitude to the Lord for allowing that within the family circle. It's fantastic, isn't it? Tremendous blessing. I just use that as an example, you see, but I'm inverting it.

I'm saying that as it's natural for human parents to have pride over their offspring, so it's natural for a heavenly father to have pride over his children. Now, this is not an emotional argument. I think, honestly, I can buttress every statement that I've been making.

I'm measuring my words this morning from the New and from the Old Testament. You see, here is the Lord Jesus on earth, and suddenly, as he is engaged in his career, a voice is heard from heaven. It happens on three different occasions, but on this occasion, the voice from heaven is the voice of the heavenly father, and it's speaking of the Son.

You remember, this is my beloved Son in whom I am, well, pleased, because his lad, if I dare use the word, has submitted to the waters of baptism, has been immersed by John, has identified himself with all those Jewish and Roman and Gentile sinners, and indeed with your sin and my sin. And Father, God is pleased because the Son is beginning to achieve on earth the objective for which he was sent. Now, if you were to ask me what I want to see in our local fellowship here, in our beloved Tabb family, it's this.

I want to know that Father God is looking down upon you and me, pastor, elders, deacons, all our officers, all our church family, and saying, look, my beloved family, in whom I am well pleased. Now, how do you please your father? How do you please a father who's just been presented with, by his lovely wife, just been presented with a little bouncing, blue-eyed baby boy? Well, the nurse says, he just looks like his dad. I mean, you probably can't see it, and I can't see it, but the nurse who's got some good idea in psychology, she says the right thing to the father.

Now, isn't there a sense in which the Father God looks for us to be like him? Some resemblance, some resemblance. You say, again, that that is running along, it's more sentimental than it is doctrinal. I tell you, my friend, you could never be more wrong.

Listen to the Apostle Peter, the Apostle Peter, as he writes in the fourth verse of his second epistle and the first chapter. I'll read from the third verse, as you're finding it, 2 Peter chapter 1. His, that's God's, divine power has given us everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires.

Did you notice the intonation there? In the divine nature, participating in it. Of whose nature are we speaking? Well, the nature of Father God. Now, you have been made a son, a daughter of the living God through our Lord Jesus.

That's not just academic. You know, you're not just a Christian by logical deduction from a text. Believe that, A, B, C, D, that gets you in the kingdom, abracadabra.

No, that speaks more of magic than it speaks of New Testament theology. This is why the doctrine of the Holy Spirit is so important to us. You see, I'm a Christian because the very life of God flows into my personality.

Now, that's a staggering statement. I mean, the majority of people on Montague Street, if I suddenly say that, they'd think I was balmy. The power of God is in me.

They'd look at you with eyes that would go like saucers, wouldn't they? Because it seems so crazy. And yet it's wonderfully, blissfully true. If we really are Christians, then we've partaken of the divine nature.

It's the nature of Father, by the Holy Spirit, mediated to us through our Lord Jesus, that is perceived in your character. And it's to the end that you are like Father, that you're pleasing him. So you see, it's not a soppy, sentimental chorus to sing, Abba, Father, let me be yours and yours alone.

It's the essence of good theology. Let me be so much like you that people are aware that I am a member of the best family circle in the universe, your family circle. Father, may I, as a result, may I please you? So let's box all our remarks together by going finally to Hebrews chapter 2, because there is a striking statement of the adoption of the familyhood of brothers and sisters who named Jesus Christ as Savior.

Verse 10 of Hebrews 2, in bringing many sons to glory, it was fitting that God, that's the Father, for whom and through whom everything exists, should make the author of their salvation perfect through suffering. Both the one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family. Did you notice that? The one who makes men holy, that's arguably the heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus, and those who are made holy are of the same family.

So Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers. Now that's astonishing, isn't it? I once remember an older minister for whom I have great respect saying he didn't like Christian people referring to the Lord Jesus as their brother. Now, I understood what he was trying to say, because pastorally his concern was that we were never flippant or casual in our understanding of our relationship with the Lord Jesus.

God forbid that that should ever be the case. And yet he was going a little bit too far with his sensitive pastoral concern, because here is a comment made that as God is our heavenly Father, so the Lord Jesus is our elder brother. And as there is a resemblance, or should be, between us and the Father, so there should be a resemblance between us and the elder brother.

Now our elder brother pleased the Father, not so, I brought you information, evidence along that line. And as he pleased the Father, so it is for us in the family circle here, as individuals and drawn together as a whole, to please Father. Isn't that the very teaching of this verse? The one who makes men holy and those who are made holy are of the same family, so Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers.

So here's a test for our family life as individuals and collectively. Is that which pleased the Father about the Son reflected in our lifestyle? What strikes you about our Lord Jesus in terms of, shall we say, his relationship with his brothers? I'm talking about the eleven men, the eleven true men that he called. What sort of thing would you make amongst your conclusions that was paramount in the example that he gave them and in the attitude that he had towards them? Well let me suggest one of two things.

What about his incredible generosity? Don't you think that's a staggering thing? I never understand why John Calvin hasn't got a chapter on the generosity of Jesus. He's got a chapter on the attributes of God. Probably it's all bound up with many other things that that great theologian said.

But there was an incredible generosity. He was always giving water into wine, sight to the blind, food to the hungry, self-respect to the disgraced, comfort to the sorrowing, even taxes to the government. And it was Jesus who said that Father who sees in secret or what you do in secret will reward you openly.

Now this is what warmed the Father's heart about our Lord Jesus, his incredible generosity. Now does that pervade? I think it does actually to a large degree. But analyse yourself individually.

I don't care whether you're fifteen or fifty or eighty for that matter. I became convicted about tithing my pocket money when I was a lad of fifteen. It's been a good maxim to have all down my life.

But I'm not just referring to tithing, I'm referring to our generous nature because our Lord Jesus had a generous nature in every area. Is there that about us that we found in him that pleased the Father? Incredible generosity, consistent sensitivity. Wasn't he a very sensitive man our Saviour? Here's Nicodemus and he's so embarrassed.

So he sees Jesus by night. Jesus doesn't sort of bawl at him, to use an American expression, bawl him out because he comes at night. He doesn't say, well you're a bit of a coward aren't you? In a very sensitive way he deals with him.

Sensitive way he deals with a woman who's taken in the act of adultery and dismisses her accusers before he ever engages in interview. So sensitively he directs his comment to Mary whose heart is smitten as she sees her son on the cross and he directs his attention to John and he says, look after your mother and mother behold your son. You remember those incidents? Is he a pleased father? Hey, what about our sensitivities to one another? You know it's so easy to hurt one another isn't it? So easy to miss when we ought to be ministering.

So easy to be taken up with our immediate group and forget the lame dog, so to speak, who's limping away. The Lord Jesus wouldn't have done that. You couldn't be lonely in his family circle.

Neither should it be possible to be lonely, alas though sometimes it is, in the family circle at the tab. What about his unbelievable humility? The majestic son of God who spoke and the worlds come into existence and he arrives into Jerusalem on a donkey. Can you believe it? And he girds his waist with a towel and he washes the feet of his disciples.

Do we have that here in the tab? Are we foot washers? In the symbolic sense at any rate. It is a truth that stands out with distinction, says one modern preacher, on the pages of the New Testament that God has no sons who are not servants. The unbelievable humility of Jesus, the consistent sensitivity, the incredible generosity, all these attributes he displays and there are many more.

I've only just given you a sample. He displays before his family circle and now credit to the family, credit here. Very often we can criticize Peter and Thomas for their crass stubbornness or what seems to be, but there are many, many times when those handful of men that Jesus picked can show you a lesson or two.

They responded by and large to what he had to say. He was their elder brother. He was the chief.

They were the disciples. They recognized him in one sense as being Lord and they were servants. And when he spoke his word of correction, even though they didn't always understand, they tried to put it into practice.

Not so? Now ask yourself this. Why did whoever penned the letter to the Hebrews, why did he, or let me be a little speculative, she, write the letter? And the answer is because there were certain things that were going wrong near the family circle. You see they weren't meeting together as often as they ought to.

Chapter 10 verse 25, there was the area of discipline, 12 verse 8, 13 verses 1 through to 3. The fact of hospitality. Look at chapter 13. Keep on loving each other as brothers.

Do not forget to entertain strangers for by doing so people have entertained angels without knowing it. Remember those in prison as if you were their fellow prisoners and those who were ill-treated as if you yourselves were suffering. It's chock-a-block full of corrections for the family.

Verse 7, remember your leaders. Verse 17 of the last chapter, obey your leaders and submit to their authority. They keep watch over you as men who must give account.

Obey them so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no advantage to you. Now to who were those remarks being addressed? Well go back to chapter 3 if you've got nimble fingers will you? Because there in the sixth verse reference is made to the family. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house.

Oh you say house, he doesn't say family. But that's precisely the way in which we are to interpret the very rare occasions when the word family is used in the Greek language. But Christ is faithful as a son over God's house, over God's clan, over God's household.

And we are his house. You and me. So what did these Christians who received the epistle to the Hebrews have to do? They had to recognize more and more what the responsibilities were as well as the privileges as being members of the family of God.

Now look, these addresses are mine. Some of you have been very kind and you've said you've enjoyed this preaching. But my friend, they've not been brought for you to enjoy them.

They've been brought for us to act on them. Quite frankly sometimes as a preacher I couldn't really care whether a congregation enjoys what I have to say. In fact sometimes I'm alarmed if they do enjoy it.

I'd rather sometimes that we endure it. Because the endurance perhaps means that it's helping to correct what areas may be wrong in our lives. Now these really are my final comments.

Here we are 500 people. We've split you into groups. We've had to do that because pastorally it's just an impossible task.

I'm an old man now as you can see. We need to relate one to the other more. Some are having a rough and tumble ride at the moment.

Some of our younger families find it very hard to keep up with two or three kids and just one wage going in. And perhaps they need your help and empathy. Some of our 70 year olds find it hard to go to sleep at night and you would if you've got arthritis too.

Now it's in these areas where the family shows itself to be the family. You might think highly, I don't know, of the preaching ministry at this time. But quite frankly it's utterly ineffective if it really is the old fashioned pulpiteering ministry.

If it doesn't make a difference within the family, within the context of who we are and how we relate to one another as well as how we worship God in our songs and in our hymn singing. So there's the burden of my heart. I want God to be able to say of us at the time, as he said of the Lord Jesus, behold this is my beloved family in whom I am well pleased.

Let's pray to Father. He takes me home, the living bread. And on to peace the fount is filled.

We drink of thee to drink. As spirits shall go deep. Let us drink.

O God, that we might drink. Jesus, help us. Let us drink.

God and Christ. Chaste blood of Christ. Amen.