The Fatherhood of God

Knowing God — Steve Gregg

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The Fatherhood of God

Knowing GodSteve Gregg

In this thought-provoking exploration, Steve Gregg delves into the concept of God as a Father and its significance. He highlights how the term "Father" was not commonly used to refer to God in the Old Testament, but it became more explicit with the incarnation of Jesus. Gregg discusses the spiritual adoption and the familial relationship between believers and God, emphasizing the loving and caring nature of God as a Father. He also addresses potential misconceptions about God's anger and wrath in the Old Testament and emphasizes the importance of understanding God as a loving and committed Father figure.

Transcript

We talked last time about the doctrine of the Trinity. And essentially, after all the talk I gave, in case you didn't figure out what the conclusion was, my conclusion is I don't understand exactly the Trinity. I believe that the Trinity is a good formulation of the biblical data on the Godhead, or on the divine nature.

I believe that we can biblically establish that there is one God, and that also the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. Therefore, that much I accept, the rest is all conjecture. I mean, really, to harmonize those things in a particular way, to me, does not seem sacrosanct.

It seems to me if one person would harmonize that material one legitimate way, or one rational manner, they have as much reason to believe that they're correct as another person who can somehow rationally put those things together. And my conclusion was that a full understanding of the Trinity apparently is not one of those things that is essential for salvation. Fortunately, or else none of us would probably be saved, since none of us fully understand it.

And even those who think they do, very possibly don't, understand as well as they think. Paul said, if anyone thinks he knows anything, he knows nothing, as he ought to know. So, moving from that, I do want to consider, without further belaboring of the concept of the Trinity as a whole, I do want to talk about God as Father, and God the Son, and I want to talk about God the Holy Spirit in separate lectures.

Each of these reflect some manner in which God reveals himself to us, and for us to know God requires that he reveal himself to us. We cannot find him by imagination, or by searching through human reasoning. Paul said that the world, through wisdom, did not know God, and we cannot find him through wisdom.

We can only find him by him finding us. We can only know God by him pulling back the veil and saying, here I am. Here is who I am.

And this is what we believe God has done in the scriptures. He has disclosed himself to us through his word. Of course, at a later point in time, he disclosed himself through his word becoming flesh.

But the written word also is a very good way in which God has revealed who he is. But even with the written word, we need the Spirit to reveal to our hearts who God is, because the knowing of God does not come from just hearing propositions about God. Jesus said to Peter, Bless art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood do not reveal this to you, but my Father, which is in heaven.

And that is what we need. We need for the Father who is in heaven to reveal to us who he is. And to begin with, I want to talk about what it means when we call God Father, or the Father.

We are living 2,000 years after the time of Christ, and Jesus spoke frequently of God as the Father, and therefore as Christians we have a heritage of calling God by that name, or by that term. It does not probably sound strange to our ears. It is a very customary way of speaking of God, calling our Father, which art in heaven, or the Father.

Jesus used the term, My Father, Your Father, and the Father, when he spoke of God. And this may, like I say, this does not sound strange to our ears, but I would like to suggest it may have sounded somewhat strange to the ears of his original hearers. It might seem like one of the most basic ways of thinking about God is to think of him as a Father, but that is only true since Jesus has come.

Because before Jesus came, God was very seldom referred to or thought of in terms of a Father. I am afraid I do not have the data on this exactly, but I heard a radio minister once say, a few years back, that the Jews in their traditions had a long list of names by which God could be referred to in prayer. When they would speak to God, they could call him Sovereign Lord, or they could call him any number of things that they had a list of that were appropriate names for God to address him by.

But according to this one party, I am sorry that I have so little ability to cite my sources, because it was something I heard while driving and I do not even know who was speaking. So before you would quote me on this, you had better do some research of your own. But it was suggested that Father was not one of the names.

That of all the names, as I recall, there were 30 or 40 such names on the list. Father was not one of the names on the list, because the Jews did not typically feel comfortable calling God by that name. In fact, even in the Old Testament, he is not generally spoken of as anybody's father.

He is likened, in a few cases, to a father. In the Psalms it says, Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him. In Psalm 103, that is obviously comparing God in one respect to a father, but he is as often compared to a mother.

Because in Isaiah it says, Can a mother forget her nursing child, or fail to have compassion upon it? Yea, she may forget, yet will I not forget thee, O Israel. You are engraved on the palms of my hands, he says. Now, God is like a father, it says in the Old Testament.

It also says, in some respects, he is like a mother. Does that mean that we can legitimately call God our mother, which art in heaven? Well, the Bible has no precedent of addressing God in this way. Now, in the Old Testament, you do on occasion find the concept of God being father, but not necessarily of the individual believer.

Isaiah, I believe twice in his book, says, O God, you are our father, and we are your children. But by that he means that God is the father of the nation of Israel. And God had originated that concept back in the Exodus, when God told Moses, you go and approach Pharaoh.

And this is my message to Pharaoh, Israel is my firstborn, and I command you to let Israel go, or else I will kill your firstborn. Now, quite obviously, God was speaking of Israel collectively, as a nation, as his son. And Hosea uses that expression also in Hosea 11, in verse 1. When Israel was young, I loved him, and I called my son out of Egypt.

His son meaning the nation of Israel. Now, we see then, on rare occasions, perhaps half a dozen in the entire Old Testament, that God is the father of Israel, the nation. And Israel is his, not sons, so much as his son, singular.

It's a figure of speech, that Israel is seen collectively, and of course as a type of Christ, who is God's son. And therefore, much of Israel's experience with God, and experience in its history in the Old Testament, is seen to have parallels with that of Christ personally, who is the antitype of God's firstborn, Israel. Christ is the true Israel, embodied in a person.

But when we speak of God as our father, although we could, in one sense, use that the same way, because we are in Christ, we are one in Christ, and if God is Christ's father, and he is the son, then we are the son too, in him. We share in the sonship of Christ. Just as a person in Israel shared in the sonship of the nation of Israel, so a person in Christ shares in the sonship of Christ.

Let me show you this in Romans chapter 8, and there's a parallel to this Romans 8 statement, also found in Galatians. In Romans chapter 8, and verse 15, Paul said, For you did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba, Father. Now, he says, the spirit, before I read on here, I should probably show you the parallel in Galatians, because it is kind of the same statement, very similar.

And it's in Galatians 4, it says in Galatians 4, 4, But when the fullness of the time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons, because you are sons, God has sent forth the spirit of his Son. Now notice in Romans 8, 15, it says the spirit of adoption, here he says the spirit of his Son. Into your hearts cry out, Abba, Father.

Now, the reason I wanted you to see Galatians as well as Romans, is the wording is a little different. Obviously they are parallel thoughts, I mean the wording is even parallel to a large extent, but not exactly. In Romans 8, 15, Paul says that we have received the spirit of adoption, by whom we cry out, Abba, Father.

But in Galatians it says we have received the spirit of his Son, that is of Jesus, crying out, that is the spirit himself in us cries out, Abba, Father. That is the spirit of Jesus, the spirit of God's Son resides in us, and that spirit of Jesus cries out, Abba, Father. What that means is that the spirit we have received of Jesus Christ is the spirit of sonship, the spirit of adoption.

This spirit gives us a share in the sonship of Christ, so that as Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane said, Abba, Father. Abba meaning Father, Abba is the Aramaic term, some say it is the familiar term for fathers, such as a child uses speaking to a father. Like our word Papa or Daddy or something like that.

Jesus used that term, Abba, Father. And what Paul is saying is now that the spirit of Jesus, which is the spirit of sonship, has come in us, that spirit in us cries, Abba, Father, and we cry, Abba, Father. What he is saying is that it is our connection to Christ and our sharing in his spirit of adoption or his spirit of sonship that gives us an inward awareness that we are children and can speak to God in this way as Jesus spoke to God as Father.

Now getting back to Romans 8, we can see this confirmed in the following verse. In Romans 8, 16, the verse after when we read says, The spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. Now what Paul is saying here is that the doctrine that God is a father to us is not just a heartwarming, fuzzy, feel-good kind of a thing.

We can say, you know, us orphans, humans, have a daddy somewhere. And especially that would be comforting to people who have never had an earthly father and feel the hollow space inside. You know, it kind of feels good to think, well, I have a father now in heaven.

When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up, David said. Now all that is true, but it is not just something where we just conceptualize God as a father. It is something where the actual spirit of sonship has embraced us and has taken up residence in us and joined with us and bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God so much that it is as natural for us to cry out to God as Daddy, Father, as it was for Jesus because it is the spirit of Jesus in us.

And this is a mysterious matter, but I am saying that the sonship and fatherhood relationship of us and God is not simply something conceptual. It is not just something that is metaphorical. You know, there are many metaphors for God.

God is, the Lord is my shepherd. Well, I am not literally a sheep and he is not literally a shepherd. That is a metaphor.

And there are many other metaphors. He is compared with a master of slaves. He is compared with a judge of athletics competitions in the scripture.

And we stand before his judgment seat. He is compared with a number of things that are metaphors for God. But when we say God is my father, we are not just employing another helpful metaphor.

We are talking about something organic, something spiritually genuine, something that has transformed. We have been regenerated. We have been born again into the Father's family.

And we share in the same spirit of sonship that Jesus embodied when he was here. Therefore, the fatherhood of God is not strictly one of adoption as we usually think of that term. You see, we think of the term adoption to mean somebody who is not really biologically related to you, a child.

You take them and go through some legal transaction and you now treat them as if they were your child. You give them the rights and privileges as if they were a child. It becomes a legal phenomenon, but it never becomes biological phenomenon.

It never becomes organic. It is always artificial. Now, the artificiality can be very fulfilling.

I mean, a person can love an adopted child as much as they love their own and provide for them in all the same ways. But there is still not the organic connection. And when we think of, you know, we have been adopted by God, we need to realize that that is really more of a metaphor because it is not so much that we have been adopted, we have been born into his family.

In a sense, we could use the term adopted because that conveys some ideas too, you know, that we did not have natural position in his family. We had to be born again. And that is sort of like an adoptee coming in from outside.

But in a real sense, becoming children of God was not just a matter of a legal adoption. It was a matter of being regenerated and having the actual nature of the father conferred to us just like the nature of an earthly father is conferred into his children by natural generation. Well, I do not want to explore the mystery of this too deeply because, first of all, I do not know, I think I would be out of my depth very soon, maybe I am already there.

And so I will not dwell on that too much. But I do want us to realize that fatherhood, God's fatherhood of us, his children, first of all, it is not universal. There was a popular notion, it probably is still popular in some quarters, I am not in those quarters so I do not hear it very much anymore, but back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, right as the modernist or liberal movement in Christianity was fond of talking about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.

And the idea was everybody is a child of God and everyone is a brother. And the world needs to learn to get along and just act like a great big happy family. And we will not make wars anymore and we will not have some rich and some poor because everyone will just care for each other as brothers and God loves us all and we are all his kids and so forth.

Now let me say, evangelicals or fundamentalists as they were called back then, reacted to that very strenuously and said, no, not everyone is the son of God. The Bible says, as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become the sons of God. Even to as many as believed on his name, not everyone is the son of God in that sense.

Now, we don't want to overreact. Much theology or many theological propositions are formed in the context or in the atmosphere of debate. And as such, sometimes a proposition is framed as a reaction to a not quite accurate formulation of a debate rival.

And when the liberals say, God is everybody's father and everyone are brethren, we realize that that's not entirely true in a biblical sense and therefore we need to clarify. No, people who are Christians are God's children in a special sense. But it would be possible to throw out the baby with the bathwater.

The Bible certainly does suggest that in one sense, everyone is a child of God in the sense that God is our creator. Now, what the Bible indicates is that by the fall and by defection from God, many children have been essentially disowned or have essentially disowned themselves. They've run away from home and they're gone like the prodigal son.

And they are not saved. They may be in a sense connected to God by virtue of creation, but they have no family relationship with God. Now, what I'm saying is that when we speak of God as father, we have more than one possible thing we might mean.

And we need to make sure that we're not crossing over categories when we use the terminology. Paul in Acts chapter 17 quoted from a Greek poet who said, we are all his offspring. And Paul seemed to not criticize that.

He said, well, if we're all the offspring of God, then he must not be made of wood or stone because we're not. And he was arguing that God must be a living God if we're all his offspring. And he quoted a Greek poet to prove the point.

Now, he wasn't talking to Christians when he said we are all God's offspring or his children. And therefore, we don't want to overreact to liberal ideas when they say, well, God is everybody's father. In one sense, that's true.

God is the father of all creation. But in the special sense that Christians cry Abba, Father. That is not a universal thing that human beings can do.

Jesus said to, Jesus had actually an argument with the Jews about this very point. Now, if anyone on earth prior to Christ had the right to think of God as their father, it would be the Jews. Because in the Old Testament, when God spoke of Israel as his firstborn and he was like the father to them, then, you know, I mean, more than say the Philistines or some other group like that, the Jews had the right to think that God was their father.

But Jesus wanted to put a finer point on it and let them know that maybe even though it could be said biblically that God was the father of the nation of Israel, it did not extend down to individuals unless they had the nature and the faith that indicated they were indeed sons. And if you look at John chapter 8 where this debate is found, Jesus said in verse 31, and I'd like to read several verses thereafter. John 8, 31, Then Jesus said to those Jews who believed him, If you abide in my word, you are my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth will make you free.

And they answered him, We are Abraham's descendants and have never been in bondage to anyone. How can you say you will be made free? And Jesus answered them, Most assuredly, I say to you, Whoever commits sin is a slave of sin, and a slave does not abide in the house forever, but a son abides forever. Therefore, if the son makes you free, you shall be free indeed.

I know that you are Abraham's descendants, but you seek to kill me because my word has no place in you. I speak what I have seen with my father, and you do what you have seen with your father. They answered and said to him, Abraham is our father.

And Jesus said to them, If you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. But now you seek to kill me, a man who has told you the truth which I heard from God. Abraham did not do this.

You do the deeds of your father. Then they said to him, We were not born of fornication. We have one father, God.

Jesus said to them, If God were your father, you would love me. For I proceeded forth and came from God, nor have I come of myself, but he sent me. Why do you not understand my speech? Because you are not able to listen to my word.

You are of your father the devil, and the desires of your father you want to do. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in the truth because there is no truth in him. When he speaks a lie, he speaks of his own resources, for he is the liar and the father of it.

Now, this is a discussion about pedigree here. This is a discussion about family connections. They claim to be Abraham's seed, Abraham's family.

Abraham was their father, and at one level Jesus acknowledged it. He said, I know you are Abraham's descendants. He said that to them in verse 37.

But he said, by contrast, in verse 39, if you were Abraham's children, you would do the works of Abraham. So in one sense you are Abraham's descendants, but you are not really truly children of Abraham. You are unworthy of the title because you do not act like Abraham.

You know, physical persons bear some resemblance usually to their physical parents. Now, sometimes there are real exceptions to that, and you cannot see the resemblance at all between somebody and their parents. But that is unusual.

Genetically, there are traits that are usually visible that are passed down to children. And so you can tell that somebody has the eyes or the hair color or the shape of the mouth or the size of the teeth or the whatever bone structure of one or both of their parents or some grandparent. You can see relationship in the traits that are born from the parents.

And that is what Jesus is saying about spiritual family relationship. If you were really legitimately a spiritual seed of Abraham, you would show the spiritual traits. They would have been passed down to you as it were.

You would have the faith and the works of Abraham. That would be the proof that you are spiritually his children. You are physically, that is evident enough, but you are not spiritually.

And he went on to say, now, if you were really God's children, that is what they finally claimed. Well, we have one father, God, probably thinking of those verses where Isaiah said that God was the father of the nation of Israel. And the Pharisees making no distinction about individual relationship with God.

They just figured, well, we are Jews, and therefore we have God as our father of our nation. He says, but you as individuals, if you were, if God was your father, you would love me because he is my father too. And you don't.

You do not show the traits spiritually of being spiritually born of God. Now, you do show the traits of your father, as all people inevitably do, and your father is the devil. And as he loves to murder, you love to murder.

You are going to kill me. He hates the truth, you hate the truth. That is what he is saying.

You can tell who your father is by the spiritual resemblance you bear to him. If you are truly a seed of Abraham spiritually, you will be like Abraham spiritually. If you are a child of God, you will love Jesus because he is a child of God.

If you hate the truth, then you are a child of the devil. Now, what I am saying is that we don't need to overreact to people suggesting that God is the father of everybody. He is the father of everybody in the sense that he is the creator of everybody.

No one would exist if not for God. But, at the same time, we know biblically that he is not the father of everybody in the same sense. When it comes to the relationship that matters, the relationship that saves, certainly God is not the father of everybody.

All persons who are children of God will be saved if they are children of God in the sense that we are talking especially about, and that Jesus talked about to his disciples. Now, notice he said to the Jews, you will do the works of your father. And he said, your father, and he later indicated he meant the devil, but to his disciples he said, your father knows what you are in need of before you ask him.

He was talking about God as their father. There is a distinction between the disciples and the enemies of Christ. They both had fathers.

And Jesus could speak of your father and he could talk about your father. And they were different fathers. And so, Jesus spoke particularly of God as the father in a special sense that relates people to God in a saving way.

Now, unless we understand or know God as our father, we don't know God, not the God of our Lord Jesus Christ. And a lot of people wonder whether the God of Islam could possibly be the same God of the Bible, because the Islamic people, they worship one God, and they believe in the Ten Commandments, and they believe in a lot of the same kinds of things. There is a lot of overlap, let's put it that way, between the Jewish notion of God and the Islamic notion of God.

But one point of overlap that they share is that both the Jews and the Muslims would say that God is not the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because they don't believe Jesus is the son of God. Therefore, only the Christians know the true God. And perhaps I should clarify.

It's possible for someone to have a father and not know how many other children that father has, especially if they're separated at birth. It seems to me as a possibility, at least I'm not going to rule this out, and I'm not going to spend time talking about it right now, but as a possibility, there may be people who have never heard of Jesus, but the God they worship is nonetheless the father of Jesus Christ, but they've just never heard of him. If your father left your mother before you were born and fathered other children you never heard of, he would still be your father, and you might know him vaguely by name or whatever, but you wouldn't necessarily know everything there is about his children.

And it is maybe possible, I'll leave this to God to judge, not me, that somebody might know the true God who is the father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and they've just never heard of Jesus yet. Maybe. But I would say that people who have heard of Jesus and rejected him, which would include most Jews and most Muslims, if they've heard that Jesus is the son of God and they simply reject it, then the God they worship must be a different God, because the God that we worship is the God who is the father of Jesus Christ.

And as such, because we are in Christ, he is our father too. Now, knowing God as father is a revolutionary concept, at least it was in Jesus' day. It still can be and probably is to many people.

It doesn't seem revolutionary to me personally just because I grew up thinking of God in those terms. I had the Christian Bible, I had the teachings of Jesus from childhood. It's not a new idea to me, but it certainly was new to the Jews, because Jesus called God father frequently.

In fact, it was probably his favorite term for God. He used other terms, but not anything quite so frequently or so emphatically as the name father. And this really bothered the Jews.

You can see this, for example, in the fifth chapter of John. In John chapter 5, verses 17 and 18, it says, But Jesus answered them, My father has been working until now, and I have been working. Therefore the Jews sought all the more to kill him, because he not only broke the Sabbath, but also said that God was his father, making himself equal with God.

Now, it's interesting that they wanted to kill him because he called God his father. That just was not acceptable for a person to do that. That was like blasphemy.

That's like making yourself equal with God. Now, of course, you might say, well, were they right? Is it true that when Jesus called God his father, he was making himself equal with God? I would say, yes, he was. That was to say that he was the embodiment of the life of God.

Just as an earthly child is the embodiment of the nature, the human nature, of its parent, so also Jesus in the flesh was the human embodiment of the nature of his father. Now, the Bible says God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself in 2 Corinthians 5. And in a sense, although it would be truly blasphemy for us to say we are children of God, therefore we are God, or equal with God. We do not pretend to be equal with God, yet we cannot deny that being sons of God to us means that the same divine nature that was in Christ is in us.

There is obviously a difference in the status of Jesus and the status of us as sons. He is in all respects superior. He is in nature different.

Before he was ever born, he was God and came into the flesh. That puts him in a class totally separate from the rest of us in some respects. But the separation is one of innate origin and innate nature and things like that.

But in terms of relationship to the Father, the Bible suggests and Jesus suggests that our relationship to the Father is just as real and all of God's fatherly feelings toward Jesus are equally toward us. Look at what Jesus said in John 17. In John 17, of course, Jesus was here praying to his Father.

And he says in verses 22 and 23, The glory which you gave me I have given them, that they may be one just as we are one, I in them and you in me, that they may be made perfect in one, and that the world may know, notice, that you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. Now, God has loved us as he has loved Jesus. That God's love for us is equivalent to his love for Jesus.

That's a marvelous thing because it's not hard to imagine that God would love Jesus. Who wouldn't? And he was a perfect son. He never gave his Father any reason for grief or any reason for disappointment.

And yet Jesus says he wants the world to know, among other things, that God loves us, his disciples, even as, which means just like, he loves Jesus. And there is some mystery here that we share in his sonship and all of the fatherly affection, all of the fatherly attachment that God and Jesus experience belongs to us. Now, we don't realize that as often as we should, and that failure to realize it inhibits the normalness of our knowledge of God.

I mean, it is normative for a Christian to feel confident toward God as they would toward a generous father, to feel secure with God as a child does in the presence of their father. And to have all of those benefits of knowing God as father, that's normative Christianity. But many people have not ever known God as a father.

In fact, there are many people who, although it is part of their theology, it's part of their prayer verbiage, that God is father, yet they do not have a relationship with God the father very much. In fact, I have known people who have actually said that they feel comfortable with Jesus, but they don't feel all that comfortable with the father. Many people, and many Christians included, have expressed the opinion that God the father, or sometimes called the God of the Old Testament, seems to be a God of anger and a God of wrath and a very easily perturbed God who burns people up if they don't dot every I and cross every T properly.

Jesus, on the other hand, He's a friendly guy. He seems to be on our side. And in fact, the perception that many people have is that God the father was simply burning with wrath toward us and just about ready to hurl His lightning bolts and destroy us all.

And Jesus came along and talked him out of it. He said, well, listen, Father, I'll take care of this. I'll go down there.

I'll die for them. Please don't hurt them. Let me go and do something about this.

And He came and stood up for us to defend us from the wrath of God who in the Old Testament is perceived by some as a very wrathful being. Now, there are several things wrong with this illusion, and it is tragic really because Jesus did not originate the plan to come and save us. The Bible says God so loved the world that He sent His only begotten Son.

Jesus came out of obedience and love for His Father. Not because Jesus loved us more than the Father did and therefore Jesus wanted us saved and the Father wasn't so sure, but He had to defer to Jesus. It was the Father's plan to save His wayward sons.

It is the Father that is described by Jesus in the parable of the prodigal. Jesus isn't describing Himself as the Father. He is describing His Father as the Father.

One of the saddest tragedies that has happened in Christian thinking is that Jesus is somehow more on our side than the Father is and that if it weren't for Jesus, God just couldn't think of any reason to tolerate us at all. Now, this comes from a very strange misreading of both the Old and the New Testament. People constantly say to me, well, the Old Testament God is an angry, vengeful God, but in the New Testament He is a God of love and forgiveness and all that stuff.

I say, read it again, would you? I don't know what you're reading here. In the Old Testament, God puts up with sinners for centuries and millennia before He finally is forced to annihilate them. And when He does, He says, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked.

I'd rather that the wicked would turn from their wicked ways and live. Repent. Why will you die? He says.

He pleads. And by the way, it is true that we have more instances of God's judgment recorded in the Old Testament, but let's get this in perspective. The Old Testament records 4,000 years of history.

The New Testament records about 30 years of history, and therefore we don't see as many instances of God's judgment in the New Testament. But it's not absent. John the Baptist and Jesus predicted gruesome, horrible judgments that God would bring on the Jewish people, which He did.

But it's simply a matter of the necessities of history that the event happened after the New Testament was written, and therefore it's not recorded in there. But the God of the Old Testament is no different than the God of the New Testament in terms of His judgment. God still judges nations, and He judged them in the Old Testament.

We just have more cases of it recorded in the Old Testament, because more millennia of history are recorded in the Old Testament. But likewise, the love of God, which perhaps people think they see in Jesus, that's not absent from the Old Testament at all. His patience, it's in the Old Testament that says, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy.

He will not always chide, neither will He keep His anger forever. Like as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him. As far as the East is from the West, so far as He removed our transgressions from us.

He has not rewarded us according to our sins, it says. Or dealt with us after our sins, or rewarded us according to our iniquities. This is what the Old Testament teaches about God.

And I don't know where people are getting the idea that in the Old Testament we have this different kind of God. Jesus said, If you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. The Father is no different than Jesus is, except that Jesus was in human form.

But in terms of character, He was not really any different. Jesus came to reveal the Father. And here's something else we need to understand clearly.

Jesus did not come to replace the Father. He came to bring us to the Father. Jesus said, I am the way, the truth, and the life.

No man comes to the Father but through Me. Some people think that means no one comes to Heaven but through Me. That might be true, but that's not what He said.

He said, No one comes to the Father but through Me. The assumption is that people want to and need to come to the Father. And the only way to do that is through Him.

He didn't come to be instead of the Father. He came to bring us to the Father. People's alienation from God as Father is often seen, I think, in the way they pray.

And I don't want anyone to feel embarrassed if you pray the way that I'm going to be talking about here. But I hear a number of Christians who, when they pray, they address Jesus when they pray. They say, Lord Jesus, etc., etc., etc.

Now, I cannot say there's anything wrong or sinful about praying to Jesus. I will say that the Bible nowhere teaches us to pray to Jesus. And Jesus Himself told us to pray to someone else.

Jesus can hear us, and I believe there's every reason that we could pray to Jesus and know that He hears us and so forth. But the fact that people pray to Jesus, I wonder really what's behind it. There is no model in the New Testament of anyone praying to Jesus with the exception of two people.

One is Stephen. Just as he was dying, he said, Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And the other is John.

In the last prayer in the book of Revelation, even so, come Lord Jesus. The only two prayers in the Bible addressed to Jesus. Both uttered by men who were seeing at that moment visions of Jesus, and they spoke to Him.

Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. Even so, come Lord Jesus. All other prayers in the Bible are directed to the Father, and rightly so.

Jesus said, when you pray, pray our Father who art in heaven. Jesus never told us to pray to Him. In fact, let me show you something.

In John chapter 16, verses 26 and 27, says, In that day, Jesus is talking to His disciples, says, In that day you will ask in my name, and I do not say to you that I shall pray to the Father for you. For the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me, and have believed that I came forth from the Father. Actually, if you look a little earlier in the same chapter, verse 23 says, And in that day you will ask me nothing.

Most assuredly I say, whatever you ask the Father in my name, He will give it to you. Until now you have asked the Father nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

And then, of course, the verses we already read. He said in verse 26, you will ask in my name. That is, you will ask the Father in my name, as he said in verse 23.

And what? I do not say that I will pray to the Father for you. Well, isn't that different than what most Christians think? I remember when I was a child reading a book by a well-known Christian leader. And that leader was trying to communicate to the reader that they could come to God through Jesus.

And he gave this illustration. He says, you know, I am not acquainted personally with the President of the United States. And he is a busy man, and there are very few things I would have to say to him that would take precedence over the affairs of the state that he has to deal with on a day-by-day basis.

If I had a personal request to the President, I probably could not get an audience with him. And if I did, my request would not stand out in his mind as more important than many other things. But he said, if the President had a son, and that son was my friend, and I talked to his son about it, his son could approach his father any time he wishes, and his father would give special weight to what his son would have to say above other things that are on his desk.

Therefore, you can see the analogy he is making, that God is a busy man. He has got a lot to do. He might not have the time of day for me, but he will listen to his son, certainly.

Fortunately, I have Jesus as my friend, and therefore, through him, my request can be presented to God. But the impression I got, because the illustration encouraged it, was that I talked to Jesus, and Jesus goes and talks to the Father. I never really get into the Father's chambers.

I never come into his office, you know. I just talk to Jesus outside, and he goes in and communicates what I have in mind to him. That's exactly what Jesus said he won't do.

He said, I'm not going to go pray to the Father for you about this. You talk to him yourself. Now, some might say, but doesn't the Bible say there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus? Paul said that to Timothy.

It's true, but what is a mediator? A mediator sits at the same table, and for the sake of reconciliation or whatever, to smooth out or to mediate in a discussion. Actually, the way that Jesus is described for us in 1 John 2, it says, My little children, these things I write unto you, that you sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Now, an advocate with the Father, the word advocate there, the Greek word is parakletos, which is also a term sometimes used for the Holy Spirit. When Jesus said, I'm going to send you another comforter, the word comforter there is parakletos, same word. But when John says in 1 John 2, verse 1 and 2, when John says we have an advocate or parakletos with the Father, he's talking about Jesus, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Okay, Jesus is our advocate, but what does that mean? Parakletos comes from two Greek particles, para, which means alongside, and kaleo, which means called. And a parakaleo or a parakletos was a person who was called alongside. In fact, it was a term that was used for a defense attorney, who if you had to face the judge, you had this person who was called alongside you to advocate for you, to defend you, your defense attorney.

Now, the image is not of Jesus going instead of us to the Father. He is the mediator. He is the parakletos.

He's called alongside us. We come to the Father on His merits. We come to the Father on His recommendation.

It is because of Christ, because we are in Him, that we can approach the Father at all, because we are sons too in Him. And no one can approach the Father except through the merits of Christ. But because of the merits of Christ, we, that is we personally, can approach the Father, and that's what Jesus is trying to get through.

Jesus' whole mission appears to have been in every way to support His alienated children. And sadly, the Church in some cases, or individuals in the Church, have missed the whole point. And they say, well, the Father, He's still kind of grisly and old and grumbly and grumpy.

And I don't know if I can really relate to Him. But Jesus, I've always felt that Jesus is friendly. Jesus didn't come to be instead of the Father for us.

He came to bring us to the Father. That's why He died, to remove the barrier between us and the Father. It was a barrier that prevented God from being able to accept us, but it did not prevent Him from wanting to, which is why He sent His Son to remove the barrier.

It was not Jesus who came up with the idea of restoring us to Heaven. It was the Father who had the idea of restoring us to Himself, and sent His Son to do the necessary things. And what did Jesus do? He, of course, made a propitiation for our sins.

He removed the barrier that would prevent us from being able to approach God. But in addition to that, He showed us the Father. He showed us who the Father is by showing us Himself.

You see, it's interesting that Jesus in the Old Testament is actually called the Everlasting Father. In Isaiah 9, verse 6, it says, 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 Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father. Jesus is the embodiment of who the Father is.

And Jesus said, if you've seen Me, you've seen the Father. Look over at John 14. Excuse me.

In John 14, verse 5, Thomas said to Jesus, Lord, we don't know where You're going, and how can we know the way? Jesus said to him, I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also.

And from now on you know Him and have seen Him. Philip said to Him, Lord, show us the Father and it's sufficient for us. Jesus said to him, Have I been with you so long, and have you not known Me, Philip? He who has seen Me has seen the Father.

So how can you say, show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in Me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak on My own authority, but the Father who dwells in Me does the works. Remember I was talking yesterday about our feeble attempts to find analogies of the Trinitarian concept. I said that the idea of a committee of three men somehow I don't think is quite adequate.

And at the same time, elements of a substance are not adequate because they're not personal. And it's probably the real... If an analogy could be found that was apt, it would probably fall somewhere between the idea of three guys on the one hand and three elements in a substance on the other, because He's a spirit, God's spirit. He's not three guys, but He's not three elements.

He's not substances either because He's personal. There seems to be no analogy that I've ever been able to think of that seems to work with what I think the Bible teaches. But here's an interesting thing.

I mentioned the rather homey illustration of lemonade being made up of lemon juice and sugar and water all mixed together. Well, isn't that kind of what Jesus said? I am in the Father and the Father is in me. That always bugged me when I was a kid.

How could Jesus be in the Father and the Father is in Him? I could take a small vessel and stick it inside of a larger vessel, but I could not have the larger vessel inside the smaller vessel at the same time. How could one be in the other while the other was in it or Him? And yet I can understand if I mix lemon juice and sugar and water that the water is in the lemon juice, the lemon juice is in the water and the sugar is in that. I mean, there's a mixture.

It's not like vessels. It's more like spiritual substance or something. I hate to use the word substance because it sounds more New Age than it sounds personal.

I don't want in any way to detract from the personal nature of God. But Jesus said the Father was in Him and He was in the Father. And this made Him so the same as the Father and yet in some ways so other, which is never explained, that when Philip said, Would you just show us the Father? Jesus said, What? How can you say that? How can you say, Show us the Father? What's more to see of the Father than what you've already seen? Have I been this long with you and you haven't known me, Philip? I mean, Jesus' reaction makes it very clear.

So, don't you recognize that you've already seen the Father? If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. Now, that means, of course, that Jesus came to restore us to the Father, to be the way to the Father by His atoning work and also by His demonstration or making visible to us the Father in Himself, to be the embodiment of the Father and show us exactly what the Father is like. If Jesus is in any way attractive to you, then the Father is equally attractive.

And if any conception you have of God is less attractive than your conception of Jesus, then your conception of God is inaccurate and you don't know Him. Now, Jesus, as I say, used the term Father for God an incredibly large number of times. In the Sermon on the Mount alone, which is only three chapters long, the term Father with reference to God is used 17 times.

Now, that's more times in the Sermon on the Mount alone than in all the Old Testament combined. You do not find God called Father in the Old Testament as many times as you find Him called Father in merely those three chapters of the Sermon on the Mount. And, of course, throughout the teaching of Jesus, in addition to the Sermon on the Mount, He's continually referring to God as the Father.

Why? He was obviously introducing what was a revolutionary new concept, enough so that they wanted to stone Him when He talked about God being His Father. You just don't get that intimate with God. You've got to have a little bit of mystique there.

You've got to have God a little more removed. It makes God too accessible. It makes God too unfrightening in one sense.

Now, fear of a father. I think in ancient times and probably in modern times, many people have known the right and healthy kind of fear of their father. You know, when a little boy would misbehave and his mother said, wait until your father gets home.

I'm going to tell your father what you've been doing. That was to inspire fear. Why? Are fathers scary individuals? Well, if you've been disobedient, they are.

If you've been a rebel, they are. To a rebel, a father is a fearful thing, a frightening thing. But if you haven't been a rebel, when Daddy comes home, that's what all the kids look forward to.

And when Daddy drives up, all the kids come running out saying, Daddy's home. And they're all excited. Now, the difference, of course, is not in who Daddy is.

The difference is how the children are relating. I mean, if they're rebelling against the authority of Daddy, his coming home is something they dread. It's a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

God is a disciplinarian God. But even that is not contrary to his affection and his love, because the Bible says that discipline is part of a father's love for his children. Look at Proverbs chapter 3. In Proverbs chapter 3, verses 11 and 12, it says, My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor detest his correction.

For whom the Lord loves, he corrects, just as a father the son in whom he delights. There's a case where father is used as a metaphor for God, as opposed to saying God is a father. He's like a father in this respect.

Whom the Lord loves, he disciplines. Whom the Lord loves, he corrects, just like a father does. Of course, you're probably aware that later on in Proverbs, it says, If a father doesn't correct his son, he hates his son.

The allowing of a child to go his own way to his own destruction is a mark of lack of love and lack of commitment for a child. A loving father, unpleasant as it is to him, will discipline his children. And by the way, it is always unpleasant.

God is really grieved that Israel requires so much correction, so much discipline. He doesn't seem to like it very much, disciplining them. In Isaiah chapter 1, verse 2, God says, Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth, for the Lord has spoken.

I have nourished and brought up children, and they've rebelled against me. And in verse 4, he says, Alas, sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity, a brood of evildoers, children who are corruptors, they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked to anger the Holy One of Israel, they have turned away backward. Look at verse 5, Why should you be stricken again? You will revolt more and more, the whole head is sick, the whole heart faints, etc., etc.

He says, why do you want to be stricken again? Why do you have to be disciplined again? It's not like God enjoys it. They're rebelling, they're corruptors, they're wicked children. They need to be disciplined.

He says, but, you know, why do we have to go through this again? A loving Father does not enjoy disciplining children. And that is why a Father who does discipline his children is shown to be a loving Father after all, because an unloving person will just do the thing easiest to himself. But even if he knows that by leaving the child undisciplined, it will make the child temporarily happier with the Father, make the Father more popular with the child because he doesn't discipline him, but it will also make the child more a rebel and more pursuing a path of his own destruction.

So the Father who loves his child takes the course that will make him temporarily unpopular, which no one really likes to be unpopular, especially with their children, but he rather takes that risk, he pays that price. I'll be unpopular for the moment because I care about this child's well-being. It says, he that reproves a man afterward finds more favor than he that flatters with the lips.

Proverbs says that. And so to reprove, to correct, to discipline is the loving thing for a Father to do. And it makes it very clear there in Proverbs that we read a moment ago, Proverbs 3, God disciplines his children.

Don't despise that. Don't dislike that. That's like a father who loves his son and disciplines his son.

Now look at the way this same verse is quoted in Hebrews chapter 12 because the wording is a little different but insightfully so. Hebrews chapter 12 verses 5 and 6, and I guess the verses afterwards continue the thought. Hebrews 12 verse 5 says, And you have forgotten the exhortation which speaks to you as to sons.

My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord, nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges, that means whips, every son whom he receives. Not every son that he rejects.

The discipline of the Lord is not a sign of his rejection. It is a sign of his receiving. It's a sign of him being willing to take the pain in the neck and the responsibility of caring for rebellious children and trying to straighten them out for their own good.

That's hard work. That's a big responsibility. Not everyone wants that.

My wife sometimes talks about us adopting children. I wouldn't mind having more children. I'd like to have a lot more children as a matter of fact.

But I'd just as soon have the children that God gives me because then I know that's a God-given task. I'm not saying adoption is not a good idea. I'm just saying I'm loath to take on that responsibility without knowing that God is the one doing it.

If God would give me 12 children, I'd love the responsibility. But I would know that it was a God-given responsibility because God gave them. For me to run out because God's closed the womb and go out and adopt a few children, I don't know for sure if God's in that or not.

That responsibility may well be a responsibility that would take me from other legitimate things God wants me to do. But I will say this. As a father willing to take care of my children, willing to inconvenience myself however much that must be necessary until they're grown and well off, I still dread in one sense taking on such responsibility without knowing that it's the Lord.

Just because it is a tremendous responsibility. Many people father children and take no responsibility for them. But that's not like God.

God assumes the responsibility. He takes on children, difficult children, and trains them, suffers with them, suffers their abuse, they abuse Him, and He experiences emotional turmoil over it. But He loves enough to chase Him.

And some might say, well, maybe the God of the Old Testament would discipline His children, but certainly not Jesus. Gentle Jesus, meek and mild, we could never imagine Him disciplining children. And yet Jesus Himself would disagree with that and says so.

In Revelation 3, verse 19, Jesus is speaking. Revelation 3, verse 19, Jesus says, As many as I love I rebuke and chasten, therefore be zealous and repent. There's nothing unloving or unchristlike about chastening children.

In fact, there's something very unchristlike about not doing so. And ungodly, and it's not good for the children to leave them to themselves. Now, what I'm saying is that not everything God does is pleasing to us, but that does not argue against His love for us or His fatherly care or His warmth.

As I said, when Daddy comes home, that can be an occasion of dread to a child who knows that he's got something coming, he's done wrong, he's in rebellion. And he stands to be disciplined. And that's where the fear of the Lord comes in.

But if a child is wise, the fear of the Lord, or the fear, in this case, of the illustration of his father, is the thing that keeps him from doing wrong. And if that child goes through the day and doesn't do wrong, because he feared his father, he has no fear at all of his father. When his father comes home, it's the high point of his day.

He's eager to see his father, because the fear of his father has kept him out of the path of rebellion and in the path of favor. And this is how we relate to God as a father. The knowledge of His discipline is what we call the fear of the Lord.

And the fear, it says in Scripture, by the fear of the Lord, men depart from evil. Well, that's what you've done, that's what I've done. We've become Christians, we've repented of our evil lives, we've departed from evil.

And we are delighted to meet with God. We look forward to being in His presence. We invite His visitation.

Nothing is more thrilling to a Christian who's thinking like a Christian than the thought of going to be in the presence of God forever. Because it's as exciting as when a child has his daddy come home or whatever. It's a reunion, and there is cleanness of conscience that makes it not a frightening thing.

But the fear of the Lord is nonetheless a continual principle residing in the wise child. But it's a fear that does not result in alienation or running away from God. It's a fear that gives balance to the life.

And it keeps us on the narrow path. And because we're on the narrow path, we are not ashamed to see God. It says in 1 John something about this.

In 1 John chapter 3, which is a very good passage about the relationship of conscience, the work of conscience in the life of the believer, in terms of our relationship with God. It says in 1 John 3, 18 and following, it says, My little children, let us not love in word nor in tongue, but in deed and in truth. And by this we know that we are of the truth and shall assure our hearts before Him.

For if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart and knows all things. Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, because we didn't do anything wrong, if our heart doesn't condemn us or if we've been forgiven, we have confidence toward God. And whatever we ask, we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.

We have confidence toward God. Why? Because we keep His commandments. Because we do the things pleasing in His sight.

We stay to the path that He's given us. And that gives us not fright at the prospect of seeing God, not dread, but gives us confidence toward God. It gives us assurance and security that our relationship to God is something that works for our benefit.

Not something that inspires continual dread. But why? Because we keep to the path. We keep His commandments and do those things pleasing in His sight.

Why do we do that? Well, partly out of fear of God and partly out of love of Him. We don't always love Him perfectly and when we don't, then the fear of God kicks in. It's nice if we mostly obey God because we love Him.

But at those moments where our love is weak, hopefully our fear is strong. And it keeps us in the way of His commandments. Now, let me just, we don't have a lot of time here, let me just run through some of the things that Jesus taught and that the New Testament in general teaches about the fatherliness of God.

In some places, YWAM for example, it's very typical to have a speaker come in and speak for a week on what they call the Father Heart of God. The Father Heart of God is the term they use for the fatherliness of God, or God's affection or God's heart toward His children. I generally don't use the term just because it's not exactly a biblical term.

I have no problem with the concept. But I would use more the idea that God is our Father and as a Father, God intends to be known in the way that a father is known, by his children. And I might just say that Jesus, in using this term for God, that He is our Father, was trying to awaken us to a certain reality.

He was trying to get us to know God in a new way, taking advantage of what we might call natural theology. Natural theology is where we find in nature a certain phenomenon and deduce from that certain things about God. And Jesus knew that everyone had a father.

Now, there are some people who have never known their father, but no one exists who didn't have a father. And as such, there were things that every person could transfer in their knowledge of a father to God. I mean, there are transferable concepts.

By what we already know about fathers, if we understand, oh, God is your father, then suddenly a whole complex of awareness about something, about fathers, can be transferred to God and we learn about Him, and we learn in one lump sum a great deal more than you could learn just by so many different propositions. To have the role model of a father and say, okay, now that's how you should think of God, is a helpful thing. And Jesus intended for it to give us a great advance in our knowing of God, knowing how we are to relate with God and so forth, because we already have fathers.

We already know something about how to relate to a father. We already know something about how to honor your father and your mother. There are things already present, already in place in our relationship with our parents, that once transferred to God in our thinking, just puts us way ahead of where we would otherwise be in understanding and knowing God and relating to Him.

Now, I have to say that with the awareness that not everybody in our day has known their father. And those who have, have had sometimes very bad fathers. There are fathers who have abandoned the family, who have not supported the family, who have been in no contact with the family.

And on the other hand, there are fathers who have stayed home and the family would be happier if he did abandon them. Because when he's there, he's drunk or he's abusive or he's a molester or some other horrendous thing. I don't know if that kind of fatherhood was known in Israel in biblical times.

For one thing, fathers like that would usually be put to death. Most of the crimes of abuse and molesting would be punishable by death. And so, the death penalty probably deterred some of that kind of behavior.

And where it was manifested, it was eliminated by capital punishment. But Jesus indicated that even fathers who are evil know how to give good gifts to their children. Jesus didn't even consider, as a model to be considered, the father who is a deliberate abuser of his family.

Now, that doesn't mean Jesus was unaware that there might be some rare fathers like that. Certainly in the pagan world, there must have been, even at that time. Jesus was talking to Israelites who knew something about fathers, their affection for, their goals for, their care for their children.

And when we transfer the idea of fatherhood in our thinking to the way we think about God, we have to realize that Jesus didn't mean that every father on the planet, the worst conceivable fathers, are great examples of who God is. In fact, it is the very knowledge of a wicked father on the part of many people that has given them difficulties with the concept of God the Father. Now, I say it's given them difficulties.

I don't want that statement to be taken further than it legitimately can. I have read in so-called Christian psychological books and articles, I've read this many times and probably you have too, that if your father was not a good father or if you had a bad relationship with your father, we are told that you simply are going to not be able to have a perfect or ideal relationship with God. Because you get all your concepts of God from the figure of your father, because God is a father figure.

And your earliest impressions of who God is come from your ideas and relationships with your father. And there are many psychologists and many of them Christian who have said this without any shame as if it were true. That if you haven't known a good relationship with your father, that you are just not going to be able to have a good relationship with God.

That apparently is not biblically true. It was David who said in Psalm 27 and verse 10, Psalm 27, 10, he said, When my father and my mother forsake me, then the Lord will take care of me or will take me up, the King James says. Now, that sounds like he is saying, my father and my mother can ignore me or reject me or forsake me.

That doesn't interfere with my relationship with God. God will take care of me. God will take me up.

He will accept me. They can reject me, but God accepts me. Now this takes, of course, some real strength of resolve to refuse to transfer to God the ideas of a bad parent.

My father forsakes me, but I don't believe God would forsake me. Now, I will admit that there are likely to be struggles. There is a deficiency in many cases that many Christians will experience because they have never really had a good father as a role model.

And Jesus intended that calling God the Father was supposed to build upon the already present knowledge of what a father is supposed to be like. Because most people had one. And most people could think, okay, my father, he is the guy who supports me.

He is the guy who cares for me. He is the guy who doesn't let me go wrong too far because he disciplines me. He is the guy who has got a plan for my life.

He is setting up, I am going to take over the farm from him. He is training me in the business. He is the guy who is launching me in life and caring for me and he is going to leave me an inheritance.

This is a father. I mean, almost everyone who heard Jesus speak knew that about fathers. And unfortunately, many people in our pagan society don't even have that much going for them.

But I will say this. No one can use that as a real excuse. No one can say, well, my father was a terrible person and therefore I am just doomed to have a bad experience with God.

Not so. The very fact that you say your father was not a good father means you know what a good father should be. Or else how could you know your father wasn't a good one? People instinctively know what a father ought to do in many cases.

At least the basics. If people did not have a concept of what a good father was, they would never be able to judge that their father was not a good one. Because you must measure against some standard to make that judgment.

And that means that even if you were not the proud possessor of a good, loving, God-like father, it doesn't mean that you have to live in ignorance of what a father is supposed to be or what fathers usually are. You may have had the advantage of knowing somebody who had a good father. And you might have even wished that you had a father like that if you don't have a good father yourself.

Many of you did have good fathers, I'm sure. Or good stepfathers or something. Many have had good role models or at least the option of having a good role model of fatherhood.

If not your own father, then someone you knew. And if you never even knew anyone who had a good father, I mean there might be some rare, rare exceptional cases of someone who had never, ever seen a good father anywhere. Yet I dare say most people know what they wish their father had been.

And what their father ought to have been. And they know something of the standard from which their father fell short. And if even lacking that, if a person even doesn't have that much of a role model, they can gain the composite drawing of a good father from what the Bible says on the subject.

In other words, just because your father wasn't ideal doesn't mean that you are doomed or that you have an excuse to have a stilted relationship with God. But if you have had a good father, what this teaching of Jesus tells us is that that knowledge of that good father, whatever good things were positive about your father, you can transfer what you know about fatherhood and your father and your relationship with your father to the way you relate to God and think about God. If you lacked a good father in an earthly sense, then at least you have this.

You've got one now. When my father and my mother forsake me, the Lord will take me up. If you did not have a good father, you can't complain anymore because you've got one now.

What kind of father is he? Well, let's have a look. First of all, there are several traits. I don't know if we really have time to cover all of them.

I hope I might. We'll just work on it. Let me tell you what a good father is like.

And I judge this partly from what the Bible says about fathers and partly from what God says about God as a father. And by the way, the very revelation that God is a father works two ways for us. It means that we can transfer what we know about good fathers to our concept of God.

It works the other way, too. It means that a father who wants to know how to be a good father could transfer what he knows of God. God becomes the role model for fatherhood because God is the father who does it right.

He's the father who made no mistakes. And certainly the men here, especially, many of whom will perhaps be fathers someday, can say, well, I never had a good role model in my own father. How could I ever know how to be a good father? My answer is, well, get to know God and then be that kind of a father, the kind he is.

That's the model for me. Anyway, look with me at Hebrews 2. Hebrews 2, verse 10 says, For it was fitting for him, for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings. Keep your mind on that verse, if you could, especially in bringing many sons to glory.

And turn to Romans 8. Romans 8, 29. Paul said, For whom he foreknew, he also predestined, to be conformed to the image of his Son, that's what glory is, is the image of Christ, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. What do both these verses have in common? Well, two things.

One, it speaks of God's concern for many sons. Bringing many sons to glory. Jesus being the firstborn of many brethren.

God wanted a big family. But not only a big family. He's not just interested in quantity.

He's also interested in quality. He wants them to be conformed to the image of his Son. That is bringing many sons to glory.

Now, the point I want to make from this, about God and about fathers who are God-like fathers, is that they have a vision for their children. They don't just have this little thing that's been presented to them, and say, now what do I do? I guess I feed it and clothe it and just see what comes out. That's not what you're supposed to do.

The father's task is to know the way that son or daughter is supposed to turn out and to direct the child and have a goal for that child, a faith vision for that child. It doesn't mean he has to know exactly what the child's going to do for a living. I don't know what my children will do for a living.

Of course, my vision for my children would be in hopes that they would all be in some form of service to God. Of course, a person can be in service to God even in secular vocations, what would otherwise be called secular vocations. I'd be very pleased if my children were missionaries or ministers or if my sons became Bible teachers like me.

But that vision isn't the fundamental vision I have. My fundamental vision is that they will be godly, that they will be mature Christians by the time they're mature humans. And that by the time they are launched in the world, they will be Christ-like.

They will be conformed to the image of God's Son, not perfectly, but so far along the way that the rest is just details. My vision is that when those children are launched from my bowl, when they're launched from my home, that the world will have four or however many God gives me examples of what Christians are supposed to be like. And that is the vision that a father has to have a vision for his children or else he'll just be patching up holes here and there in their behavior.

He won't even know what he's aiming at. Children are like arrows in the hands of a mighty man, it says in Psalms 127, 127 and verse 4 and 5. And like arrows, they have to have a target. You can't shoot an arrow unless you know what you're aiming at.

You have to have vision. If your eyes are shut, you can't hit a target. You have to know where that child is aimed and that's how you direct the bow.

You don't just shoot at random and hope something good happens. And God doesn't just shoot at random. He has a plan.

He has determined that he's going to bring many sons to glory, that the many brethren of Jesus are going to be conformed to his image. So what I'm saying is that God is a visionary father. He's got a vision for your life.

He's got a plan and a purpose for your life that's good for you and glorifying to him. And any good father does. That gives you a sense that your life is not haphazard.

God's not just patching up the holes whenever you blow it and just hoping that you turn out into something decent. He's got a specific direction he wants you to end up hitting, a target. And that is to be like Jesus.

And that's what any father who's godly or even a good father in general has some vision for their child. Even an ungodly father who is nonetheless a committed father will have some desire to launch his sons and his daughters into the world as productive members of society as opposed to just hoping they turn out, hoping they survive and once they get out of the house, I'm rid of them, you know, let them take care of themselves. That's not fatherhood.

Fatherhood says I brought this child into the world. God has given me a child and there is a reason for this child's existence and I am here to shape that child and help them hit that target. And that is the vision for children.

God is visionary and has a vision for your life. God is approachable. I already read you the verses that I would prove that from.

John 16, verses 26 and 27. Jesus said, in that day you won't ask me anything. You just ask the Father in my name and I'm not going to go talk to Him about it.

You talk to Him about it. I did not say that I'll ask the Father for you or I'll pray to the Father. The Father loves you.

He didn't send me to keep you at arm's length from Him. He sent me to bring you to Him. You go to the Father.

You can talk to Him. He loves you. Also mentioned John 17, verse 23 where Jesus said that the Father has loved us even as He loves Jesus.

There is every reason that we should be comfortable with God. So long as our conscience is clear. If our heart condemns us not, then we have confidence toward God.

And whatsoever we ask, we receive of Him because we keep His commandments and do those things pleasing in His sight. Another fatherly trait of God is that He is attentive. He pays attention.

Not only does He listen when we ask, but He knows what we need before we ask. He has already been paying closer attention to our needs than we are. Children, especially little children, don't anticipate what they are going to need an hour from now.

Or at dinner time. But the Father and the Mother do. The Father knows in advance what His children are going to need when they are 12 years old.

He knows that when they are born. Not everything they are going to need, but He knows that they are going to need to know some things. They are going to need some education.

They are going to need some training. The Father knows that by the time the son is 18, he is going to have to know how to make a living somehow. The Father knows that His daughter, when she is 18, she is going to have to be able to be marriageable.

She may not have to get married at age 18, but she is going to have to know what it takes to be a wife and a mother. The parent has attention to the needs of the child before the child is even old enough to know what its needs are going to be. The Father and the Mother are wiser than the child.

And so Jesus says in Matthew 6 and verse 8, that when it comes to praying, that we don't have to be like the heathen who use many words thinking that God will hear them because of their many words. He says, don't be like them. He says, therefore do not be like them, for your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.

How attentive is He? We are allowed and encouraged by Christ to ask God for the things we want. But even before we ask, we don't surprise Him with anything. He is paying attention to you more than you are paying attention to yourself.

Before you can even anticipate your needs or ask for them, He has already got them packaged and ready to send. You ask, but you are not asking for something that He was not already aware of your need about. And there is another very important scripture bringing up how totally attentive God is.

In fact, there is quite a few that Jesus gave. But in Matthew 10 and verses 29 and 30, Jesus said, this is Matthew 10, 29 and 30, Are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? And not one of them falls to the ground apart from your Father's will, but the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Now, what an important insight that is to God's special and detailed attention to us.

You know, when Jesus said here, are not two sparrows sold for a copper coin? Apparently, that was the going rate for sparrows. But in Luke's parallel, Jesus actually says, are not five sparrows sold for two copper coins? Which apparently also reflects the rate of exchange of the cost of sparrows in those days. But consider that.

Two sparrows for one copper coin. Five sparrows for two copper coins if you compare Matthew and Luke. What does that tell you? It tells you that in the marketplace, if you wanted to buy sparrows, you could buy two for a penny.

Or five for two pennies. It means that sparrows were so cheap that if you bought four, they'll throw in another one for free. Pay the price for four and you get a fifth one for free.

Those sparrows were so cheap, so worthless to the seller, that he'd treat that fifth sparrow as worth nothing. It's just a freebie thrown in. And yet not one of those, even the freebie, falls to the ground without your Father knowing it.

There's nothing so worthless. Even in the sight of man, worthless. That God is not paying attention and concerned about it.

Even that fifth sparrow. And Jesus said, even the hairs of your head are numbered. That is a changing number every day.

For most of us. And that means that God is not only aware of how many hairs he programmed into our DNA, he's aware of the current inventory. For attention to detail, God is unparalleled as a Father.

Of course, we as fathers, who are fathers, should seek to be as parallel to him in our attendance to our children's needs as he is. But we just can't be perfect. But he can be.

And that's the point. Where earthly fathers fail, we must not necessarily assume that God has the same weaknesses. He is the perfect Father.

And he makes up every deficit. We don't have to be dysfunctional or something because we lack ideal parenting from our fathers. We have the one who takes us up, even if our father or mother forsakes us.

Another thing is that he's on our side. He's sympathetic. In Psalm 103.

Psalm 103, verses 13 and 14. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear him. He knows our frame.

He remembers that we are dust. He's sympathetic. He knows we're weak things, we're frail things.

Like a father pities his child. And until you're a father, you probably won't know exactly how a father pities his child. But you can get sort of a vague picture of it, even as a single person without children.

That's how God pities us. We've already seen that the Bible says he's a disciplinary father. In addition to that, he's a forgiving father.

The story of the prodigal son, I think, is intended to give us that understanding. The father has been violated by his son, has been insulted by his son, has been brought to shame by the behavior of his son. But when his son comes back with even the, you know, the merest expressions of remorse, the father restores him, forgives him, acts like nothing ever happened.

Give him his ring, give him his coat, all the things that he lost, give them back. My son is returned. And there is no, you know, necessity of the son pleading with his father for mercy.

It's just true repentance, it's true remorse. As soon as God sees it, you know, interesting in that story, the Scripture specifically says, when the son was returning, his father saw him a long way off and ran out to meet him. He didn't even wait for the son to exercise enough resolve to get all the way home yet.

Of course, the son would have gotten all the way home, but the father didn't wait for that. The father went out and made up the gap between him and his son, eager to forgive, not reluctant to forgive. A father must always be forgiving toward his children if he's to be a godlike father.

A father has to also be delighted to give to his children. Jesus said in Matthew 7, 11, if you fathers, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to his children? He gives the example, if a child asks for something that's food, you won't give him something harmful. And how much more if earthly parents, who are imperfect in the extreme, if they have at least this much to be said in their favor, that they delight to give good things to their children, how much more, God? This is the point.

You cannot blame God or have a low view of God based upon defects you see in human parents. Why? Because they're imperfect. They are only a vague picture of what God is like.

He is the how much more God. Whatever good, however little good you find in a decent parent, God is that, but how much more. And this is the God we are to relate to.

This is the God that Jesus came to reveal to us and to restore us to relationship with. It is not that Jesus comes to replace God for us. He comes to restore us to God.

And until we are relating to God as a father, we are not yet knowing the God of our Lord Jesus Christ in the way that he can be known and intends to be known by us. We run out of time with that, so we'll close with that too.