That song we just sang, I believe it was derived from
the book of Hebrews, I think it's in chapter 14, excuse me,
chapter four, where it says, let us come boldly to the throne
of grace, where we may find mercy to help us in our time of need. And you know, the book of Hebrews
was written to Jews who were being persecuted because they
believed that Jesus was the Messiah. And anyone who believed that
would be put out of the synagogue, not permitted to come to the
temple. And while we might look back at that and say, well, that's
not such a bad thing, after all, with the coming of the Lord Jesus
Christ and the accomplishment of his work, There was no more
need for the synagogue, and certainly no more need for that temple.
But remember, these people were being brought out of a religion
they were raised in. And so they knew what the throne
of grace was. They knew where God was enthroned.
It says in, I believe, one of the Psalms, it says, he sits
enthroned between the cherubim. And back there in the Holy of
Holies of the temple, the Ark of the
Covenant had a likeness of a cherubim on each side. And on the top
of the Ark of the Covenant is what would more strictly be called
the atonement cover, but traditionally it's been called the mercy seat.
And it's where once a year on the day of the atonement, the
priest would come and pour out the blood of the sacrifice. Now, that was only a typical
thing, an illustration of a truth. But for all those years, until
the day that the Lord Jesus Christ was crucified, only one man would
ever be allowed back in there, and that only once a year, and
never without blood. But the scriptures teach us that
when our Lord finished his work, that the veil of the temple was
torn in two. signifying that the way to God
had been made known. And no longer would it be that
only one man, once a year, could go into that typical throne room
of God and seek God's mercy, but that all the people of God
can freely go into the very presence of God upon his throne and ask
him for mercy in their time of need. I am or have been for many, many years
captivated by the many changes that occurred when our Lord Jesus
Christ finished his work and the old covenant handed down
at Sinai was made obsolete. And the new covenant in which
it is written, there's sins and iniquities. There's sins I will
forgive and there are iniquities I will remember no more. It came
in force. Now, of course, no one has ever
had the favor of God apart from the principles of the new covenant.
My pastor used to say it was called new only in that it was
more newly revealed than the old covenant. The old covenant
didn't really take a lot of revelation. One encounter with God on Mount
Sinai and the entire old covenant was told out. God has been revealing
the new covenant from the very time that to cover Adam and Eve's
nakedness, he killed some animals and made them clothing out of
their skins. And from then until Christ said
it is finished, the new covenant was becoming brighter and brighter
and more obvious. And you and I live in a day We
don't go to a temple made with hands. Even Solomon, when he
had built that great temple of his, he said that the Lord God
is not worshipped in temples, or excuse me, Paul, I believe,
said God is not worshipped in temples made with hands. Solomon said, the heaven of the
heavens cannot contain thee, much less this temple I've built.
And that was probably the most glorious temple of its day. The Holy of Holies was essentially
a 25-foot cube lined with gold. Imagine a building like that,
and yet that wasn't enough for God. But you and I, through the
Spirit of God, moment by moment at any time and under any circumstances. Approach God on His sovereign
throne and ask Him for mercy to help in time of need. And unlike the priests of old,
we don't have to go in with blood. Why? The successful blood's already
been put there. and remains there as a testimony
that sinners like you and me can be accepted there at that
throne and find mercy. A beautiful song. Since my wife was playing piano
this morning, I said, pick whatever hymns you want to do. She picked
that one, and I'm glad. I like the other ones okay, too,
Bonnie, but I think that one. And I want to speak this morning
on something else that changed with the new covenant. The scene we have before us is
in the Garden of Gethsemane. Gethsemane, as I understand it,
means either the Garden of Olive Trees or the Olive Press. but
it had something to do with olives and the harvesting of olives.
And our Lord went there. He went there to pray. He knew what
was coming. He had told the disciples several
times, but they just didn't understand. He said that he would go to Jerusalem
and he would be crucified by the powers that
be, both religious and political. But after three days, he would
raise again. And it was as if he were talking to a brick wall. And don't be surprised that the
disciples didn't understand him. The only reason we do is because
we live after those events happened. And we have the New Testament
which explains why Messiah must suffer, because their view of
Messiah was a conquering king, someone who would come and restore
the former glory of Israel under kings like David and Solomon,
throw off the yoke of Rome, and make Israel the center of the
earth again. Of course, their conceptions
of what Israel had been in times past was overblown, but even those disciples to whom
much understanding had been given compared to the people around
them, even they did not understand that the Israel that Christ came
to redeem was not the Israel that descended from Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob. It was not the natural seed for
which our Lord came. He came for what some refer to
as spiritual Israel. Those people from every kindred,
tribe, tongue, and nation who had been chosen by God before
the world began. for whom the Son was sent to
redeem them from their sin, and whom the Spirit would call by
doing an internal work of writing God's law on their hearts. And
it does not mean by that he would simply take those things which
had been inscribed on stone on Mount Sinai and then write them
on the heart, because that's already done to everyone. You realize that? The Bible says
that God has written the law on everyone's heart. And the
proof of it is this, that you look specifically the latter
six of the Ten Commandments, which relate to human relations. Every society believes those
laws to be proper. They interpret them a little
differently, but all societies know it's wrong to lie. All societies
know that coveting is wrong. All societies know that stealing
and murdering and being disrespectful and dishonorable towards your
parents, that's wrong. That's everywhere. Why? Why do
you find that throughout human society, whether it be a so-called
modern civilized society such as us, or the most primitive
society you could find on earth right now. The same laws apply
everywhere, and that's because God wrote that law on every man's
heart. But the Spirit writes another
law, a law that you could never inscribe in stone. There's not enough stone to write
it out. And yet, it could be inscribed on a post-it. It's the law of love. The law that says, love the Lord
your God with all your heart, mind, body, soul, and strength.
And once again, that said, just, you know, heart, mind, body,
soul, strength, not that we really have all that divisions in us,
it's just people talk about those divisions. So it was said that
way, so that you'd realize, love the Lord your God with every
bit of your being. And love your neighbor as yourself. And the Lord went on to say,
but you've heard it said, love your neighbor. I say, love your
enemy. Now, that law, those laws, they're
not written on everyone's heart. Most people believe there is
a God, and most people believe that we owe God something, you
know. Give God his due, give him his
10% of your money and his one-seventh of your days. And they'll do
that, not because they want to do that, not because they delight
in giving to the Lord, nor that they delight in setting aside
one day a week with the special intention of worshiping Him.
What they like about those two things is, all right, I got to
give up one day out of seven, but that leaves six for me to
live to myself. And I don't like losing 10%,
but at least that leaves me 90% for me. That's old covenant law. New
covenant law says none of what you have is yours. None of your
days belong to you. None of your money belongs to
you. You don't belong to you. You were bought with a price.
God owns you, lot, stock, and barrel. More than this, when
that law is written on the heart, And by that I mean it's written
in such a way you agree with it and approve of it. That means
you love God. That means when you write out
your offering, you aren't going, I better write out a check to
the church or God will punish me. It'll be, this is all I can give. I wish
I could do more. But the apostles said we shouldn't
give above what we're able. Boy, I wish I had more to give. It doesn't say, oh, it's Sunday,
gotta go to church. It says, thank God it's Sunday. And for a while, I can forget that I am a member
of a cursed race, living a short life, full of
disappointment, or as Job said, a man is born to trouble as the
sparks fly upward. The heart upon whom God's law
has been written by the Spirit of God looks at worship as a
It doesn't say, let's get Sunday over with so we can get back
to our normal lives. It says, I sure wish I could
get through this week quick so that once again I can gather
with others who have the same kind of precious faith that I
have, who worship the same Lord I do, who hope in the same things
I do. That's why over the years I've
said, and sometimes it's been misunderstood, and I understand
it. I mean, that doesn't surprise me. I've said things in ways
that can be misunderstood. But I've made the statement,
if you don't want to go to church, don't bother. Now, I didn't mean
by that if you wake up some Sunday morning and you say, oh, I don't
know if it's worth it, you know, like that or whatever. I'm not
talking about that. What I mean is if you have no
desire to worship God, If there is not in your heart a delight
in hearing the truth of God as is revealed in Christ Jesus,
don't go to church to fulfill some duty, as though by doing
so, God's gonna say, well, I know he didn't like being there, but
at least he came. God doesn't look on the outward appearance,
he looks on the heart. We have, I'm not even gonna bother
to guess, there's more than we've had in a long time, I look at this group, and you
know, I'm glad every one of you is here. The more the merrier
from my viewpoint. But that's just because all I
can do is see whether or not you're here. That's as far as
I can go with it. I can't look in your heart and
see whether you're happy to be here, whether you've looked forward
to this, or that inside you're grumbling that you had to get
up Dress up a little bit, clean
up, drive here. I can't see that. Now I will say this, and most
of what we say we have to qualify as. I want you to come whether or
not you want to. And here's why. Faith comes by
hearing. hearing by the message of Christ. That's what the scriptures say. And so even though you're not
gaining points with God by being here, it's not as though God
was ready to slap you a good one, but you got up and went
to church, and he said, well, he went to church, I guess I'll
relent. No, nothing like that going on. But I know this, if
God is going to save you, He's going to do it through the declaration
of His Word. He chose you to be saved through
belief of the truth. And you can't believe what you
don't know. And here's a miracle of gospel preaching. It's not
magic. Don't confuse magic with miraculous. Magic, properly described,
is the ability to access some kind of hidden forces in nature,
either by incantations or potions and stuff like that, and cause
things to happen that others are not able to cause. That's
magic, and it doesn't exist. Makes for great movies. As long
as you realize it's just a movie, it's okay to have fun with it.
But there's no such thing as magic. What is the miraculous? The miraculous is when God does
something that we can't do. When God accomplishes things
which, if they had been told us beforehand, we'd have said,
no, that can't happen. And God says, watch this. Miraculous
is when a whole nation of people escaping bondage in Egypt comes
up to the Red Sea or Sea of Reeds, as it's called in the Old Testament.
I don't know if that's the same place or not. It really doesn't
matter. They were confronted by a body of water that they
could not cross. It was too deep. And behind them
was Pharaoh's army. Pharaoh had said, OK, get out
of here. Leave us alone. That was after Passover, after
so many Egyptian firstborn had died. And they said, get out
of here. You're a curse to us. Leave, leave. And once they left,
Pharaoh said, what did I do? I just let a free workforce go. And so he gathers his army. And
they're going to go out and round them up and make them slaves
again. And there they are. I remember
a song. I first heard it in 1975, sung
by Karen Carpenter. And I don't know if it was an
old song that she just wrote, but there was a line in there,
I'm caught between the devil and the deep blue sea. And that's how Israel was. There
was no way to fight. that devil Pharaoh and his army
behind them, no way to cross the sea in front of them. And God told Moses, you tell
the people this, stand still and see the salvation of the
Lord. One reason people don't see the
Lord's salvation is they never take a minute to stand still.
They're so busy with life, they don't stop and think. They don't
give real consideration. When the thought of their coming
death, and all of us know it's going to happen, almost from the youngest here
to the oldest. You don't get very far in life
before you realize everything eventually dies and everything
includes you. And men start to think upon it,
and everyone has written in his heart what is written in Hebrews
9, verse 27, I believe. It's appointed unto man once
to die, and after that, to judgment. And there is this strong, unsettling
realization that when you die and go to judgment, it's not
going to go well with you. We know that. But what do we do with that?
I mean, we naturally know that. What do we do with that? It's
our nature to put it out of mind. I do believe that one of the
main motivations for the vast quantities of entertainment that
people consume, and it seems like people are willing to spend
a lot of money on entertainment, And a whole lot of science and
technology goes into making entertainment more accessible to us. And right
now, there's enough entertainment available to us. We could put
on three or four TVs, and they'd all be showing us something all
the time that we hadn't seen before. But one of the primary reasons
for entertainment and recreation and all that, and I'm not saying
these things are bad, but they become overwhelming. And the
reason is it fills the mind to such a degree you can put out
of mind the things that are uncomfortable to you. And the most uncomfortable thing
of all is this. And I say this with all solemnity
and sobriety to everyone here. There is coming a day when you
will stand before God. And it will not be God as you
think He is. It will be God as He is. It will
not be the God that your mind has made up. It will be God as
He is. It'll be God as He was before
there was such a thing as time, before He created the heavens
and the earth. He has not changed in the least bit. And while we
do believe that the old covenant has gone, has come to an end,
and all the thunderings and, you know, in the book of Hebrews
it speaks about there on Mount Sinai how When Moses was speaking
to the Lord, there was the thunder and the lightning and the sound
of a trumpet, and it terrified the people. So much so that they
said to Moses, no, we don't want to hear from him again. You go
talk to him, and then you come tell us what he said. But we
don't want that business again. Do you understand? The gospel
didn't change that God. The gospel does not describe
a change of God. He is as righteous as he ever
was. He is as holy and unapproachable
as he ever was. He said to Moses, I will by no
means clear the guilty. And that statement still stands. Not one thing about God has ever
changed. You say, then, what difference
is there between the old covenant and the new? Well, God has not changed. God has fulfilled for himself
all that is required. to reestablish a pleasant and
enjoyable relationship between himself and his people. Now that truth was hidden in
the Old Covenant in types and pictures. That lamb, the lambs
and the sheep, you know, the goats and all that that were
sacrificed day after day, year after year and all that, they
were all pointing to Christ, but most people didn't understand
that. They actually thought that they
were building up their own righteousness by observing all of those rituals
at the tabernacle and later at the temple. They thought their
sins really were put away by the bloody sacrifice of perfect
animals. They didn't realize it was merely
a shadow of good things to come. And even the disciples here the
night before the crucifixion hadn't yet understood that this one, whom they'd been
following for about three years, that all that was in those Old
Covenant religious practices were pointing to him, that he was to be their priest. He was also to be their sacrifice. Those old covenant priests, they
offered a lot of sacrifices, but they never offered themselves
as a sacrifice. The book of Hebrews says of the
Lord Jesus, he offered himself without spot to God. He offered, that means he was
the priest, because the priest makes the offering. He offered
himself, that means he's the sacrifice. And with that once
for all, once for all time sacrifice, He put away sin. Every sin that
was laid on Him no longer exists. Ponder on that a little bit. You can probably think, if you
just, if you want to do this, I don't recommend it, but if
you do it, just think about this past week and your sins. That's a bunch of them. And every
one of them filled with all the rebellion, all the wretchedness,
all the guilt and condemnation of every sin that's ever been
committed. We think Judas committed the
worst sin. I remember when I was in college,
and going through Reformation history. And the professor pointed
out that after Luther had come on the
scene and initiated what we call the Reformation, and of course
he was put out of the church and they despised him, and they
finally came to the conclusion the only two who would eventually
end up eternally in hell was the devil and Luther. You know? I hear, though, they've kind
of cut Luther some slack now. Isn't that nice? The church cut
him some slack, as though the church is the judge. But God will not clear the guilty. God will have an answer for every
sin, and every one of us here is full of all the sin of Judas,
who betrayed our Lord. We're full of all the sin of
King Herod, who out of appreciation for what
was evidently a very lascivious dance by his stepdaughter, had John the Baptist beheaded. It's full of the sin Every sin
we commit is full of all the awfulness of the sin of Adam
and Eve, who partook of the only thing God said they couldn't
have. That one tree. God gave them
everything else, but that's the one they had to have. Full of all the sin of that world
that existed before the flood, which was so wicked, violent,
and perverse, that God said, I'm going to destroy mankind
from the face of the earth. We're the same as all who have
gone before us, and God is the same. Yet, in Christ we find aspects
of God revealed that aren't natural to us to understand. Our Lord goes into Gethsemane,
the only righteous man that ever lived. He's God, he's man. My brother
read that. That's what the book of John
starts with. The declaration of the divinity,
the godness of Jesus Christ. In the beginning, the word already
was. He didn't come to be, he was. And he was with God. Most people could wrap their
minds around that. But then he said, and he was
God. And the way it's written in the Greek, it actually reverses
it. It says, and God was the word.
And Greek will reverse normal word order when they want to
emphasize something. As though he's saying, and God
was the word. Meaning the word was God with
bold, italic underline on the word God. And then you get down there to
verse 14. We've read about the Word. He
is that unapproachable God. We can't get to Him. But it says,
and the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. Under the old covenant, you can't
get to God. There's no way. But because we couldn't get to
God, God came to us. He was made or became flesh. He who exists outside of our
universe, after all, He's the one who created the universe,
so that means He isn't a part of it. He became a part of this
universe. He entered space and time. The
book of Philippians says, being in very nature God, and for whom
it wouldn't have been robbery to claim equality with God. He emptied himself. He made himself
of no reputation. We spend our lives trying to
fill ourselves up. and build a good reputation for
ourselves. Our God emptied himself and made
himself of no reputation. He began to preach, and you know, I believe it was
Nathan, the disciple Nathan that said this, when his brother,
and you'll excuse me if I get some of these details wrong,
There's Andrew, I believe, but he found Nathan and he said,
we have found the Messiah, Jesus of Nazareth. And Philip, who
was one of these guys, he wasn't mean, but he spoke honestly. He said,
can any good thing come out of Nazareth? Many believe that that
name Nazareth comes from the Hebrew word meaning despised,
and there's a way in which it was fulfilled. Isaiah 53 was
fulfilled where it says he was despised and rejected of men. No reputation. Nobody from Nazareth
had a reputation except among the people of Nazareth, and even
they looked at our Lord, and I think we saw this a week or
so ago, and they said, isn't this the carpenter's son, whose brothers and sisters we
know? Who is he to speak to us with
such authority? Who is he to set himself forward
as a prophet? He didn't even have a good reputation
in his own hometown. Oh, the wonder of our God. He who made us all became one
of us and not a glorious one among us. I mean, he was glorious,
but his position in this world was not a glorious position.
And here we see him coming very near to the end of his descent. It was enough that he made himself
flesh and dwelt among us. That's coming pretty far down,
don't you think? I mean, you know, there he was, God. He spoke and it was, he commanded
and it stood firm. He sits above the circle of the
earth. The heavens of the heavens cannot contain him. He's above
it all, and what does he do? Comes right down here in the
middle of it all. And he lives his life completely
as a man. You look at the miracles of our
Lord, you look at what he said. You'll notice, as near as I can
remember, he never did a miracle on his own behalf. He said, well he walked on the
water. I don't think he did that to save having to walk around.
He walked on the water to get to the disciples because they
were out there on the water. The sea was heaving. He fed 5,000
men and their wives and children. We don't read that he ate any
of it. He lived exactly like you and
I must live in this world. And the miracles that he did,
and this is the only way I know to explain it, he's God in human flesh. But
as near as I can tell from what I read in the scripture, he never
did anything under the energy and power of his own divinity.
He quoted Isaiah, I think it's from Isaiah 61, and it's found
in the book of Luke chapter 4, I believe, but he's in Nazareth.
And they gave him the scroll of Isaiah to read, and he turned
to that portion where it says, the spirit of the Lord is upon
me. to give sight to the blind, to
release the prisoner, to declare the year of God's
acceptance. So whenever our Lord did something
that we would count miraculous, He wasn't doing it under His
own steam. so to speak. He did it as a human
being who had been given the Spirit of God, as the Bible says,
without measure, that is, without limitation. That's how much our
Lord emptied Himself. And here it says that, you know,
it says He, and this is in Philippians 3, made Himself of no reputation,
And he submitted himself to death, even the death of the cross.
Not meaning simply because there's a horrible way to die, that's
true. But there's plenty of horrible
ways to die. The death of the cross meant
the death under the curse of God. As it is written, cursed
is everyone who is hung upon a tree. And this is going to happen within 12 hours, and our Lord
knows it. Wow, I haven't even got to what
I plan to preach on, and I got two minutes left. We're gonna
go over a little, but I'll try to condense what I wanted to
say to you. Verse 34 of Mark chapter 14. My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow
to the point of death, he said to them. Stay here and keep watch. Going a little farther, farther
into the garden, he fell to the ground and prayed. When was the
last time you were so overwhelmed? with need that you fell to the
ground. You can no longer stand. The whole God in human flesh
groveling in the dust. Even if the disciples had believed
him that he was going to be crucified, that wouldn't have brought the
Lord. into the dust. He knew that while he was crucified,
the sins of an uncountable host of people were going to be laid
on him, charged to him, and God would deal with him as though
he were the one who actually committed every one of those
sins. If you are a believer, I want
you to think on this. Well, I wish I thought on it
more. I wish I could get into it, so to speak. He knew He was
going to bear every sin I ever did. And He was going to bear all
those sins I wanted to do but didn't commit because I was afraid
I'd get caught. He bore all the wretchedness
of my nature. And that was just one of that
countless multitude. He fell to the ground, and this
was his prayer, that if it were possible, the hour, it doesn't
mean 60 minutes, it means the time frame of what's about to
happen to him, that it might pass from him. Now we're gonna get to what I
wanted to talk about. Here's our Lord, knowing what
lay ahead, knowing what God would do to him, and he says, Abba,
Father. Now, Abba is derived from the
Hebrew word for father, and it's quite possible that Abba is all
he said, that they put Abba, Father, because they're writing
an Aramaic word And so right after it, you know, maybe if
we'd have done it, we'd have written Abba, parenthesis, father,
close parenthesis. So the people who didn't know
Aramaic would know what he meant by that word. But from what study
I've done on it, what's available to me, it means a little more
than simply father. Just the A-B means father, Abba. Actually in Hebrew it's pronounced
Av. The letter B in Hebrew, depending
on whether or not it has a dot in it, is pronounced as we pronounce
a B or as we pronounce a V. I don't know why, it's just the
way it is. But that A-B, meaning father,
you find it many, many times in the Old Testament. Nearly
every time it refers to the word father, it's the word ab. but
we find it pop up in so many names. Absalom, son of David. It's pronounced Av Shalom, and it means my father is peace. David married a woman named Abigail.
That's how we say it. Avigail or something like that.
My father is joy. So nearly all those names that
have this A-B in it are a reference to the father. But here we have
A-B-B-A. And from what I've read, it indicates
not simply father in the sense that that's my male ancestor,
but it carries with it all the affection and tenderness that
we might include in a word like dad or even daddy. Now everybody here has a father. Some of us had good fathers,
some of us had bad fathers, and everything in between. And those who were raised by,
I call them bad fathers, don't have another way to say it, but
fathers who did not properly play the part of father were
maybe even abusive. How did they know they were being
abused? Because every one of us seems
to know what a father's supposed to be. We all have this innate understanding
of what a father is supposed to be, and without ever being
told that, a five-year-old child can tell you whether or not he
has a good father or a bad father. Of course, when this is applied
to God and in this new covenant, expression of God. It means father to perfection. You see, in the old covenant,
God was not really a father as such. He was creator. He was God. He was governor,
king. He was all those things. Our
Lord comes into the world. And he uses, as near as I can
tell, he uses something new in his addresses to his God. Remember it says, blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. And he looks to
God and says, Father. And when he calls him Father,
he is collecting all the attributes of fatherhood in its perfection. And that's what God is to him.
He's not calling him father simply because he is uniquely the son
of God, actually born of God, the son of God. He's calling
him father because he relates to God as a childhood to a father. And in this scene, And remember,
our Lord's face down in the dirt. He's gone to his God, to his
Father. And he said, Abba, everything
is possible for you. Do you remember when you were
a kid and you thought your dad could do anything? Remember when you were in your
mid-twenties and you were a dad and you thought you could do
anything, and you found out later you can't get it all done. Oh,
kids, when they got a good father, they think, Dad can do anything. Kids will even get into fights
with other kids. Well, my dad can do this. My
dad can do this. We look to our fathers as the
one who can do for us what we cannot do for ourselves. As we get older and learn the
place of our parents in our lives, and particularly when you look
at it in a more traditional setting I guess us baby boomers were
the last ones raised in what's considered a traditional household
configuration, but you know, dad got up, went to work, he
was the provider. Now it didn't mean that moms
didn't provide things, they provided different things, but they mean
provider in that it was dad went out and met with the world. and
wrestled with the world to gain from the world what was necessary
for the welfare of his house. Food, clothing, shelter. That's been the traditional role
of father's provider. Secondly, protector. Now, once again, and I guess
given the day and age in which we live, we've got make these
statements so that people don't misunderstand. It is not as though
women are not protectors. I remember reading something
from C.S. Lewis, and he was talking about
how men, generally their job is the mediator between the family
and the world. And mothers, for the most part,
they are entirely focused on the family. They're nesters. And everything, everything is
judged by how it's affecting the family. And he says, and
if you don't believe me, he says, if your child gets bit by a dog,
who do you want to talk to? The dad or the mom? If you talk
to the dad, most likely he's going to try to work something
out. Why? Because he's got to continue
a relationship with those outside the family. You talk to mom,
kill it. Get rid of it. This was a threat
to my family. It does not have the right to
exist. Men protect, and I know this, something that is a threat,
a continual threat to the family. A good father will find a way
to protect the family. provider, protector, nurturer. Now, once again, we normally
apply that word to moms, and it's true. Most of the nurturing,
the day-to-day stuff, moms do that. I know in thinking about whether
or not You know, women are supposed to preach. I made the remark
one time, I said, women are some of the greatest preachers ever
were. I said, nearly every preacher of note that I am aware of, he
learned the gospel from his mom. Now it says, Fathers, bring up
your children to fear and admonition of the Lord. Now that doesn't
mean that the primary effort of that was not delegated to
mom. My mother taught me what I know. Yes, I've learned things beyond
what my mother taught me, but I have never learned anything
contrary to what my mother taught me in the most basic elements
of the gospel to which I am a sinner in need of a Savior and Christ
is the Savior I need. I've never moved an inch from
that. But dad, as a father pities his
children, says the Lord. So does the Lord pity them who
fear him. He understands that we are dust. Oh, when we behold God as our
Father, we know that we can approach
him as one who understands who and what we are and deals with
us, not in the strictness of a judge, but in the merciful
understanding of a good father. I had what I consider a very
good father, but there was one flaw he had, and that is he tended
to judge me by adult standards. Not taking into account, you
know, I was seven or 17. I mean, he always had 30 years
on me. Oh our God knows what we are.
But here in the depth of his agony the Lord Jesus Christ calls
him Abba, Father. Now this word is only used two
other times and we'll take a quick look at them and be done. Romans
8 15. He's talking to believers and
talking to the spirit that they have received. Meaning not only
the spirit of the message, using that word metaphorically, but
actually the spirit of God who has come to dwell in God's people. And he says in verse 15, for
you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again
to fear. Let me tell you right now. If
the religion you're involved with makes you a slave full of
fear, one of two things is true. You're not hearing what they're
saying or what they're saying, the lie, one or the other. The Spirit of God does not make
slaves who live in fear. He said, you receive the spirit
of sonship And by Him, that is, by that Spirit, we cry, Abba,
Father. We relate to God the same way
the Lord Jesus Christ did. We can go to God, the living God, Jehovah,
God in His absolute essence, however you want to describe
it, God as big as you can possibly imagine Him. And we go to Him
not as a slave master to try to convince Him we did as good
as we can or we got accomplished everything. We go to Him like
children. who approach a good father, despite
what problems my father may have had. You know something? I was
never afraid of him. I was never afraid to go home. I was never afraid to see him,
even when I knew discipline was coming, because I knew that his
hand was never full of wrath, that the discipline was for my
good. Now we are not slaves, and the
Spirit of God will never teach us that. Instead, the Spirit
of God works in us, that when we pray, whether we have done
what is pleasing to our Father or not, whether we are full of
joy and thankfulness or full of sorrow and grief, Whatever
our condition, we go to him, Abba, my provider, my protector, the
one who cares for me as a child, Abba. People want to know what it is
to live in the spirit. And you ask most people what
living in the spirit means. They'll say, well, that's living,
you know, a so-called godly life, and yet, and I don't have time
to go through all of it, but it says, talking about calling
him Abba Father is all within the context of living in the
Spirit. Living in the Spirit is approaching God as our Father,
because we know that the Only Begotten One of God called him
Father, and we are accepted by the Father in Him. I have as much right to go to
God and call Him Father as our Lord did. You say, whoa, that's
a big statement. Yes, it is. And I couldn't begin
to believe it were it not that I see in the principles of the
scriptures. As Christ is, so are we in this
world, says John. All right, Galatians 4.6. because you are sons, not slaves. God sent the spirit of his son
into our hearts, the spirit who calls out, Abba, Father. Knowing humanity in general,
as I do, I'm sure there are people here this morning scared to death
of God, scared to death of dying and going to meet God. terrified at the prospect that
you have sinned against God. And you know something, if you're
outside of Christ, that's a good attitude to have. But in Christ,
that fear is taken away because he is our Father. When our Lord
was to be crucified, Pilate said, because they had a custom that
on a certain day, Roman government would release some criminal.
And there was a man named Barabbas, and he was a murderer, an insurrectionist. And so Pilate says, do you want
me to give you this Jesus, in other words, release him. Because
Pilate was trying to find a way out of this mess. He says, shall
I release Jesus to you or this Barabbas? They said, give us
Barabbas. And you can imagine what that
was like for Barabbas when they come down there in the dungeon,
open the door, take the shackles off. He knew he was headed for
a cross someday. He'd been an insurrectionist
against Rome and a murderer to boot. They said, you're free. What? Yeah, you're free. And so Barabbas goes free. And
the Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten son of God, is nailed
to a tree. Now here's what puts this little
story in perspective. Do you know what the name Barabbas
means? You've heard of a bar mitzvah?
The B-A-R means son. And at 13 years old, a Jewish
boy becomes a son of the law. Bar, son. Abba, the father. Here's this criminal. A man who did not deserve to
live. who had snuffed out the life
of others. But he's the son of the father. And he is set free because the
only begotten son of the father who had never done wrong was tortured and crucified. and fell under the wrath of God. Next time you pray, say, Abba,
it's Barabbas. I'm your son. You're my father. Bless me. Send your spirit. to remind me who I am, because my sin constantly argues
against that identity. And it's all because of Christ.
You say, I'd sure like to be a son of a father. Well, it's pretty simple. It's not easy, but it's simple. Put all your confidence in the
Son of the Father, and you will be Barabbas, Son of the Father. Well, may the Lord add his blessing
to his word.