Those of you who were with us
last Lord's Day evening will remember, I trust, that I began
to preach a New Year's message, which at that time I said I had
every intention of continuing and completing as a communion
meditation tonight. However, as I labored at more
detailed preparation for tonight, it became evident to me that
if I were to preach in a responsible way, and respect the restriction
of time that we believe is appropriate for the ministry of the Word
prior to a communion service, that I would have to take two
more evenings to complete that New Year's message. And so, God
willing, I will leave the final head that I announced last week
and will announce this evening, and that will have to await our
time together, God willing, next Lord's Day evening. Using the
imagery of the barrels of water that acted as ballast in the
belly of ancient seagoing vessels, or sea vessels of any bygone
day, I sought to identify those fundamental biblical truths that
you and I need desperately to have stored away in the deep
recesses of our souls as we embark on what to us are the uncharted
seas of the coming year. Without these truths, I asserted
that we will be tossed about on the sea of life, unable to
keep our bearings, and always in danger of capsizing. Now, we had time to address but
two such truths, and I stated them this way. First of all,
I directed your attention to the ballast that he is found
in this truth that God is on his throne, governing all things
in this universe as an absolute sovereign. And then the second
ballast-creating truth I identified in this way, that the crucified,
risen, and exalted Lord Jesus shares that throne as the administrator
of all things, leading to a glorious consummation. And without even
citing, let alone opening up, many of the texts that we considered
last Lord's Day, suffice it to say that we were reminded of
truth number one in our call to worship this morning. Psalm
97.1, Jehovah reigns. We will be reminded of truth
number two when we come to the table, for in those words of
institution, that are given to us by the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians,
we have these words, as oft as you eat this bread and drink
this cup, you do show forth or preach forth the Lord's death
until he come, indicating that the consummation is to be in
our eyes and hearts even as we come to the table. Now tonight,
in the much more restricted time allotted for a communion meditation,
I want you to consider with me the first of the two remaining
ballast-like truths. Tonight, we will look, as it
were, at the flip side of the coin of that first truth. God is on his throne, governing
all things in this universe as an absolute sovereign And this
truth that is its parallel, the obverse of that coin, is that
the God who is on his throne is our loving, all-knowing, kindly
disposed, but principled Father in heaven. And as we considered
that second ballast producing truth, the crucified, risen,
and exalted Lord sharing the throne as the administrator of
all things, leading to a glorious consummation, God willing, next
Lord's Day evening, we'll look at the reverse side of that truth,
that the enthroned Christ is our advocate, intercessor, indwelling
life, and constant companion. So tonight we focus upon this
third biblical truth, which I say will act like ballast in our
souls if it becomes something more than the theological pennant
to which we point and which we can recite upon being questioned. But when it becomes the very
stuff of our reaction to God's dealings with us, the unfolding
of his providence, the vicissitudes of our own experience, the confidence,
the well-grounded confidence, the knowledge that the God who
is on His throne is my loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed,
but principled Father in Heaven. Coupled with the bedrock conviction
that God is on His throne as governor of all things, we must
have an equally strong, biblically informed persuasion that this
God is our Father if we are the true people of God. The apex,
the very pinnacle of redemptive privilege, is not our justification. I stand with the great historic
stream that had been buried for generations and centuries and
broke out into an open wide river during the Reformation, that
justification by faith, faith directed to Christ, and faith
that embraces Christ and his work on behalf of sinners as
the sole ground of our acceptance with God, that truth. was designated
during the period of the Reformation with renewed clarity as the article
of the standing or the falling Church, and I stand with those
who assert the place of justification by faith alone. However, justification,
the declaration by God to the penitent believing soul that
all of his sins are and that all of the perfect righteousness
of Christ is credited to that believing sinner, justifying
grace is not the apex or the privilege or the pinnacle of
our redemptive privilege. The apex, the pinnacle of redemptive
privilege, is not justification, but it is adoption. It is the
God who declares us righteous on the grounds of the righteousness
of Christ, who then, as it were, steps off His throne from the
place of the moral judge of the universe, goes into His parlor,
and invites us as justified sinners into his presence and holds out
before us a duly drafted legal title to becoming his sons and
daughters, and we become his adopted children. This is brought
forth in several passages in the New Testament. Perhaps one
of the most clear of those passages is Galatians chapter 4. Galatians
chapter 4. and verse four and following.
But when the fullness of the time came, God sent forth his
son, born of a woman, born under the law, that he might redeem
them that were under the law in order that we might receive
the adoption of sons. And because you are sons, God
sent forth the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying,
so that you are no longer a bond slave, but a son, and if a son,
then an heir through God." And this same emphasis is brought
before us in the middle section of Romans chapter 8. And it was
this very truth for which Jesus was preparing his disciples in
his repeated emphasis on this reality of the true people of
God being the sons of God, particularly in the Sermon on the Mount. And
I want you to turn with me, please, to Matthew chapter 5 and following. And in my study Bible, I took
a red marker, I mean a bright yellow underline or highlighter,
that's the word I want, and I went through and just highlighted
all the references to your Father, your Father in Heaven. your father
who sees. And notice how in this declaration
of the great principles of the kingdom of grace that our Lord
Jesus came to establish from the description of the character
traits of the sons and daughters of the kingdom in the Beatitudes,
to their influence upon the world, to their living under the light
and under the direction of God's holy law as God intended us to
understand it, their life lived before the Father in their almsgiving
and in their praying and in their fasting, in their relationship
to the world of food and drink and clothing. In all of those
things, notice how Jesus, again and again, is preparing them
to think in terms of God as their Father. Chapter 5 and verse 16,
Even so, let your light shine before men, that they may see
your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. And I will be giving emphasis
to certain aspects of these phrases, and I trust you'll see the purpose
for that as the matter unfolds. Verses 44 and 45. Love your enemies. Pray for them that persecute
you, that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For He makes His Son to rise
on the evil and good, and sends rain on the just and the unjust. Verse 48. You therefore shall
be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." Chapter 6 and verse
1. Take heed that you do not your
righteousness before men to be seen of men, else you have no
reward with your Father who is in heaven. And then again, verse
9. 8. Be not therefore likened unto
them, for your Father knows what thing you have need of before
you ask him. After this manner therefore pray,
Our Father who art in heaven." If you forgive men their trespasses,
your Heavenly Father will also forgive you. If you forgive not
men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your
trespasses. And then again, verse 26, Behold
the birds of the heaven, they sow not, neither do they reap,
nor gather into barns, and your Heavenly Father feeds them. Verse 32, After all these things
to the Gentiles seek, for your heavenly Father knows that you
have need of these things. Chapter 7 and verse 11, If you
then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children,
how much more shall your Father, who is in heaven, give good things
to them that ask him? Now I ask you, After listening
to the Lord Jesus in this Sermon on the Mount, surely if you had
half an ear to what He was saying, you would come away with the
conviction that the sons and daughters of the kingdom, marked
by the character traits delineated in the Beatitudes, are a people
who should think of God within that kingdom as their Father. as their father who is in heaven. Now, when I say that, it's vital
that I say what I'm about to say. And I trust you'll listen
very carefully, for there's a lot of nonsense going around in the
name of Christian truth, particularly with respect to this matter of
how the Christian is to conceive of God as his father particularly
his Father who is in heaven. And the first thing we must understand
is that we are not to take our experience with our earthly fathers
or with any other earthly fathers and project them upward to God. the negative experiences and
say, well, God, if his father must be like that nasty no-good
father, or if they seem good to us, to say, well, surely,
if that character trait and action of my father was something I
like, then God must be like my earthly father. No, that's the
essence of idolatry. Idolatry is to conceive of God
in terms of the character traits of man, the creature, or to descend
to a lower plane, to beasts. But in Romans 1 it says they
make God into an image like unto their fellow men, and then to
birds and beasts and to creeping things. So when Jesus said, Your
Father who is in heaven, He did not expect His listeners. to
think of their earthly experience in relation to their fathers
projected upward with negative or positive connotations with
reference to God. There is one place where he appeals
to fatherly instinct even in sinful men and doesn't say God's
like that. He said God is much more than
that. But take away that one reference. Jesus does not say
Think of God your Father in terms of earthly categories spun out
of your own experience. Furthermore, He does not want
us to sit down and spin out of the stuff of our own psychological
needs what we think the Heavenly Father should be like. That also
is idolatry. When Jesus rebuked Peter In the
very passage we read this morning, why did he rebuke him? And he
called him a devil. Surely the loving Jesus doesn't
call one of his disciples Satan. Yes, he does. He says, get behind
me, Satan. Why? For you think not the thoughts
of God, but the thoughts of men. When men with their thoughts
conceived of God as Father, it is an offense to Jesus Christ.
It's idolatry. We are not to take our concept
of God as Father from our experience with our fathers or other people's
fathers, positive or negatively. We are not to spin a concept
of God as Father out of the stuff of our own hearts. Rather, we
are to conceive of God as Father in precisely the way He's revealed
Himself to us as Father. And you know what the focal point
of that revelation is? It's Jesus Himself. You remember
John chapter 14? Words could not be plainer. John
chapter 14, Jesus has made the declaration in verse 6, I am
the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes unto the Father
but by me. If you had known me, you would
have known my Father also. From henceforth you know him
and have seen him." Philip says to him, Lord, show us the Father
and that suffices us. Jesus said unto him, Have I been
so long time with you? and you do not know me, Philip,
he that hath seen me hath seen the Father." How do you say,
show us the Father? You see what Jesus is saying.
He is not saying, I am the Father, but he says, I am the perfect
revelation of the Father. When I have told you in the Sermon
on the Mount to think of God within the kingdom as your father,
what kind of a father are you to think of? You're not to think
of him in terms of the negative experiences of your own family
or someone else's family and project them upward to God. Nor
are you to think of him in terms of the stuff you spend out of
your own heart. You're to conceive of God as
father, as I have revealed him. He that hath seen me hath seen
the Father. Do you see that with your own
eyes and your own Bible? Now we're on safe ground, you
see. We're not shying away from God because our own experience
of a Father was some unprincipled, unpredictable, loveless, capricious,
self-centered bum. who just as soon smacked you
on the head for no reason as to put you on his knee and slobber
you with kisses. You didn't know what to expect
of him. What a wicked thing to project such an experience upward
to God and be shy of God because that's your experience with an
earthly father. Furthermore, it's just as wrong
to say, well, I think I need a heavenly father who is like
this. And make your idol of what the Father should be and what
he should do and not do. No, no. You look at Christ. And
in Christ, you see the perfect representation of the Father. He that has seen me has seen
the Father. The Father's love shown in Jesus
looking at the multitudes and being moved with compassion. The father's care in Jesus calling
himself the great shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep. The father's principled commitment
to see his children become more like his son when he rebukes
one of his choice disciples and calls him a devil. And when he
says to all of the disciples, Oh fool, and flow of heart to
believe in all that the Father has revealed, all that the Scriptures
have said. You say, I can't conceive of
God ever calling me foolish. Well, then you've got a conception
of God that's unscriptural. I can't conceive of God ever
calling me a devil. Then you've got an idol and not
the God of the Scriptures. He that has seen me has seen
the Father, the tenderness of Christ, the principled, righteous
antipathy to sin in Christ, the Father's anger against religious
tradition and clogging the way to God. You see it mirrored in
Jesus with flashing eye and poured in his hands over turning money
tables and throwing down the money upon the temple floor and
driving out the money changers. That's the Father. He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father standing with the woman at the
well, telling us that the Father is
mirrored in the parable of the prodigal throughout the Gospels. Get hold of this principle. I
have no right to cast shadows upon God from my negative experience
as a son or daughter with my earthly father or anyone else's.
I have no right to do it. I have no right to spin a God
out of the bowels of my own self-needs. I have every right and responsibility
to conceive of a Father who is revealed in Jesus Christ. For he that hath seen me hath
seen the Father. And what kind of Father is revealed
in Christ? Well, I've put together a string
of adjectives. And I'm not satisfied with them
who can speak of God in any way and be satisfied. We touch but
the edges of His ways. But I have said that we ought
to have, as we enter this new year and face all the unknowns,
we ought to have in the deep belly of our souls the ballast
of this conviction that the Father who is on the throne, or the
God on the throne, is our loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed
but principled Heavenly Father. He is our loving Father. It's very interesting. You have
to go out of the Synoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke, to find
the Lord Jesus referring to him as loving father. You notice
how I emphasized in all the references to father in the Sermon on the
Mount your heavenly father, your father who is in heaven, your
father who sees not once does Jesus ever refer to him as our
loving father. Now what you make of that fact
can either be true for heresy but it is a fact he does refer
to him in his own prayer in John 17 11 as holy father and in the
recorded praise of Jesus in Matthew 11 verse 25 at that season Jesus
rejoiced in spirit and said I thank you father Lord of heaven and
earth he calls him your heavenly father your father in heaven
He addresses him as Holy Father, Father, Lord of Heaven and Earth. But never once does he address
him as Loving Father. And the two explicit references
to the Father loving his own, it's not unconditional love.
It's love conditioned by our response to Jesus Christ in his
person and in his work. We'll see that in the closing
application. Now I hope I've rattled your cage a little bit
as mine's been rattled. When I come to my Bible saying,
Oh, my father, I want to think of you as you are revealed in
Christ, in his person, in his work, in his words. And I want
to go where my Bible takes me. I've had to rethink some things.
But nonetheless, as I've tried to follow the track of my Bible,
I'm on solid ground to say we must think of Him. We must relate
to this sovereign, all-governing God as our Father, who is a loving
Father. For God so loved the world that
He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believes in Him
should not perish but have everlasting life. 1 John 4.10 here in his
love, not that we love God, but that he loved us and gave his
son to be the propitiation for our sins. Romans 5.8 speaks of
the love of God manifested in the giving of Christ. In Romans
8, 32, though the word love is not mentioned at the beginning
of that paragraph, the whole summation of all that is promised
to us, of God's commitment to give us all things necessary
to take us to heaven, and nothing in this life, neither height
nor depth, nor principalities nor powers, shall be able to
separate us from what? From the love of God which is
in Christ Jesus our Lord. whom the Lord loves, he chastens
and scourges every son whom he receives. So we must think of
our God upon the throne, governing all things in his universe as
an absolute sovereign. He is not an unapproachable sovereign. He is the sovereign whose heart
is the heart of love. God is love. It is in the very
essence of his being to love. And He has loved and continues
to love us and will love us through all eternity. And we are to think
of Him as He's revealed supremely in Jesus Christ, where the love
of God is exegeted in the giving of His Son and in His willingness
to give Him up to the death of the cross. He is our loving Father. And once we are in the orbit
of his peculiar love as his children, the apostle throws out the challenge. Who, what, in heaven or earth
or in hell beneath can separate us from that love? But he is
also our all-knowing Father. Did you notice how many times
Jesus emphasized this in his references to God as Father in
the Sermon on the Mount? Matthew 6 and verse 4, and your
arms may be in secret that your father who sees in secret shall
recompense you. He is the father who sees in
secret. Verse 18 of the same chapter,
that you be not seen of men to pass but of your father who is
in secret and your father who sees in secret verse 32 All these
things to the Gentiles seek for your heavenly father knows What
things that you have need of these things Jesus emphasizes
the all-seeing all-knowing dimensions of the father and I must confess
that it was in preparation for the meditation tonight that this
thing hit me in a way I've never seen it before And I'm still
not satisfied that I can answer the question, why did Jesus emphasize
this aspect to his disciples in this magnificent declaration
of the principles that are operative in the kingdom of grace? I'm
not sure that I know all the reasons, but I do know that's
where Jesus put the emphasis. And if he put it there, then
obviously he knows that we desperately need to think of our father as
all seeing and all knowing. And I'm beginning, I think, to
understand why he did this. You see, you can't live honestly
with your father if you think you can hide from him. And that happened with you kids?
If you think you can do something naughty and secret, and your
father won't see it, then you're bold enough to attempt it. You're
not going to conceive of something that's a blatant disobedience
to your father's revealed will, and go right out in the middle
of the living room and say, hey Pop, come here, watch what I'm
going to do. I mean, you have got to be one cheeky dude to
do that. Now you look around and say,
Dad won't see, Dad won't hear. You sneak in the bedroom, you
start listening to music, you know Dad would never let you
listen to. You hear anything come up the stairs, you change
the channel to WFME. Is that right? You don't live comfortably
with a father that can only see some things if you've got any
controversy with him. But when next to pleasing God,
nothing is a greater desire in your heart than to please your
Father. You cannot not hide. Your Father sees in secret. How
are we to relate to God as Father in such a way that we have no
desire to hide? He sees! He sees in secret! Your Father knows! That brings
tremendous liberty, that I don't need to come to God and inform
Him of all the problems I have and all the needs I have. and
all the struggles I have, and hope I can get his attention.
There's no point in my pilgrimage where my father does not know
completely. No point in my pilgrimage, no
place I can go, so I'm 139, but my father's eye sees me. Now
that brings tremendous consolation, if I'm walking with integrity
before my father. But that brings real conviction
when I'm a naughty child. Then it ought to. If you're caught
red-handed by your father doing something he told you not to
do, the jig's up. You're embarrassed. You know
you're going to get it. And rightly so. Your father sees. Your father knows. You walk with
him. You commune with him. You leap
before the face of God. It's a liberating thing. It's
a delightful thing. to know that God on the throne
loves me. He knows me. He sees me. He knows my motives. He knows
when I've acted with integrity of heart and yet I've done something
stupid. And I confess my stupidity, but
I can say, Lord, you know that in the integrity of my heart
I did. He knows. And then he's a kindly disposed
father. Here I struggle with words and
I've got whiteouts in my notes. How can you express the truth
of Psalm 103 verses 8 to 14? the greatness of God's loving
kindness as far as the east is from the west so far as he removed
his transgressions from us like as a father pities his children
so the Lord pities those who fear him for he remembers our
frame Matthew 7, 11, If you then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father
in heaven give good things to those that ask Him? When I come
to ask for what in my perception is good, and I plead with Him,
I know He is kindly disposed to me. Even when my understanding
of my good is skewed, and He withholds what I ask, I don't
question the kindly disposition of His heart. He's kindly disposed
to me as his child, loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed, but he's a principled
heavenly father. And what do I mean by principled?
I mean you can't con him, you can't wear him down by whining,
you can't cajole him into thinking more favorably of you. He's a
principled father. He fathers his children in principles
of perfect love, perfect equity, justice, kindness, all of his
attributes together, funneled down upon the head of a hell-deserving
sinner who has fled to Christ. He's a principled father, that's
how he's described in Hebrews 12.4. When some of these Christians
are complaining that things are getting rough and getting kind
of hot, In their Christian experience, he says, you've not resisted
unto blood, striving against sin, but you have forgotten the
exhortation which reasons with you as sons. Hebrews 12, 5. My son, do not regard lightly
the chastening of the Lord, nor faint when you're reproved of
him. For whom the Lord loves, he chastens and scourges every
son whom he receives. It is for chastening that you
endure. God deals with you as sons. For what son is there whom
his father chastens not? I'll tell you the one that doesn't
chasten him. An unprincipled, mushy, soft, unrighteous father
doesn't chasten his son. The book of Proverbs describes
it. He withholds correction. He refuses to chasten. He's an
Eli. His sons are guilty of sins,
and he barks out a few complaints. But God indicts him and says,
You restrain not your sons. You weren't a principled father.
Don't project upward to God a father that you may have had, and you
could wear him down being cutesy if you were a little girl. You
knew just the buttons to push in your old pot. And you could
come in and you could push those buttons, you could get anything
you wanted. God's not your push-button pop. He's a principled father. And
when he sees that we need his rod of chastening, he'll bring
it upon us, and all our whimpering doesn't move him a bit. He may
say, like my mother would say to my father, give him some more.
Dad, he's not sweet yet. And God's dealings with us at
times can have the appearance of ruthlessness. The appearance of ruthlessness.
Where do you get that in the Bible? Read the book of Job.
Here is God's Son, righteous above all other men in his generation. Look at him sitting on a heap
of patches with sackcloth, scraping his boils with a piece of a broken
pot. Looking off and seeing the freshly
dug graves of his 10 children and having his accountant show
him he's wiped out and doesn't own a thing. Loving heavenly
father. Come off it. No don't come off it. He's a
principled father. God had issues to settle in the
unseen world where demons and the devil and the powers of darkness
operate in conflict with God. And God was doing something in
the discipline of His child to answer to those cosmic powers
and to bring Job to a new level. of self-discovery and self-disclosure,
and you read his repentance in Job 42, not a repentance for
shacking up with other women, not a repentance for taking advantage
of his servants. He protests all through the book
the innocency of his conscience in matters ethical and moral
before God and men. But he had new levels of discovery
of God's inscrutable sovereignty, of God's right to do what he
willed with his own. And God dealt with him in a way
that had the appearance of ruthlessness. Why? He's a principled father. Get close to where Paul was praying.
Those three times he gave himself to intense seasons, no doubt,
in my judgment, of fasting, for he says, in fasting's off, as
well as in hunger imposed upon him. Three times he lays hold
of God in intense season of prayer, saying, O God, this thorn in
my flesh, I can't go on and serve you with it. Surely, my Father,
you don't want me to serve you. with this overwhelming impediment. Take it from me. No answer. Another season of prayer. Take
it from me. No answer. Another season of
prayer. Why? He's convinced God is his
father. God knows him. God knows his
need. He perceives that his need is
to have this impediment, whatever it was, this thorn in his flesh
that made him consciously and obviously weak before the eyes
of others. He believes that the best thing
God can do is take it from him. Until finally, after the third
season of prayer, God says, No, my son, I see that there's something
far more far more disastrous in your life than being consciously
physically weak. And that's for you to be a man
puffed up because of all the privileges of grace I've conferred
upon you. And lest I be exalted over much,
he says, God showed me, this discipline was to keep me consciously
weak. For when I am weak, then am I
strong. God's dealings with the dealings
of a loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed, but principled Heavenly
Father. Not a mushy, unprincipled, capricious,
able to con Him with wines and pushing buttons kind of a Father. No, He is our Father, but He's principled. And notice how Jesus emphasizes
this In several other places, I take one specimen, Matthew
18. It's a very interesting use of the same phrase of Heavenly
Father. He's dealing with the subject
of forgiveness. He's been asked, how many times
should we forgive those who sin against us? And Peter sets a
limit, and the Lord says, no, true forgiveness has no limit
among the sons and daughters of the kingdom, because they
are forgiven by the God of heaven. And if the monarch of heaven
has forgiven them, then they must have a forgiving disposition
to all of their fellow mortals. So he gives a parable and shows
one man who didn't have that disposition. Verse 32, Then his
Lord called him unto him, and said to him, You wicked servant,
I forgave you all that debt, because you besought me. Should
not you have mercy on my fellow servant, even as I have mercy
on you? And his Lord was angry, and delivered
him to the tormentors, till he should pay all that was due.
Angry, delivered to tormentors. Now notice the application, verse
35, so shall also, now look at this, my heavenly father do. Do to whom? Unto you, if you
forgive not everyone his brother from the heart. Who is Jesus'
father? He's a principled father who
will be angry and deliver people to the torment Oh, my father,
my concept of God has no wrath and torment. Then reject your
idol and begin to worship the God of heaven. Jesus said, I've
come to reveal him. And he's the God who, when his
forgiveness is brought to you through my work, a disposition
of forgiveness is implanted within your breast. that you will never
consciously, deliberately, and impendently take a fellow sinner
by the throat and say, I'll never forgive you. And Jesus said,
if that's your disposition, my Father will be angry and deliver
you to the tormentors. That's what the text says. But I... It doesn't matter whether
you feel comfortable with it. Bring your comfort zone into
line with the Bible. The Father is revealed in the
Lord Jesus. And then, very briefly, I said
the God upon the throne is our loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed,
but principled Father in Heaven. Did you notice how many times
I tried to emphasize it in reading the phrases out of the Sermon
on the Mount? Your Father in Heaven! Your Heavenly Father! What is Jesus doing? By constantly
saying, Father in Heaven, Heavenly Father, He's underscoring that
all the intimacy with which He enters into communion with us
as His children, giving us the freedom of addressing Him as
our Father, putting within us the spirit of adoption, enabling
us to call the God who was our Judge to now call Him our Father. But we never forget, He's our
Father. who is in the heavens, literally.
He is our Heavenly Father. He does not cease to be God-exalted,
God-majestic, God-terrible and awesome in His holiness and in
His power, because He becomes our Father. And there is some
of this teaching that makes me sick, that says if you really
appreciate the grace of God, you'll come tripping into God's
presence anywhere, anytime, plop up on his lap and say, Hi Daddy!
And then they try to prove it by saying the Aramaic word Abba
has as its equivalent the intimacy of saying Daddy. My friends,
that's hogwash. That's not solid biblical exposition
and it's not sound theology. You never had a daddy in heaven,
nor did I. I had a dad who had much of heaven
in him. But he was a fellow creature. And in our most intimate moments,
we related as fellow creatures and fellow sinners. God is never
your fellow. He's your father who is in heaven.
Reverence, awe, are not at all inconsistent with saying, Oh
God, my I love you. I know you love me. Thank you
for your all-knowing, kindly disposed heart towards me. But he is my Father who is in
heaven. Jesus addresses him in John 17,
11, as I mentioned, as Holy Father, addresses him in Matthew 11,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth. the only one who had intimacy
with the Father as a fellow, never speaks of Him in a buddy-buddy
way. Say, I never thought of that.
Nor neither did I, till just now. Where did Jesus ever speak to
him in a cavalier light and buddy-buddy way? Holy Father, I thank You,
Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that you have revealed these
things unto babes. He's your father in heaven, and
because he is your father in heaven, no flip, hi daddy, look
at my new suspenders, tripping carelessly into the presence
of God. He is my father in heaven. He
sits upon his throne, before him are these creatures who've
never known the stain of sin, veiling face and feet, and crying
as they fly about the throne, not in dread, but in overwhelming
ecstasy of delight in his majesty. Holy, holy, holy is the Lord
God the Almighty. Look at those pictures in the
book of the revelation that we considered last Lord's Day. And
when it's God upon his throne and then the Lamb upon the throne,
where are those closest to the throne on their faces? In worship,
in adoration, in the sheer ecstasy of being overwhelmed with the
consciousness that God is not of our kind. He is of a totally
other kind. And in Christ, we can yet feel
comfortable in his presence. One other text. I hope some of
you thought of this. It was many, many months ago,
several years ago, that I expounded it. Remember 1 Peter 1? Here's
the Father revealed in Christ. What concept did Peter have of
Father after spending three years with the Lord Jesus? Having the
Spirit given to him in a unique way as an apostle, what was his
perspective on the Father? Well, look what he says, verse
17 of 1 Peter 1. And if you call on him as Father,
who without respect of persons judges according to each man's
work, pass the time of your sojourning in skip-happy, light-hearted
hand clapping joy knowing you were redeemed not with corruptible
things no you call on him his father who does not cease to
be the all-knowing God whom you nor oh no one else can con or
push the buttons if you call on him his father who has not
relinquished his role as judge he without respect of persons
judges according to each man's work Past the time of your sojourning
in fear, not the cringing fear of the son who has a capricious,
angry, undisciplined father who will whack him any time. No,
no, it is the fear born of the reality of who he is. And particularly
notice verse 18, knowing who he is in the light of the work
of Christ, knowing that you were redeemed not with corruptible
things, with silver or gold from your vain manner of life handed
down from your fathers, but with precious blood that is a lamb
without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ. It
is knowing the price of my redemption that frames my concept of God
Even when I know Him as Father, I know that He is so holy that
His love could not save me without an atonement. He is so just that
He could not confer just pardon without punishing His Son. It
is the knowledge of the price of redemption that shapes our
concept of God as Father. And we walk before his face with
joy as his sons and daughters, but we walk before his face knowing
he'll deal with us impartially in the last day. And because
we've been bought with such a precious price, we have that mingled experience
of all the liberty and delight of sons and daughters, but sons
and daughters of the Father who is in Now, I know that to preach
this is to cut right across the grain of contemporary, the contemporary
ethos of modern evangelicalism. I hear at times these men who
are Christian leaders, and they say, now, before we begin, let's
have a word of prayer now, Lord. And they're just talking like
they're talking. What a wretched, wretched parody of approaching
the living God. Jesus said, when you pray, say,
Our Father, who art in the heavens, Hallowed be your name. Oh, that's
so formal. Jesus said, that's the spirit
in which we're to pray. You've got a father contrary
to the word and the revelation made in Jesus Christ. You've
got an idol. Deal with your idol the way you're
supposed to. Now, I know I've gone a bit longer
than I should for a communion meditation. In closing, let me say this.
As we seek to fill the barrel of our souls with this truth
as ballast, that God on the throne is my loving, all-knowing, kindly
disposed, but principled Father in Heaven, we ask the question,
who can claim this relationship? And the Bible answers, only those
who are rightly related to Christ. And here I give you the two texts
from John that I mentioned earlier, John 14, This again struck me
as I studied and said there must be a lot of passages that speak
of God's unconditional love. Very interesting. Listen to what
Jesus says in John 14 in verse 21. He who has my commandments
and keeps them, he it is that loves me and he that loves me
shall be loved of my Father. You want to be loved of the Father
with a distinctive, peculiar love? Then you love Jesus and
keep his commandments. That's what Jesus said. I didn't
write it, he did. But that's contrary to my concept
of God's unconditional love! Then junk your concept. Bend
it to the Word of God. Let God be true in every man
and liar, even those who write their books on unconditional
love. Listen to Jesus in John 1423 Jesus said if a man loved me
he will keep my word and my father will love him condition. This
peculiar intimate love of the father is reserved for those
who do not love Jesus and keep his word. Who are those who love
Jesus and keep his word will turn over to John 16 and the
Lord tells us this is 26 and 27 and that day she'll ask in
my in my name and I will not say unto you that I will pray
the father for you for the father himself loves you because because
this is conditioned love because you have loved me and have believed
that I came forth from the father. Here the Lord traces their love
to him back to their faith in him as having come forth from
the father. It is faith that works by love,
Paul says in Galatians 5, and I believe it's verse 6. And here
Jesus says, those who can repose, the old writers would say, in
the complacent love of God. And what they didn't mean by
complacent, they didn't mean that it was inactive, but it
was a love of delight. Some of the old words are precious.
the complacent love of God. For whom is that reserved? Jesus
says, for those, for those who've loved Him, and those who love
Him are those who have come to faith. They've embraced Christ
for who He is and for what He's done on behalf of sinners. It
is only those rightly related to Christ who have God as their
Father. The Galatians 4 passage tells
us we needed the sending forth of the Son before we could have
adoption as sons. In Ephesians 1.5 says that we
were predestined to sonship through Jesus Christ unto himself. If you're not in Christ, you
cannot bask in this wonderful consciousness that God on the
throne is my Father, loving, all-knowing, kindly disposed,
principled Father in heaven. But this is true for all who
are in Christ. And what a shame to live beneath
the joy and the privilege purchased it so dear a price. Christ redeemed
us that we might receive the spirit of adoption, enabling
us to enjoy the reality of that status. The spirit enables us
to cry, Abba, Father. May God grant that as we come
to the table, we'll see in the bread that symbolizes his body
assumed given in death for us, in his blood, shed in the violent
death of the cross for us. This, to the end, that we might
sit here and say, He is my Father, who is in heaven, loving, all-knowing,
kindly disposed, principled, heavenly Father. What we talk
about now and wonder at times if we know anything of what we're
talking Someday we'll see and know face to face. Let's pray. Our Father, what a privilege
to call you that blessed name. Forgive us when we have carelessly
let it trip off our lips. We would bow fresh in wonder
and awe that you, the God of heaven, who spoke galaxies into
being by the word of your mouth, that you would send your Son,
that all the obstacles in your justice and righteousness and
holiness might be overcome, that you might give us the status
of sons and daughters. O God, fill us anew with the
wonder of our and where we need to repent of erroneous concepts
of you, Lord, help us to repent of them and bring our minds subject
to the Scriptures and help us ever to see more clearly day
by day in the Lord Jesus, your heart, your disposition, your
dealings with us, your sons and daughters. Thank you for your
word. Thank you that we can now plead
that you will continue to be with us As we come in obedience
to our Lord Jesus, to this blessed table of remembrance, hear us,
we plead in Jesus' name. Amen.