SPEAKER_00: We have a tendency as culture to do museums the wrong way.
SPEAKER_00: And what I mean by that is uh the times I've been to a museum where it has famous pieces of art in it, I just want to go and see them all.
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, I go and stand, okay, I've seen this one, okay, now I've seen this one, and I'm kind of marking them off a list of famous pieces of art that I should have seen.
SPEAKER_00: And uh the reality is people who really love art will find a bench and sit in front of a piece of art for a long time and just take it in.
SPEAKER_00: The colors, the textures, the details, everything, and just sit and sit and let it soak in.
SPEAKER_00: And sometimes I think when we go through a book of the Bible, we we approach it like Americans approach museums, is let's just get through this thing and uh cover all the bases.
SPEAKER_00: Uh so what we're doing with Galatians is we're going to find a bench and just kind of sit for a bit and let our minds and hearts and souls uh based, sit and take in all of the elements.
SPEAKER_00: And uh what I'm hearing from people from last week is uh God has already started that process just sitting and thinking about the grace of God that is ours in Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So we're looking again at the same painting we looked at last week, which is Galatians chapter 1, verses 1 to 5.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're able, let me invite you to stand as I read for us Galatians 1, 1 through 5.
SPEAKER_00: Paul and apostle, not from men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead, and all the brothers who are with me, to the churches of Galatia.
SPEAKER_00: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever.
SPEAKER_00: That sends the reading of God's word for the morning.
SPEAKER_00: Let me uh invite you to join me as we pray and ask God to bless us.
SPEAKER_00: We came in this morning with the baggage that we know about.
SPEAKER_00: And we came in here this morning with baggage that we don't know about, that we're carrying around with us that we haven't seen.
SPEAKER_00: And the answer to both is you and your gospel.
SPEAKER_00: And so what we pray, Holy Father, is that you, in the name of Jesus, by the power of your spirit, would be at work in what is said this morning to draw all of our hearts to contemplate the greatness that is ours in being your children.
SPEAKER_00: Would you bless us?
SPEAKER_00: Would you bless your word?
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, would you bless me?
SPEAKER_00: I'm the wayward child, and I need you to help me talk to the people in this room about things that truly matter.
SPEAKER_00: Bless us.
SPEAKER_00: Bless me.
SPEAKER_00: Make our time productive for the sake of the gospel, we ask in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Please be seated.
SPEAKER_00: I think it might be, might have been A.
SPEAKER_00: W.
SPEAKER_00: Tozer who said, when we think, what we think about when we hear the word God is the most important thing about us.
SPEAKER_00: What you think when you hear the word God is the most important thing about you.
SPEAKER_00: And everybody apparently thinks something about God.
SPEAKER_00: There's a book called Incomparable by Andrew Wilson.
SPEAKER_00: And he's a scholar, he's a writer, he's a preacher and teacher, and uh he knows a variety of ancient languages and modern languages.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what he said.
SPEAKER_00: He said, Every language that he knows has a word for God.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them don't have tenses like present tense, past tense, future tense.
SPEAKER_00: Some of them don't have the word the.
SPEAKER_00: They don't have a word the in their language.
SPEAKER_00: But every single language that he knows has a word for God.
SPEAKER_00: He said they may not be talking about the same God or the true God, but they all have the word.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere in the mindset of everyone in the world is the idea of a God.
SPEAKER_00: God is not really a name, actually, but a title.
SPEAKER_00: It is what we call a common noun, not a proper noun.
SPEAKER_00: It's like referring to the president rather than George Washington.
SPEAKER_00: This means, of course, that the word God can be understood in lots of different ways depending on people's backgrounds.
SPEAKER_00: So that means everybody knows the word God, but we all have varying views of what God is really like.
SPEAKER_00: This was real, this really was brought home to me several years ago.
SPEAKER_00: It was a decade ago, it's 2016, and some of you remember there was a nightclub shooting in Orlando.
SPEAKER_00: It was at an LGBT establishment.
SPEAKER_00: And within just a few hours, maybe just a few days, I remember reading an article, and in the article it was somebody saying that God hates LGBT, therefore, this was an act of God's judgment on the community.
SPEAKER_00: And almost right beside it was an article that said, God is LGBT, so this is a great tragedy.
SPEAKER_00: And it was fascinating that these two people, these two people who wrote these had very different takes on this based on their view of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that for most of us, we, our view of God has been shaped in some ways by the values of our culture and the people around us, so that we naturally latch on to a view of God that supports and justifies the things that we believe about the rest of the world.
SPEAKER_00: So perhaps the biggest question of life is what do we think about God?
SPEAKER_00: And this question is difficult for us because there are so many competing and confident voices out there telling us about God.
SPEAKER_00: And this is part of why we're reading Galatians, is because the phenomenon of people trying to redefine God to fit their views and values that they already hold instead of uh letting God speak for himself and change those values is not new.
SPEAKER_00: So the Apostle Paul had to deal with this in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: God was being portrayed as a legalist, a racist, a ruthless tyrant, a cosmic landlord pounding on the door, demanding that we pay him when he doesn't have any need of that money.
SPEAKER_00: So, do you think that's what God is like?
SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's what God's like?
SPEAKER_00: The Apostle Paul wrote Galatians to correct this view and to give us a true knowledge of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: And that's where we start.
SPEAKER_00: True knowledge of God matters.
SPEAKER_00: It matters.
SPEAKER_00: What we believe about God matters to God.
SPEAKER_00: There are a lot of voices out there telling us who God is, lots of voices telling us what God wants for us, lots of voices claiming to have spiritual insight.
SPEAKER_00: And we didn't look at this, but we're going to look at this verse next week.
SPEAKER_00: In chapter 1, verse 8.
SPEAKER_00: Functionally, what God, what Paul says on behalf of God is if anyone is claiming to have insight about God and is misrepresenting God and what he wants for us, let that person be eternally condemned.
SPEAKER_00: Clearly, it matters to God what we think about him.
SPEAKER_00: God apparently cares a great deal about what we believe about him.
SPEAKER_00: And Paul knew this firsthand because he himself considered, he probably considered himself the disciplinary hand of God, but then he himself received discipline from God.
SPEAKER_00: So Paul, as a religious, zealous Jew, was going around and trying to silence Christians in the Christian community because he said they're teaching something that's wrong about God.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul would go and give his approval when Christians were stoned.
SPEAKER_00: He was on his way to arrest Christians for what they were teaching, to put them into a prison, to bring them before councils, when the resurrected Jesus Christ appeared to him and told him that he was fundamentally wrong.
SPEAKER_00: Paul was wrong about God.
SPEAKER_00: And not until that moment did Paul realize that he was wrong.
SPEAKER_00: So here is a true statement that I'm going to state in the negative.
SPEAKER_00: People can be wrong about God.
SPEAKER_00: That really bothers us in the United States because we feel like people should have the right to choose for themselves what God is right what God is like.
SPEAKER_00: Now, for us to say that has a covert, hidden, tacit belief that's underneath the surface that's being also promoted that requires us all to accept that God has not really made himself known and that we can't, we can, we have the freedom to actually believe whatever we want without any kind of consequences.
SPEAKER_00: So God's not known, and so we make God whoever we want him to be.
SPEAKER_00: If you want a God, great.
SPEAKER_00: If you don't want a God, that's also okay.
SPEAKER_00: We don't have access to the real God, so we're free to make it a matter of self-expression.
SPEAKER_00: But the belief that's underneath the surface that's there is one called expressive individualism.
SPEAKER_00: It is a very modern view, a product of the Enlightenment, and it says that the only way we can know the world around us is through sense, through science, through the things that we directly observe that way.
SPEAKER_00: And so God says the opposite.
SPEAKER_00: God says he is knowable, he's made himself known.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is a record of that, and he cares for us and wants us to know him.
SPEAKER_00: So let me say it in the positive way.
SPEAKER_00: People can be right about God.
SPEAKER_00: God is knowable, he has told us, he's led us in, he's interacted with us in the world, and what we believe matters to him.
SPEAKER_00: And one of the reasons it matters so much to God is because it has an impact not just on our lives, but on the lives of people around us.
SPEAKER_00: There's a confusion about God that creates problems for people, and misrepresentation of God ruins how people live.
SPEAKER_00: Because what we believe about God shapes our the way we live in the world.
SPEAKER_00: This is a quote from Thomas Paine, one of our founding fathers.
SPEAKER_00: He said, A cruel God makes for a cruel man.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you believe about God is going to shape you and it's going to make you who you are.
SPEAKER_00: Now, a decade ago, around the same time as the shooting, there was a uh something that took place in Turkey, in Turkey.
SPEAKER_00: There was a wedding, and a 13-year-old went to the wedding wearing a bomb vest.
SPEAKER_00: Fifty people were killed at this wedding in Turkey.
SPEAKER_00: Now, what's fascinating, Turkey is modern-day Galatia.
SPEAKER_00: It's in the same place that Paul's writing to.
SPEAKER_00: Now, we would look at that and say that was an act of terrorism.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is that was an act of faith.
SPEAKER_00: That was somebody acting on what they believed about God in the world.
SPEAKER_00: And in that part of the world, there are people who believe that if if you die in a holy war as a martyr, you immediately go into paradise.
SPEAKER_00: It's because of what people believe about God.
SPEAKER_00: Now, there are people who say, well, that's why I don't want anything to do with a belief in God, because it it goes that way.
SPEAKER_00: But the reality is, is if you look at the majority of violent acts in the 20th century, the wars and things, were largely atheist, no God.
SPEAKER_00: People who didn't believe in a God fighting these battles, fighting these wars.
SPEAKER_00: So again, it matters what you believe about God.
SPEAKER_00: Is he real or is he not?
SPEAKER_00: And if he is, what is he like?
SPEAKER_00: And some of this has to do with Paul.
SPEAKER_00: Paul knew firsthand about what you believe impacts the way that you live.
SPEAKER_00: And part of it is because of the nature of God's relationship with us.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not just about what we believe about God shapes how we live, it's the nature of our relationship.
SPEAKER_00: We think that being sincere often is more important than being accurate, or being free to choose is more important than being accurate.
SPEAKER_00: It's about the right to choose.
SPEAKER_00: But God wants us, yes, to choose freely, in accordance with the truth, and to know him for who he really, really is.
SPEAKER_00: Choosing what is false, he doesn't want.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us, he's like any other person.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to enter into relationship with him.
SPEAKER_00: Again, this is from A.
SPEAKER_00: W.
SPEAKER_00: Tozer, who is a very well-known theologian from the 20th century.
SPEAKER_00: He wrote, God is a person, and in the depth of his mighty nature, he thinks, wills, enjoys, feels, loves, desires, and suffers as any other person may.
SPEAKER_00: We have almost forgotten that God is a person, and as such, a relationship with him can be cultivated, just like with any other person.
SPEAKER_00: So what's at stake is knowing God.
SPEAKER_00: It's not some abstract notion of going to heaven when we die or some of some abstract higher power.
SPEAKER_00: It's knowing and believing the true God as He's revealed Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And so Paul is writing to Galatians to correct false views of God, and this passage, his letter begins by letting us know who this God really is.
SPEAKER_00: He's a Father, the Fatherhood of God.
SPEAKER_00: He says it three times.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 1, God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 3, God our Father.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 4, our God and Father.
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't say God the all-powerful, God the all-knowing, God the just, which are all true, but God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: So what does Paul want us to be right about as we're entering into Galatians?
SPEAKER_00: Where does he want us to start?
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to start with the reality that God is our Father.
SPEAKER_00: So just these three things, very quick.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 1.
SPEAKER_00: He is God the Father.
SPEAKER_00: In John chapter 17, verse 24, Jesus prayed to his Father.
SPEAKER_00: And this is something he said, which is fascinating.
SPEAKER_00: He said, You loved me, Jesus speaking of himself, you loved me before the foundation of the world.
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, pre-incarnate Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: But what that means is before there was matter, time, energy, space, all the things that make up the created world, the love of God existed before the creation of any of that.
SPEAKER_00: The love of a father existed for his son before there was anything else.
SPEAKER_00: Before there was a creator, before he was directing the affairs of the earth, he was a father who loved.
SPEAKER_00: Before God made anything, he was a loving father.
SPEAKER_00: So when the Bible says God is love, it's being accurate in its portrayal of who God is.
SPEAKER_00: So God is Father.
SPEAKER_00: Chapter 1, verse 3, he goes a little bit deeper for us.
SPEAKER_00: He says he is God, our Father, which means he loves us with the same love with which he loves Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Which is really, really hard to fathom.
SPEAKER_00: He can't love me that much.
SPEAKER_00: But Jesus says he does.
SPEAKER_00: John 17, verse 23, Jesus said, so that the world may know that you sent me and loved them even as you loved me.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us with the same love with which he loves Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: John chapter 20, verse 17 says, I'm ascending to my Father and to your Father.
SPEAKER_00: He gives God the Father the same title for us that he gives God the Father for Himself.
SPEAKER_00: And then in chapter 1, verse 4, He is our God and Father.
SPEAKER_00: This Father also happens to be the real true God in all that he is.
SPEAKER_00: He's all powerful, he's all-knowing, he's creating, he's controlling.
SPEAKER_00: And when I was a kid, I wanted a dad with that kind of power.
SPEAKER_00: And I have that.
SPEAKER_00: I have a loving father who has that kind of power.
SPEAKER_00: So when we read the word father in Scripture, when we call God Father, it is meant to capture all of the proper emotions that come when we think about our earthly dads.
SPEAKER_00: When you're little, your dad is a giant and he's super strong.
SPEAKER_00: And he hoists you up and picks you up on his shoulders, and you have awe and respect for your father.
SPEAKER_00: It's wrapped up in knowing his love and his affection for you.
SPEAKER_00: So a father loves his children, he plays with his children, he introduces you to new things, he explores with you, he protects you, he rescues, he dances, he wrestles on the floor, he listens, he provides, he helps, he dances, uh, he shapes you, and he backs you up, and he cheers for you, and he weeps for you.
SPEAKER_00: Even when he corrects you, his love for you is evident.
SPEAKER_00: He may tell you things that you don't want to hear, but he's telling you because he's concerned and he loves you.
SPEAKER_00: Um it's not because he's stupid, it's not because he's mean, it's not because he doesn't know, it's because he's acting with what he does know.
SPEAKER_00: But there are ages, like your teenage years, when your father can do no right.
SPEAKER_00: Um but in the main, as you get older, you realize, no, there was a lot more wisdom there than I gave him credit for during this particular period of my life.
SPEAKER_00: In his seminal work, The Cross of Christ, British pastor and author John Stott relates an experience of someone coming to know God as Father.
SPEAKER_00: And this guy said that coming to God the Father was irresistible.
SPEAKER_00: Irresistible.
SPEAKER_00: It's a very word this Iranian student used when he was talking about his conversion to Christ.
SPEAKER_00: He was grew up reading the Quran, he grew up with his prayers, he led a good life, but he always felt that he was under this weight of sins and things he had done that he would never, ever be able to get out from under.
SPEAKER_00: And then he had some Christian friends, and he learned that Jesus Christ had died for the forgiveness of his sins.
SPEAKER_00: And this is what this man told John Stott.
SPEAKER_00: He said, For me, the offer was irresistible and heaven sent.
SPEAKER_00: And he cried out to God to have mercy on him in Christ, and almost immediately he said, The burden of my past life was lifted.
SPEAKER_00: I felt as if a huge weight had gone.
SPEAKER_00: With the relief and sense of likeness came incredible joy.
SPEAKER_00: At last it had happened.
SPEAKER_00: I was free of my past.
SPEAKER_00: I was free of my sin.
SPEAKER_00: I knew that God had forgiven me, and I felt clean.
SPEAKER_00: I wanted to shout and tell everybody.
SPEAKER_00: And he said, it was through the cross of Christ that the character of God became clearly in focus for him.
SPEAKER_00: And he found what he said was Islam's missing dimension.
SPEAKER_00: And this was this man's young man's words.
SPEAKER_00: He said, the intimate fatherhood of God and the deep assurance of sins forgiven.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the most unique and beautiful things about what the Bible teaches us about God is the full forgiveness of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: That God would love us that way without us earning it or trying to make up for it.
SPEAKER_00: It's beautiful.
SPEAKER_00: Now, I'm talking about dads, and I know that some of you are triggered.
SPEAKER_00: And some of you in your minds are thinking, oh, please don't let God be like my dad.
SPEAKER_00: Please don't let him be like my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I've done enough ministry to know that there is a vast number of people who have daddy issues.
SPEAKER_00: We do.
SPEAKER_00: We have negative eye uh negative ideas coming to our minds about God as father because of our human fathers, because human fathers can be distant and cold and demanding and self-absorbed and angry and harsh and abusive uh and sometimes just plain absent.
SPEAKER_00: So we carry that around.
SPEAKER_00: God, please don't be like that.
SPEAKER_00: But let me refer to you to something.
SPEAKER_00: Uh going back to our museum idea.
SPEAKER_00: There are there are museum pieces from the ancient world, and uh often you will see a statue of Julius Caesar who's missing his nose.
SPEAKER_00: And uh I'm pretty sure that Julius Caesar in real life was not missing his nose.
SPEAKER_00: So I don't think that's an accurate portrayal of how he actually looked.
SPEAKER_00: Somewhere along the way, he fell, you know, the statue fell and the nose broke off.
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe some angry person came and chipped it away, I don't know.
SPEAKER_00: But at some point, the effigy of Julius Caesar has become broken.
SPEAKER_00: So it's not what it originally was.
SPEAKER_00: Fatherhood is like that for us in the world.
SPEAKER_00: Your human dad, and me included, is a flawed effigy, uh, a statue, a damaged representation.
SPEAKER_00: Whatever you wish that your father was, those good things, God the Father is.
SPEAKER_00: I wish my dad was more loving, more affectionate, more understanding, more respectable, wiser.
SPEAKER_00: I just wish he was there.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father is.
SPEAKER_00: All of those things, they're true of our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: Some of you had good had good dads, but compared to the fatherhood of God, it's like seeing a reflection in a storefront window compared to the solid reality of God in our lives.
SPEAKER_00: So, what kind of father is God the Father?
SPEAKER_00: This passage tells us our Father is a God of grace.
SPEAKER_00: He wants us to be sure about one thing as we go through the book of Galatians, and that is the gospel.
SPEAKER_00: The word gospel simply means good news, not like, you know, water cooler news or somebody's just talking about stuff that's going on.
SPEAKER_00: This is a proclamation from heaven of saying there is forgiveness for sinners, and nothing can keep us from him because of what he is like.
SPEAKER_00: Paul summarizes the gospel with this little phrase in verse 6 that we didn't read.
SPEAKER_00: Again, we'll look at it next week.
SPEAKER_00: The grace of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: So what is grace?
SPEAKER_00: Grace is God's utter and complete love for you, goodness to you, acceptance of you, apart from anything that you might do or have done.
SPEAKER_00: God, good or bad.
SPEAKER_00: In fact, God's grace led him to act for you when you couldn't and wouldn't.
SPEAKER_00: And in fact, as we're looking through these verses right here, we see that Jesus has done it all.
SPEAKER_00: God sent Jesus to do it all, everything that needed to be done.
SPEAKER_00: So I want you to picture in your mind a football team, which used to be composed of, you know, the people on the field and the coaching staff.
SPEAKER_00: Now there's a huge organization and everybody's divided up in some way.
SPEAKER_00: So on the offense, you have the quarterback, you have the linemen, you have the receivers, you have the tailback.
SPEAKER_00: In the defense, you have the nose guard, the linebackers, the defensive ends, the uh the players in the backfield.
SPEAKER_00: Then you also have on the sidelines, you have the coaching staff and all the advisors, and then up in the booths, you have people with headsets watching the game and advising what's going to take place.
SPEAKER_00: You have all the advertisers and marketers and other people trying to keep the money coming in so that this team can continue to run.
SPEAKER_00: So you have this really big organization that's trying to work towards one single goal.
SPEAKER_00: And the Bible says we only have one.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus has accomplished it all.
SPEAKER_00: There's not a team of people working for our salvation, there's just one.
SPEAKER_00: And he's accomplished it, and Jesus has done it all himself.
SPEAKER_00: This is what we read in verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: He gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age.
SPEAKER_00: He gave himself, period.
SPEAKER_00: He gave everything.
SPEAKER_00: You can't admit the little you see of yourself, but Jesus saw it all and he sees it all.
SPEAKER_00: And the reality is that he tells us is God the Father planned this.
SPEAKER_00: Verse 4.
SPEAKER_00: Jesus gave himself for our sins to deliver us from the present evil age according to the will of our God and Father.
SPEAKER_00: God the Father planned it and raised Jesus to life to show that it was really fully accomplished on your behalf.
SPEAKER_00: He sent the only one who could succeed, and he was successful for all of us who call upon it.
SPEAKER_00: So he is utterly gracious, he's a unrelenting, he's a relentlessly good father and understands our weakness.
SPEAKER_00: He embraces us even in our failures, but celebrates with us in our successes.
SPEAKER_00: This is what Michael Reeves said.
SPEAKER_00: He celebrates our salvation.
SPEAKER_00: When someone comes to faith, let me see.
SPEAKER_00: When someone comes to faith, Christians often smile and say with allusions to Luke 15.10 that the angels will be rejoicing in heaven.
SPEAKER_00: But what Luke 15, 10 actually says is that there is joy in heaven before the angels of God over one sinner who repents.
SPEAKER_00: So who is before the angels of God in heaven?
SPEAKER_00: It's God, first and foremost, who rejoices to lavish his love on those who have called upon him after having rejected him.
SPEAKER_00: So God forgives all of our sins.
SPEAKER_00: God's love is so great that he sent his son to die for our sins.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here this morning and you're hearing this message, maybe for the first time, that Jesus dies for sins, please know that if you believe in Jesus, all of your sins are placed upon him and he has paid all the penalty.
SPEAKER_00: And at the same time, the righteousness of Jesus, his perfect life that he lived, is given to you so that when God sees you, he treats you according to the work that you have done.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean he doesn't discipline you when you need to be disciplined.
SPEAKER_00: It doesn't mean that you don't have to face the consequences for what you have done on earth.
SPEAKER_00: But what it means is God's affection never changes, falters, or wavers.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you as much as he loves Jesus, even when you have sinned.
SPEAKER_00: So what it means is God's not angry with you if you're a Christian and you struggle with some sort of a sin.
SPEAKER_00: His father's heart goes out to you.
SPEAKER_00: He hates a sin that keeps you from him and makes you feel small and weak and crushes you.
SPEAKER_00: And he bids you to come in him with all your struggles, all your flaws, all your guilt and shame, and to find his embrace, his love, his full forgiveness and acceptance, and say, My father is the one who can fix this.
SPEAKER_00: You know, we tend to say when we mess up, I messed up, my dad's gonna kill me.
SPEAKER_00: In the gospel, we say, I messed up.
SPEAKER_00: I need to go to my dad.
SPEAKER_00: Several years ago, Charles.
SPEAKER_00: Charles was one of my students, and uh he was um, and I'm I'm speaking roundabout.
SPEAKER_00: He had become addicted to online material.
SPEAKER_00: And he came and told me, I knew his dad, and I said, You need to go talk to your dad.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I can't tell him, I can't talk to my dad about this.
SPEAKER_00: I said, Yeah, you can.
SPEAKER_00: He said, I can't talk to my dad.
SPEAKER_00: I said, You need to talk to your dad.
SPEAKER_00: So call him when you leave here and tell him you're coming home this weekend and you're going to have a conversation with him.
SPEAKER_00: So he did.
SPEAKER_00: So I saw him that week and I said, Did you call your dad?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah, I'm going home this weekend.
SPEAKER_00: So he went home that weekend, came back the next week, and uh I saw him at our large group and I said, So did you talk to your dad?
SPEAKER_00: He said, Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: I talked to my dad.
SPEAKER_00: When I got home, uh, I said, Hey, we need to go have a conversation.
SPEAKER_00: So we got in the car and we went to a state park so we could have privacy because I didn't want anybody overhearing us in the in the house.
SPEAKER_00: And when we pulled up into the parking lot, there was an ice cream truck.
SPEAKER_00: And so my dad said, Do you want to get some ice cream?
SPEAKER_00: And uh he said, Yeah.
SPEAKER_00: So they went over and got ice cream and just stood under a tree in the parking lot for hours talking.
SPEAKER_00: And his father wept with him and prayed for him, expressed his love for him, told him how much he loved him and how how glad he was he was his son.
SPEAKER_00: And so Charles came back to me and he said, That's the best conversation I've ever had with my dad.
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't what I expected.
SPEAKER_00: When we come to this passage, and others like it, this is our Heavenly Father.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us when we're weak.
SPEAKER_00: He loves us when we've messed up, he loves us when we're struggling, He loves us when people around us are angry at us.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: He's crazy about you.
SPEAKER_00: This is why He sent the only one who would succeed to be successful, knowing what Jesus, the Son, was going to go through for our sakes, but it was the only way that God could save you.
SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
SPEAKER_00: It's Galatians, we're sitting in front of the museum piece, and I'm just describing what I see.
SPEAKER_00: And I see a Father who loves in ways you cannot fathom.
SPEAKER_00: He loves you.
SPEAKER_00: No matter where you've been, no matter what you've done, no matter how dirty your hands feel, how grimy it feels, he says, Come to me in the name of Christ and the power of the Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And it will be that weight that is lifted off because you will encounter this God of great love.
SPEAKER_00: Let me pray for us.