Ecclesia Princeton
Ecclesia Princeton
And He Shall Be Called...Everlasting Father: Matthew 7vv7-11- Ian Graham
Pastor Ian Graham continues our series on the titles for the Messiah listed in Isaiah 9 looking at Jesus the Son as Eternal Father.
Good morning friends. My name is Ian. I have the joy of being a part of the staff that leads here, and so it's such a joy to be with you. We've been in an Advent teaching series as we anticipate Christmas, using Isaiah 9 as kind of our template and our framework, and we'll read that passage in Isaiah 9 that refers to Jesus, the coming Messiah. The first week, savannah looked at Jesus as the wonderful counselor. Last week, lydia explored that he is the mighty God. This baby that we first encounter in the manger, the one who brought the world to life, comes to us in the most delicate and fragile of states. And today, as we move through Isaiah 9, we're going to look at this third title, that of the coming Messiah, jesus as the everlasting Father.
Speaker 1:When I think about my own father, I think about a complete and utter loser. My dad coached my sports teams and the worst version of this was baseball. And I would be talking to him you know strategy about the game and I'd be like dad, who's pitching tomorrow? And he would say Stephen, stephen can't throw the ball over the plate, dad, which means we are going to lose. Like from the time the game starts we have no chance, and I would get super frustrated with him and I would, you know, kind of do all the passive-aggressive stuff we do as kids. And my dad was steadfast and consistent. I would say, dad, like we should really think about a different plan. And he said, son, he's like nobody else will ever let Stephen pitch. And he said, you know, stephen had the courage to say I want to pitch. And so for one time in his life he's going to get to be the pitcher. And 11-year-old me said, dad, that's the stupidest thing I've ever heard. But 39-year-old me says, wow, it's kind of amazing. We're talking about Jesus as the everlasting Father. In just a few moments we'll talk about some of the complications with that term Father. But it's no small matter that God has chosen the analogy of fatherhood as one of the ways that he will ever reveal himself to us. Now, as we discussed a few weeks back that he will ever reveal himself to us Now, as we discussed a few weeks back, god is not confined to our created gendered categories.
Speaker 1:So God is not just father. Because God is uncreated, he transcends male and femaleness, though those categories are inscribed into the codex of creation. God is not male or female. Does this make sense. 1 John God is spirit. He's transcendent, above our categories, and at times, throughout the story, God reveals himself in what we would culturally talk about in regards to motherhood, that God, like a mother hen, wants to gather his children. And so God does not refrain from referencing himself as he reveals himself as a mother, but overwhelmingly throughout the story, we see God revealing himself as father.
Speaker 1:Now again, as we discussed a few weeks back in our series on paradoxes, this does not tip the scales in a zero-sum sort of way, biasing fatherhood over motherhood or maleness over femaleness. It's only our human cultures that have to play these binary games right. God is not a zero-sum God, and so, over the past few decades, it's become fashionable to dismiss so much emphasis on God as the Father, and there are really well-intended and compassionate reasons for this. Many, as we don't need to be told in this room have had fathers who were absent or abusive or selfish. Why would we want to associate the God and the Savior of the universe with this sort of category when it holds so many wounds For us in this room? We come from a variety of cultures, with a variety of cultural expectations on what it means to be a good father. And so we have that that we're trying to address, and I understand the impulse and I'm sensitive to it myself to be reticent to refer to God as Father.
Speaker 1:From a philosophical and a theological perspective, none of our words or our ideas about God can fully encapsulate who God is. There's a whole tradition, called the apophatics, that for every affirmation we make about God, that God is love, that God is light, that God is spirit, in this tradition it's called the way, the negative way. At the same time that we affirm these things, they're saying well, god is not just love, god is not just light, god is not just spirit. And this negation is not making like endless language games where you can't say anything, but it's acknowledging our human limitations when it comes to speaking about God. So why can't we just dispense with the category of God as Father altogether?
Speaker 1:First of all, I want to say to all of those who struggle with the idea of God as Father altogether. First of all, I want to say to all of those who struggle with the idea of God as Father that it's okay and it's understandable. As with many of those roles and responsibilities that hold the greatest possibility for beauty and for goodness, they also hold the greatest possibility for damage and for trauma. And that which you have lost is truly great and terrible and I'm sorry. But I also hold out this hope that, just as you are aware and in touch with that which you have lost, you will become aware of the way that God is with you in your loss and is restoring that which has been lost.
Speaker 1:I love what Joel 2 says in his prophetic utterance. He says of the Lord that he will restore the years that the locust has eaten. And there are few spaces in our lives that are defined by locust years than our perception and experience of time. You think about a childhood as a period of time. How could you ever get that back? And yet God will restore the years that the locust has eaten. He will return all that which has been lost. He will mend and repair it. Jesus on the cross bellows my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And if you look into that utterance, there are so many resonances with what Jesus is saying. But I think, one of the things that Jesus is doing he's filling the void of abandonment with his presence that Jesus truly is making all things new, even that which is broken and seemingly beyond repair.
Speaker 1:In our relationships, especially in our most intimate and intense relationship, god, revealing himself as Father, is calling us to pay attention to God on God's terms, god on God's terms. Despite all of the potential for abuse and misuse, god has still chosen this analogy as a primary analogy and we take these terms seriously because we take God seriously. We take his words and his words to us seriously. And when the fatherless among us, of so many different stripes, reclaim the term, by the power of the grace of God, we proclaim the hope of the gospel that restores and redeems all things. George MacDonald, the 19th century theologian and pastor, captures this well. He says In my own childhood and boyhood, my father was the refuge from all the ills of life. And for those of you who can resonate with what George is saying, he says you have missed in life Every time a man might have been to you a refuge from the wind, a covert from the tempest, the shadow of a great rock in a weary land. That was a time when a father might have been a father. Indeed, happy you are, yet if you have found man or woman, such a refuge. So far have you only known a shadow of the perfect, seen the back of the only man, the perfect son of the perfect father, All that human tenderness can give or desire in the nearness and readiness.
Speaker 1:The Jewish rabbis have this interpretive technique called the kal vakomer, in which a premise that is true in a simple sense is infinitely more true of God. So that which we perceive as kind is but a glimpse and a shadow of God's infinite kindness. And this is a technique that Jesus uses throughout his teaching. One instance in Matthew chapter 7, the Sermon on the Mount, jesus applies this. He says look, here's an example of a good earthly father. How much more is the heavenly father good and perfect? Look what he does in Matthew chapter 7. Ask and it will be given to you, beginning in verse 7. Search and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you. Look at what he does in Matthew chapter 7. Or if the child asks for a fish would give a snake. If you, then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him?
Speaker 1:And one of the simple ways we miss the implications of this passage is because we forget that Jesus was really funny and he's talking to people and he's saying you fathers, you earthly fathers, if your child asked you for bread, you're not going to give him a rock. This would have engendered a little bit of laughter from his first century audience. And again, all we can do to absolve ourselves of these serious notions, of this deity floating through life, uttering cosmic nonsense to people who don't understand, please do that, because Jesus is really funny and he's telling jokes. He's saying I mean, you know how to respond to your children and you are limited in your wisdom and in your knowledge. And this is what Jesus is saying here. And so, when we talk about fathers, every glimpse that we have seen of good and proper fatherhood throughout this life is but a shadow. And what a sign of the God who is the infinite and, as Isaiah 9 tells us, the eternal, everlasting Father.
Speaker 1:Let's look in Isaiah 9 as we look at our passage. That's been our framework for this Advent series. Isaiah writes in verse 6 of Isaiah 9, for to us a child is born, to us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders. To us a son is given and the government will be on his shoulders, and he will be called Wonderful Counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, prince of Peace. Of the greatness of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over his kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness. From that time on and forever, the zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.
Speaker 1:One of the questions that drives the gospel narratives forward is who exactly is Jesus's father? It's one of the questions that Jesus's opponents will challenge him on. It's the question that starts the whole narrative on its course. Matthew 1, matthew begins with a genealogy which is tracing Jesus' lineage through the line of David back to the promise of Abraham. Matthew 1 tells us that Jesus, the Messiah, is the son of David and the son of Abraham. It then gives us insight into the story of Joseph accepting the call to be Jesus's earthly father.
Speaker 1:Do you know who, the first person to ask the question who exactly is Jesus's father? It was Joseph, because Mary comes to him and says I am with child and Joseph, having learned about the birds and the bees, says okay, well, and then Joseph makes in his mind his determination to dismiss this woman with child quietly, because he doesn't want to bring her to public shame, but he's like well, I know how that happens and it wasn't with me. Therefore, I will have to bid you farewell. But just as an angel of the Lord had appeared to Mary and proclaimed to her the good news that was unfolding in her midst, now an angel of the Lord meets Joseph and says to him, in Matthew 1, joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins. This story makes it clear that Joseph has a call to be a steward in Jesus's life as his earthly father, but it also makes it clear that Joseph is not the father of Jesus. What's conceived in the womb of Mary is from the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:In Luke's genealogy, luke traces Jesus' origins back to the heavenly father. Luke 3, verse 38, describes Jesus as a son of Seth, a son of Adam, a son of God. Isaiah tells us in Isaiah 9 that the coming Messiah that we proclaim to be Jesus will be the eternal Father. But what's the role that we typically assign to Jesus Throughout the Gospels, he is the Son. A couple of things are going on here. First, father, used in the sense that we see in Isaiah 9, can be used describing someone as a leader, a protector and a shepherd. In Isaiah 22, we see an example of this. Eliakim is a leader who replaces a self-serving administrator and he is labeled as a father. Look at Isaiah 22, verse 20. On that day I will call my servant Eliakim, son of Hilkialogically, biologically, their father, he would say as their proper leader, as the one who has the people's best interests at heart. He will be a father to them. So clearly the prophetic words have this connotation in mind.
Speaker 1:But the scriptures speak in multivalent ways. They say things that are true in the immediate, but also things that are fully and more encompassingly true in the future. And the scriptures are foretelling the oneness of the Father, and this one we call the Eternal Father. The Son, the Messiah Jesus will capture this oneness, where he is both one with the Father and yet not absorbed into the Father.
Speaker 1:Throughout John's gospel, john 5, jesus is talking to some people who are questioning him how can you say God is your Father? And Jesus says to them very truly I tell you, the son can do nothing on his own, but only what he sees the father doing. Whatever the father does, the son does likewise, the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing, and he will show him greater works than these, so that you will be astonished. Indeed, just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, so also the Son gives life to whomever he wishes. The Father judges no one, but has given all judgment to the Son so that all may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. Jesus is saying I don't do anything that I don't see my father doing, and then he describes how that seat of ultimate judgment that in the Jewish mindset and Jesus is talking in a Jewish context was always thought to be the sole possession of the father, has been given to the son. Jesus says this more simply and more plainly amongst his closest disciples in John, chapter 14. He says to Philip he says Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. What does the God of the universe look like? The God of the universe looks like Jesus.
Speaker 1:The work of Advent, as we reflect on this great mystery, is that the conception of the Holy Spirit giving birth to the incarnate Son, jesus revealing the Father are completely wrapped up in every action of Jesus. Jesus undertakes his ministry through the power of the Spirit revealing the Father, and they always work in concert, from incarnation to crucifixion, to resurrection. All of this is an expression of the threeness and the oneness of God. St Augustine writes of the Trinity. He goes on we should call the Father God, the Son God, the Holy Spirit God, not three gods, but that the Trinity is one God, neither diverse in nature but of the same substance, neither that the Father is sometimes the Son and sometimes the Holy Spirit, but that the Father is always Father, son is always Son and the Holy Spirit always the Holy Spirit.
Speaker 1:There are times where I read a quote and I just almost want to just stop and be like there it is. This is not one of those times. And if you're sitting there, you're like, wow, that is convoluted. Can I just say it's okay? Say it's okay. We are talking about the great mystery that is God, the Father, spirit and Son. Three and one, no less three, no more than one. And you have just been ushered into a great mystery and a great paradox. That is the foundation and bedrock of all of our reflection about God, and so if you're sitting there saying how does this work, you are in good company.
Speaker 1:But in some way, the mystery that we behold in the incarnation is that the God who made the universe through the power of the Spirit, is present in the Son, and he's no less three, no more one, and we hold those things together and we rest in that mystery. If we could explain it all the way, he would cease to be God, because God is bigger than our finite language and our ideas about God. But in some way, this one, whom Isaiah 9 proclaims as eternal father, is the son of man, the incarnate son, and we rest with that mystery and we look at things that are a little more concrete in our experience, in our lived life. So what I want to do is look at a few aspects of the fatherhood of God as it reveals God's character and it calls us, who are fathers in this room, both spiritually and physically, to reflect on the high calling that we've received from God. So just a couple attributes of a good father, and I pray that, especially for those for whom that term father is painful, I pray that God would just review himself to you in all his kindness.
Speaker 1:A good father disciplines. Now, in some cultures that's the only thing a good father does, but this is just one piece of the puzzle. There are more. But a good father disciplines God is our eternal father does not immediately whisk us out of the hardship and challenge of this life. Rather, there's something about the struggles that we face here that are shaping us to be citizens of the kingdom when it comes in full.
Speaker 1:Hebrews 12 tells us this Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as his children. Hebrews 12 tells us this human parents to discipline us, and we respected them. Should we not be even more willing to subject to the Father of spirits and live For? They disciplined us for a short time as seemed best to them, but he disciplines us for our good, in order that we may share his holiness Now. Discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time, but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it. Therefore, lift your drooping hands, strengthen your weak knees and make straight paths for your feet, so that what is lame may not be put out of joint but rather be healed.
Speaker 1:The author of Hebrews acknowledges the unpleasantness, the difficulty of discipline and trials that we face. Now there's a whole other sermon that has to be preached about the difference between trials that God is subjecting us to and our experiences of the random and chaotic evil of a fallen world. Those are different things and that's not the subject of our teaching for today, but it is important that we differentiate those things, because sometimes we can lie to ourselves and say that everything that's ever happened has been God disciplining us, and some of you have endured terrible and traumatic things, and I say this to you as good news. God does not need those kinds of evils and mean ways in order to discipline you. He does not throw more at you than you can handle and you're saying, yes, I've experienced more than I can handle, and that's the differentiation between living in a fallen world and being disciplined by God.
Speaker 1:Last year, I took my son Sullivan to his first competitive wrestling match. Now, I don't know what you know about wrestling. Wrestling was the thing for me. I played basketball in high school and we had this big gym and I remember these are both winter sports, so we'd be training inside and the basketball team would be warming up and the wrestlers had spent time putting trash bags on their bodies and they then put sweatsuits on and they were running and doing a bunch of weird stuff and I'm just dribbling the ball, looking. I'm like these guys are psychos. And my son, because of some friends in his life, started going to wrestling practice. And my thought is he's my kid, this is not going to last very long. And, lo and behold, here we were driving an hour away to a competitive wrestling match and he walks into a room that's not that much bigger than this one where the wrestling has started to be underway and he walks in and if you watch your kids wrestling, it's a very intense experience. It's like combat. So all these mild-mannered mothers and fathers are losing their minds and these kids are in combat.
Speaker 1:And Sully walks into all of this. He's six years old. At the time he looks around the room, I see his face fall white as a sheet and he goes Dad, I need to go to the bathroom. I was like, yeah, so I accompany him to the restroom and he goes Dad, I'm actually I'm sick. And I said, son, that's untrue. What you are experiencing right now is called sheer terror, and I have a little bit of it too. I said, dad, I'm like, but I'm like, buddy, we're here. I know you're nervous, I know you're a bit afraid, and that's all okay, but we're here, you're going to step in the ring and hold your head high, no matter what happens.
Speaker 1:And to watch him not immediately summon this courage and be like, yes, I'm going to do it. He's terrified the whole time. But to watch him step into the ring and, yeah, he got beat the first time and to watch him step into that place, that requires a ton of courage, a ton of courage that I've never experienced. I was so proud, but I also like, just as his dad, I knew this was a safe environment for him to be stretched. And this is what good fathers do. We're not just, you know, clearing the ground, so everything's easy. But it's like, hey, you can do this, you can try this. And best news, buddy, you can fail, because there's no failure here. Even if you lose, you've still won by exhibiting the courage to step in here.
Speaker 1:And so we see moments like this in the lives of our kids. And again, I tell you all this story under the guise of Matthew 7. If bad earthly fathers are able sometimes to summon something that looks like heaven, that's a testament to Jesus, not because I'm an awesome dad and the same is true watching Courtney with our daughters who are dancers. There's a lot of tricks in dance. They do a lot of flips and aerials and to watch them try that stuff for the first time, I think I'm more scared than they are. But the girls are afraid and Courtney patiently spots them, encourages them, encourages them, pushes them when they want to quit and it's been amazing to watch these tricks that they can do because they work at these things. But that's just an example of the way that the Father disciplines us.
Speaker 1:Good fathers are protectors. Psalm 68, verses 5 and 6. Some of the most beautiful expressions of God as Father in the Scriptures. Father of orphans, protector of widows, is God in his holy habitation. God gives the desolate a home to live in. He leads out the prisoners to prosperity. But the rebellious live in a parched land. God in his dwelling place, what the scriptures refer to as the heavens. His eye is fixed on the weakest, those we deem the weakest and least significant in our culture.
Speaker 1:Jesus protects the sanctity of his father's house when he goes into the temple and sees that prayers of the people are being inhibited by the commerce and division that is taking place there. He clears out the temple, makes a whip of cords, overturning the money changers' tables, saying take these things out of here, stop making my father's house into a marketplace. Jesus protects the woman who is caught in adultery. When a mob drags this woman only the woman, not the man caught in adultery. When a mob drags this woman only the woman, not the man before Jesus and says our law says that we must stone these kinds of women who are engaged in this kind of behavior. What do you say? And Jesus bends down indifferently, riding in the dust, and he says you who is without sin? You go ahead and throw the first stone and we hear the sound of the stones dropping to the ground.
Speaker 1:Jesus is a protector. We turn protection into all this Liam Neeson type combat, but protection is much more about attention and concern. A good father is a protector and for us, as we see God as our father, ecclesia, this is not about male or female. We are children of our Father in heaven, as John reminds us. So to be His children is to be a people who protect the least of these in our midst and to be like our Heavenly Father to do the things that he does.
Speaker 1:A good Father comforts and provides Jeremiah 31. See, I'm going to bring them from the land of the north and gather them from the farthest parts of the earth, jeremiah 31. Of water and a straight path where they shall not stumble, for I have become a father to Israel and Ephraim is my firstborn. Hear the word of the Lord O nations and declare it in the coastlands far away. He who scattered Israel will gather him and will keep him as a shepherd does a flock. In Jeremiah 31, the context is the people have been cast away into exile because they refused to trust God as their father. But now God is welcoming them home and restoring them. God is leading them back with consolation and with clearing the ground for them to return and to thrive, and I love this connection between consolation and provision.
Speaker 1:A lot of our cultural categories would say that, oh, fathers are providers. Well here, fathers, yes, are providers, but they're also consolers. And so for us, how do we see God as Father exhibiting his character? A good father blesses when Jesus receives baptism from John the Baptist in Luke, chapter 3. Look at what it says Now. When all the people were baptized, and when Jesus had also been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form, like a dove, and a voice came from heaven you are my son, the beloved, with you, I am well pleased. There are 24 chapters in Luke's gospel. This happens in Luke, chapter 3. What this tells us is that all the amazing things that Jesus is about to do, all the faithful things that Jesus is about to do, is yet to come. When God says of Jesus you are my son, with you, I am well pleased, I am well pleased. And what this tells us is that, before any of the amazing stuff that Jesus does, god delights in Jesus and everything that Jesus will accomplish will be accomplished in the echo of that blessing. And for us as fathers, we are invited to be like Jesus.
Speaker 1:On my best nights, I put our kids to bed and I gather them to pray, and our boys share a room, our girls share a room, and my prayers tend to start something like this dear Lord, thank you for these incredible girls, thank you for these incredible boys, and my hope and my prayer is that, in that subtle compounding effect of just saying God, thank you just for the gift of these people, that that will be their experience, not only of me as their dad but as God, is that, in the context of prayer, what they see is that they are received with gratitude and with welcome. We have the opportunity to speak and to embody words of blessing. And blessing is not just words, it's binding the well-being of your life, investing words, gifts, relationship for the well-being of another person. Now I say all that to say. On my worst nights I'm like please shut up and go to bed. I'm so tired of you being awake and I've been in here four times. But in the best moments, earthly fathers you know, you who are evil, know how to give good gifts.
Speaker 1:Robert Hayden, I think, captures the blessings of a father in really powerful ways in his poem Sunday Mornings. He says Sundays too. My father got up early and put his clothes on in the blue-black cold, then, with cracked hands that ached from labor in the weekday weather, made banked fires blaze. No one ever thanked him. I'd wake and hear the cold splintering breaking. When the rooms were warm he'd call and slowly I would rise and dress, fearing the chronic angers of that house, speaking indifferently to him who had driven out the cold and polished my good shoes as well. What did I know? What did I know of love's austere and lonely offices? A good father forgives. A good father forgives. One of the most powerful images of God as father is found in Luke 15.
Speaker 1:A son has severed most of his relational ties to his father's household. He's essentially told the father hey, father, give me all of my inheritance. I wish you were dead. And he shamed the family publicly because of what the father had to do to give the son his inheritance. All of a sudden, all of the town. This is not a private society, individualistic society. This is a very public society. And this son is shaming the family in the face of the entire town.
Speaker 1:And the story tells us that the son goes off and he squanders all that which he had gotten from the father and then he has it in his mind to come back. But it's not so simple as just the son coming back. The son wants to come back and still kind of make his own way. There's a bunch of details in the story that we won't get into today. But as the son shows up in the town, the town is like no way you are welcome back here anymore. No way you are welcome back here anymore. And so they start to form a little shaming mob to say you're not welcome here, get out of here. You are not at home here anymore. You've wasted all of the town's resources, not just your family's. And as all of this is transpiring, luke 15, jesus, describing the Father who is in heaven, tells us that the Father had spent every day looking down the horizon of the road. And as he sees that day for which he has long hoped for the return of this Son, he sees him from far off and then the Father begins to run towards his Son.
Speaker 1:Now, this is a culture. This ancient Near Eastern culture was a culture where old men did not run. They wore long flowing robes. To expose the top parts of your legs was shameful In a culture where a man's pace declared his wisdom. Old men walked slow, they did not run. Running was for young fools. And here is this man hiking up his robes, running towards his son, and in doing so, all of the shame and the accumulated vitriol that was being focused on the son. You can hear the record stop. You can see the faces of all the crowd turn towards the man who is running and the father embraces his son, says put a ring on his finger, put a robe on his shoulder, sandals on his feet, all of these cultural markers of the authority of the father's house. My son, who was dead, is alive again and he throws a party. And we see, this is who God the father is. And we see, this is who God the Father is. And this is Jesus, the incarnate Son, being born in a manger, running to us, stopping at nothing to be God with us. The wonder, the mystery of Christmas, that in the incarnation, god shows us what kind of Father he is and we merely have to respond by receiving his embrace. I'm going to invite the worship team forward.
Speaker 1:I remember I went to a charismatic university and one night, me and a friend of mine that we recently met, we were praying in our dorm room. Because that's the kind of thing you did at a charismatic university. It's a really amazing thing. We're praying. And I remember the first time I heard my friend Bobby refer to God as Daddy and I got, to be honest, I have some sentimentality to me, but there's like lines there and I was like, huh, that feels weird. I was like, all right, let's just roll with it. We're just. You know, we're praying Daddy, god, daddy. I was like, huh, that feels weird. And I was like, all right, let's just roll with it. We're just, you know, we're praying, daddy, god, daddy. I was like, wow, and I got to know Bobby a little, a lot better.
Speaker 1:He's a dear friend of mine to this day and as I learned about Bobby's story, it just so happened that we had for a time lived in the same town in Tennessee. But he told me about his father who had committed suicide when he was young, and he tried to fill the void that inevitably emerges from that kind of trauma with all the things that we inevitably try to fill them with drugs and alcohol and relationships, all that kind of stuff. And he found that none of it would fill, none of it would satisfy. And then he met Jesus and in every way in Bobby's life, jesus and his presence, his salvation, his life ongoing, filled that void, that vacuum of fatherhood in Bobby's life. And so for him to call God Daddy was not some expression of weird, charismatic culture. It was the absolute, intimate cry that Jesus utters when he says Abba, father, and that which was immediately kind of like a disease for me, like oh, that's weird, became this testimony of who God is, like what he really does in the life of somebody.
Speaker 1:It's not just we talk about redemption, we don't just talk about restoration. God does that. This is the kind of father that he is. And so this morning I tell you that, to declare the good news to you that, no matter what you come with, no matter what kind of shame, no matter what kind of baggage, no matter what kind of loss you come with, come with no matter what kind of shame, no matter what kind of baggage, no matter what kind of loss you come with, god is the God, the Father, who redeems and restores all things. And my hope is that you will just behold him this morning, that, through the power of the Holy Spirit, that he will convict you and communicate to you that you are his daughter, you are his son, he loves you, he protects you, he comforts you. Yes, he disciplines you, but he is for you, and that his words of blessing will echo throughout this room. This is my daughter, this is my son, with whom I am well pleased and for whom I did everything my life, my death, resurrection, ascension for you. I'm going to pray for the Holy Spirit to come. Then we're going to have a time of response and worship, and then we'll come to the table together. So we pray, come Holy Spirit, god.
Speaker 1:I pray first off for those, god, for whom we've referenced God, for whom father is a painful category, filled with trauma or with just a sense of regret. God, god, would you show us how you restore the years that the locust has eaten in this place? God? Would your gentle presence, lord, be comforting here in this place? Lord, would you remind us that we often tell ourselves so many lies. In these instances, we convince ourselves things are our fault. And, god, you are the eternal Father, the everlasting one. May we see your fatherhood as an expression of who you are and what you've done for us, god, and would you comfort Jesus, god, I pray for those of us who we had fathers and mothers who did their best, who did with what they had, god or that you would just subtly remind us to honor them, god, to communicate with them, to call them Lord.
Speaker 1:It would be grateful, even if there are limitations, god, god, I pray that for all of us, lord, we would see your character, your heart, the Son, revealing the Father through the power of the Holy Spirit, and that our desire, sanctified by your grace would be to be like you, to be like our Heavenly Father, a comforter, a protector, a provider, a person who blesses God, that we would receive your life, god, and live out of the overflow of that life. Jesus, we come before you in all the tenderness that our most intimate relationships demand. We just pray that you would have your way in this place. Lord, as we change postures, as we stand, would you keep ministering to dear sons and daughters here in this place? We believe that you are here because you've poured your spirit out. We love you, jesus. We declare all these things in your name. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. We pray Amen.