The Father: Origin of the Species.

Introduction

2005-09-19T00:27:00.000-07:00

As I have been reflecting on the disaster in America and it’s horrific after-effects, the questions come a-haunting – why did this happen? If God is such a loving God and Father, why bring this disaster on people? Of course, this question can be asked the world over. America has the advantage of broadcasting detailed images of its catastrophes to everyone else and that brings their problems to the forefront of our minds. The fact that they are so similar to us in culture and wealth and lifestyle makes their bad news seem closer to home, but the truth is that there are horrendous events and tragedies happening all over the world about which we can ask the same question – Why?

Today on Father’s Day we are meant to be remembering and showing gratitude to our fathers for being our father. My intention is to show that fatherhood is not something we look around for and use as a description of what God is like, but a father is what God actually is – even before he created the world. Ephesians 3:14-15 tells us that God is the Father after whom all families are named. All fatherhood since the beginning of creation come after God’s fatherhood and is a pale imitation. He is the origin of “fathers” – the origin of that species, but instead of each successive generation changing and developing into something better as some theories of evolution would have us believe happens in the world, each father is closer to or further away from what a father should be, and none ever attain to the perfection of God the Original Father.
What I want to do is show you what the original Father is like, what our response should be, and how that squares with all the terrible things that are happening in our world.

God the Father always LOVES.

2005-09-19T00:25:00.000-07:00

I have to say straight away that I am not a father, but I have talked to friends who have become fathers and I have been told that having a child is like falling in love. Their love for their children is amazing. One guy said that when his wife was pregnant with their second child, he was worried because he loved his first child so much that he didn’t think he’d have enough room in his heart to love his second child that much. Instead, when his second child was born he said his heart expanded and kept expanding with the birth of each of his four children.

What a picture of the love THE Father has for his creation and especially for us. If God is love, as 1 John 4:8 says, how much more does that true Father love His children than men who are only an image of fatherhood.

Exodus 34:6-7a : “The LORD, the LORD, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin.”

Psalm 145:17 17 The LORD is righteous in all his ways and loving toward all he has made.

Acts 14:17 “Yet he has not left himself without testimony: He has shown kindness by giving you rain from heaven and crops in their seasons; he provides you with plenty of food and fills your hearts with joy.”

The greatest measure of that love is mentioned in a well-known verse, John 3:16.

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

I always used to wonder how some paintings became so valuable – to me they didn’t necessarily look anything special. The Mona Lisa, for instance – what is so special about that painting? I’m sure other people could paint another lady just as well. Picasso – even when I understood and appreciated what he was trying to do with his painting I still struggled to see why his work was so expensive. In the end, I realised it all came down to what someone would pay for it. If someone could be convinced that they had to have that painting, they would pay $100 000, $200 000, $1 million for it and that value would automatically be attached.

The bizarre thing about God’s love for us is that even though He sees through all our efforts to be good, to show we are worth something and knows how poor our true value is, He still paid the highest price possible – that of His perfect, obedient, beautiful Son – for fatally flawed, rebellious, self-centred creations. He had to have us. That’s how much He loves us.

If God the Father always loves, how do we respond?

Everyone is already experiencing the love of God for all he has made. That we have anything at all is evidence of His Fatherly love. Because God is loving even toward the most evil people in the world, there is a sense that we do not have to do anything keep being loved that way and there is not much we can do if he decided to take it away.

On the other hand, as well as showing love because He is loving, it is clear that the reason He shows us that love is so, as Paul explained to one group of people:

…men would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. (Acts 17:27)

God the Father shows His love to all people so that some will wake up and realise that there is a greater love the Father provides to those who become His children through Jesus Christ.

Maybe that is you. You are not a Christian and you want to know the love of The Ultimate Father. The solution is to surrender your life to the Lord by believing that Jesus died to take people’s sins and to take the punishment that will come because of them, accepting that Jesus took your sins and committing yourself to living for Him. Do it by talking to God and telling Him that you believe that Jesus died for you and you want to live for Him and commit yourself to do it.

God the Father does not always show love in ways we expect.

2005-09-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

The Father always loves, but some of His actions don’t look like it. If He cannot woo you with kindness, He will prod you with pain.

There are many, many people who do not know the love of God the Father through Jesus Christ and who do not pay any attention to the love the Father already shows them in their ordinary everyday lives. To these people God’s love shows itself in uncomfortable or painful circumstances, designed to awaken them from a sleep that is sending them toward destruction.

John Wimber was a successful man in the music industry until things started to go terribly wrong. His marriage was falling apart and he could find no peace or way out. Finally he went out into the desert and cried out to God to reveal himself. That was what God was aiming at. He answered that prayer and John became a Christian.

A woman I know was married to a man who would beat her when they were both drunk, and she would wake up the next day with bruises. She decided not to drink one night to see what happened and after coming home from a night out with her drunk husband, he threatened her with a knife. She escaped out a window and never returned. But she did return to drinking and hard partying until a workmate told her about Jesus, and out of the pain and desolation she felt, she accepted Jesus as her Lord and Master, and God as her Father.

The same thing often happens in times of prolonged national suffering. Think of China, with its millions of Christians. A guy who attends church here went to visit Samuel Lamb after the worst of China’s hardships had past, and the one thing Samuel Lamb wanted his group to pray for China was more persecution. The church was suffering without it. When people are in pain, they cry out to God to help them and large numbers of people often become followers of Jesus. When they experience no pain, God is an option rather than a necessity.

The same sort of thing happens in a Christian believer’s life. While kids can be cute when they act and talk like children, no one would expect them to remain that way forever. We all expect people to grow up and mature, but for some reason we often don’t think that applies to ourselves – especially as Christian people. The Father can use dramatic or quite small circumstances to help us grow.

I have to say that I lost it with God the other day. Paula and I have wanted to buy a house since we got married last year. We budgeted and at the same time as paying off student loans (HECS for you Aussies) and other debts in NZ we saved a pretty good amount of money. Then we made the mistake of going to the bank. We were told there was no way to buy a house unless we had a down payment of 10%. Well, as hard as we had saved, that amount seemed a long way off, so in between me changing jobs and deciding to up our student loan payments, we made buying a house a little more of a long-term goal.

Not too long ago, we found out that you can actually get a loan with as little as a 3% down payment. What???? So, we decided we would look around almost immediately, while we started a more serious saving plan again.

On the first Saturday we looked we found a place that we hummed and haa-ed about buying, and after a short time we decided we would put in for it. It was much earlier than we intended and we just had 3%. After we made that decision, I rang the real estate lady and was told we needed 5% for this particular house! I’m sorry, but as stupid as it sounds, I lost it with God.

“God, what is this?? I am sick of this mucking around. If we had known about this 3% thing we could have had a house ages ago! And now on the house we decided we’d like to buy, it’s suddenly 5%! Why can’t this be easy?? So much for loving me!”

I honestly expected, and I have to admit that in my heart I still have that expectation – I need to work on it – that if God loves me, He will make things like buying a house, getting a job, and achieving goals easy. It has not proven to be the case. But does that mean that God the Father does not always love? No. He’s loving me by putting me in situations where I can grow up.

Listen to what Hebrews 12:4-11 says:

In your struggle against sin, you have not yet resisted to the point of shedding your blood. And you have forgotten that word of encouragement that addresses you as sons:
“My son, do not make light of the Lord’s discipline,
and do not lose heart when he rebukes you,
because the Lord disciplines those he loves,
and he punishes everyone he accepts as a son.”
Endure hardship as discipline; God is treating you as sons. For what son is not disciplined by his father? If you are not disciplined (and everyone undergoes discipline), then you are illegitimate children and not true sons. Moreover, we have all had human fathers who disciplined us and we respected them for it. How much more should we submit to the Father of our spirits and live! Our fathers disciplined us for a little while as they thought best; but God disciplines us for our good, that we may share in his holiness. No discipline seems pleasant at the time, but painful. Later on, however, it produces a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it.

How much Bible do we know and how much do we put into practice? Do we pray once for something and then give up, even though God’s Word explicitly says to keep on praying? Do we have the same attitude toward money that the Bible teaches? Have we forgiven people we should forgive? In other words, is there something God’s Spirit is telling you to do that you are not doing? God doesn’t hate you, but in His love he may prod you with pain.

It is ironic that when the Father is showing His love through discipline that is when we most often question His love for us. On the other hand, if He was to let us go on with our lives without discipline, most likely we would praise Him for His love, and yet the lack of discipline puts a question mark over the idea that we are his children through Jesus Christ at all!

What should our response be to this? For many of us, we might be able to put love and discipline together in our heads, but not in our hearts because we have rarely experienced it in our lives. People like us either major on love without the discipline and remain unchanged and immature or we major on discipline without the love and get caught in a crippling spiral of condemnation, knowing in our heads that God is supposed to love us but never really experiencing it in our hearts.

How then do we respond to events in our lives that do not look like they are from a loving Father?

Talk to God. Be honest about how you feel, and decide to trust Him anyway…even though all is against you. Ask Him to show you clearly what He might be trying to say – through the Bible, through His Spirit, through other people – and be willing to change with His loving help. Through it all you will learn to carry on following God in the footsteps of Jesus, who the Bible says was himself perfected through suffering and:

who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. (Heb 12:2)

But not every circumstance can easily be explained as loving discipline. That’s where we need to understand the last truth about true Fatherhood I’m going to mention tonight…

God the Father always loves.
God the Father does not always show His love in ways we would expect.

God the Father follows a loving plan that is beyond our ability to comprehend.

2005-09-19T00:19:00.000-07:00

I love the conversation Corrie Ten Boom writes about between herself as a 10 year old and her father in the book, The Hiding Place.

“Father, what is sex sin?” He turned to look at me, as he always did when answering a question, but to my surprise he said nothing. At last he stood up, lifted his traveling case from the rack over our heads, and set it on the floor. “Will you carry it off the train, Corrie?” he said. “It's too heavy,” I said. “Yes,” he said. “And it would be a pretty poor father who would ask his little girl to carry such a load. It's the same way, Corrie, with knowledge. Some knowledge is too heavy for children. When you are older and stronger you can bear it. For now you must trust me to carry it for you.” And I was satisfied. More than satisfied – wonderfully at peace. There were answers to this and all my hard questions. For now I was content to leave them in my father's keeping.

We are often at a loss to understand what is going on around us and in our lives. Not only do bad things happen to both non-Christians and Christians so they will change their ways, but horrendous things like the tsunami in Asia, the recent Hurricane Katrina, terrorism, famine, tyranny occur – things where non-Christians and Christians lose their lives. Where is the loving Father in that?

When it comes to the exact reasons, we must trust our loving Father Who has kept some knowledge from us because it is too heavy for us to carry. However, the Bible gives us some clues:

We do know that God the Father is following a plan that is greater than our self-centered bubble. It is a plan that centers around His glory, something He will not yield to another. When a people he has showered with undeserved gifts and blessings, prodded with situations to awaken, when those people refuse to listen and rebel against the great and glorious God, He will act to punish those people and through those actions He provides a warning to other people of impending judgment. This is not a task that sits well with His loving father-heart, but one that He does carry out.

Isaiah 28:21
The LORD will rise up [in judgment]
to do his work, his strange work,
and perform his task, his alien task.

Ezekiel 33:11
‘As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live. Turn! Turn from your evil ways! Why will you die, O house of Israel?’

As the loving Father, God is not unjust. He takes the situation of every individual into account including their exposure to the knowledge of God through creation, their conscience, the Bible, the gospel message, Christian witness and the Spirit working to convict them. But if we are honest, we are not as innocent as most of us would like to make out.

Listen to Jesus’ response to a couple of small-scale tragedies in his day:

Luke 13:1-5
Now there were some present at that time who told Jesus about the Galileans whose blood Pilate had mixed with their sacrifices. Jesus answered, “Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish. Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no! But unless you repent, you too will all perish.”

What, then, is our response? As children of a punishing Father, we should take warning from how He deals with others, and also reflect the love the Father has for them even in the midst of their punishment through compassion and relief to victims of tragedy.

So what am I saying about Katrina, Iraq, terrorism, the Tsunami…any disaster that happens anywhere in the world?

1) We don’t know all the answers, but our Father whom we trust does.
2) The little we do know is that the Father does reluctantly carry out judgment on people.
3) These tragedies are not an indication that those affected were worse sinners than the rest of us and we should take warning.
4) The godly response we should exhibit is the Father’s always-present compassion for victims.

There is one more aspect of God’s love that is shown in terrible tragedy. Even as disasters are God’s reluctant warnings of judgment, they are also promises that evil will be dealt with. As a loving Father, God’s love is shown in his judgment of sin for the sake of the people who have received forgiveness of sins through Jesus and have become His children so that, one day, the world will be free of evil and the glory and love of God will be evermore clearly seen and enjoyed by them.

God the Father follows a loving plan that is beyond our ability to comprehend.

The plan is loving because it is the best of all possible plans to bring about the greatest glory to God which involves the greatest love of God to the most amount of people.

Conclusion

2005-09-19T00:18:00.000-07:00

On this Father’s Day, I have drawn a quick picture of the original Father, the origin of the species and tried to relate His fatherhood to the terrible situations seen all around our world today. I have noted that:

God the Father always loves, but He doesn’t always express His love in the way we’d expect sometimes for reasons coming from His following a loving plan that is greater than our understanding.

And isn’t all of this our idea of what a human father should do? He works on a plan that is beyond his children’s comprehension (beyond their comprehension for a time, at least) to make sure they have a roof over their head and food on the table and the love of family around them and safety from evil.

He expresses his love through discipline so that his children will grow into mature, responsible adults.

And his motivation behind every action toward His family is always love.

What does this mean for us here and now?

Throughout the above description we saw a constant emphasis on God’s love for his children through Jesus Christ and wanting others to know His love as His children through Jesus Christ. God wants a big family.

Our action should therefore be two-fold:

Let’s endeavor to pray for a greater knowledge of God’s love for ourselves – in our hearts and in various circumstances. (It is available and God wants us to take advantage of it).
Let’s tell others of the opportunity they have to join God’s family through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ and avoid the destruction of God’s eternal judgment.

Let’s pray.