Who Is God the Father?
Jeremy MacDonald · Tidal Church Moncton · June 19, 2022
Jeremy MacDonald looks at the Prodigal Son in Luke 15 and Galatians 4 to show that God is a Father who waits, runs to the disconnected, and welcomes them as His children, giving them a new identity, an inheritance and a family.
Topics: Love, Identity, Discipleship
Transcript
[0:00] Father's Day. Father's Day. If we're honest with one another, it's well, it's a little bit complicated. Father's Day is a little bit complicated, if you know what I mean. It might be because when you think about your father, you have all these great memories. You know, wonderful times. You loved him so much. But he's not with us anymore. He's passed away. And so when you think about today and Father's Day, you would say it's It's complicated. Or maybe for you, your father's actually alive, but you have no idea where he is. And maybe that's actually a good thing, because he's not that great of a person anyways.
[0:47] And so when you think about Father's Day and you see the cards in the store. And they all read, "Happy Father's Day." You want to explain to somebody, it's not happy. It's it's complicated. Or maybe for you, you know, you have kids, and so today is a day where maybe they're gonna do something for you, and it's kind of fun, and it kind of looks good on the outside for sure. But if you and I were having some time just together, being honest with one another. You might say you're a little bit nervous when the spotlight is on you, because on a day like today it makes you think, I don't know if I'm doing it right. I don't know if I'm measuring up. I don't know if I'm messing them up. And so somebody asks you about fatherhood, and you were really honest, you might say that it's it's complicated.
[1:37] Or maybe for you, there's no ambiguity. You messed up your kids. It is a season that's full of regret and disappointment and heartache. There's no phone calls coming today. There's no gifts coming today when you think about Father's Day. It's complicated. And so, why, knowing that fatherhood would be so complicated? And not just that, but actually, historically, fathers are incredibly complicated, and the stories are incredibly heartbreaking, even all the way back through the Christian scriptures. Why would God describe Himself as a Father? Why would He use this kind of metaphor, knowing that it would create all sorts of difficulties amongst us?
[2:26] And to that I would say, well, it's It's complicated. So what happens is when we go through the scriptures, we find all of these fascinating examples. The Old Testament has got a bunch of them, but the New Testament is just chock-full. In fact, Jesus in particular uses the metaphor a father all the time to describe God. And so there's a lot you can look through for yourself, lots of them. But here's a few. In John we read, "Whoever has seen Me has seen the Father," speaking of God. Also, we read this in Matthew: "Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone, or if he asks for fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil," just kind of harsh but fair enough, "know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask Him?" This is Jesus speaking. Jesus also giving us instructions on how to pray. He says this: "This is how you should pray: Our Father, in heaven." Just a couple more. The Great Commission, classic scripture at the end of Jesus' ministry. Matthew records it: "Go therefore, make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit." And then the most famous verse in all of the Christian scriptures, the one that most people would know if they're gonna know any of them, John 3:16: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son," which kind of presupposes that He is the Father who gives His Son.
[3:51] So the question that we want to wrestle with, or that I want to wrestle with, and you kind of have to come along on the journey with me, welcome, is simply this: what does it actually mean for God to be Father to you and to me? And the answer to that is very, very simple. It's hard to understand. It's also complicated. Well, the truth is that no matter where you're at in your faith journey, as I was saying, it doesn't matter where you are on the spectrum. You might be completely atheistic. You might be all in terms of your faith journey. We all have some level of understanding or thoughts about who God is, at least the God that we talk about when we gather in this place. And the interesting thing is that if we polled everybody and we put together the whole idea of what you think about God, and what you think about God in particular, not just what you think about Him, but what you think He is, or what do you think He's about, or how would you describe Him? The interesting thing is that we discover there's all sorts of varying degrees and varying ideas on who God is.
[4:58] And this is, I think, especially apparent when we read this interesting quote. I think it's fantastic. It's from a really interesting character. His name is Ricky Gervais. You know, Ricky Gervais, from the British Office, a number of things. He's a comedian. He's also a very outspoken atheist. And so this he means as a joke, but I honestly think there's so much truth in this. He says, "Next time someone tells me they believe in God, I'll say, 'Which one?' Zeus, Hades, Jupiter, Mars, Odin, Thor, Krishna, Vishnu, Ra." And if they say, "Just God. Just the one God." I'll point out that they are nearly as atheistic as me. I don't believe in 2,870 gods, and they don't believe in 2,869." And I think the interesting thing is that beyond just the actual names of different gods, there's so many different interpretations of this one guy that we try to gather around and talk about. That, honestly, we could sit and you could describe what you think God is, and I would say, I don't believe in that God.
[5:53] And so what we do in this kind of place is that we want to gather around the Christian scriptures, and we want to actually discover, in the way that God has revealed Himself through the Christian scriptures, discover what this God is all about. And so we ask the question, and we maybe put the emphasis differently. We say, what does it actually mean for God? The God that we gathered to talk about, the God that we might assume we all believe in, the same things about. What does it actually mean for that God to be Father to you and to me? Okay. So now this is going to be a metaphor. Right? God is Father is a meta you know Luke, I am your father. So it's a bit of a jump. So we have to kind of understand just what's happening here in the English language and it's incredibly important because it's theologians have written and there's this wonderful quote from an article metaphors for God how we speak of God clearly shapes how we think of God and of God and humans and so when we get this wrong it has a detrimental effect on our experience of faith and that's been true for so many people because we bring the baggage of our own experience with fathers or of men and then we read this and if we're not careful, we read into our own experiences into the metaphor and it creates this unfortunate disconnect from who got actually is and so I want to be clear as we go into it. And as we open up the scriptures that many theologians have written a boat how we're supposed to interpret this appropriately and one of the really helpful ones is from Dr. Spencer at Gordon Conwell Seminary down here on the East Coast. She says God is not father because God is masculine.
[7:36] really important to recognize God is not father because God is masculine. We use that language and that's a part of our English language, but but God is Not confined. by masculinity. God is not Father because He's masculine; rather, God is Father because father in the ancient world was a helpful metaphor to communicate certain aspects of God's character. Now, it's important to note: That although God is Father, fathers are not God. And that's important because many people have experienced outrageously awful expressions of fatherhood or of oppressive men, and when that happens, you need to know, when you see oppression happening at the hands of men, you see a man who's going to need to face the justice of God.
[8:25] Because the Christian scriptures are clear that the call of God to all of us, men and women alike, is one of self-sacrifice and self-denial and love. And yet here we are trying to understand: What does it mean for God to be Father? And so in the ancient world, and very similar to us today, fathers carry a level of understanding of what fathers have, what they kind of entail. And so just maybe a short list, a simple list. It's not, you know, completely conclusive, but just for our time here today, fathers have, for example, authority, right? Fathers have control, fathers have the power to punish. And when this goes right, it means that my kids can't be on their iPad for the entire day. I have the authority, and I get to control the way they access their technology, and that's a good thing. You have to brush your teeth in my house at least once a few, every few days, but no, and every day, seriously, there's dentists here. So if you're the father, there's an expectation. Now, mothers obviously carry a little bit of this kind of stuff as well, and that's very true, especially in today's day and age. The next two are a little bit different though. Fathers also carry with them a mutual asymmetric relationship, the idea that kids are different than parents. The responsibility of a father is different than the responsibility, what it means to be a kid, and that's, again, the same kind of thing with mothers, but the difference here in this last one is that, especially in the ancient world, this was something that was very exclusive to fathers. Fathers have an inheritance to give.
[9:50] An inheritance to give: the family business, the family wealth, the family name carries on, and the father hands that down generation to generation. And so when we think about these kinds of things, this is what it means in some ways to be a father. And so when we read that God is Father, we read that God actually has all of these same things. Now, interestingly, at least I think, and maybe you'll think so too in a moment, the expectation of fathers and what God would be like as a father is kind of baked into all of these expectations. And yet when we read in the Christian scriptures the example of how God the Father acts, He's somewhat, surprisingly, significantly different.
[10:38] And there's so many different examples of this, but I want to show you just one for today to help us understand: What does it mean for God to be the Father? And it's a classic story, and maybe if you've been a part of church for a while, you've heard it. It's the Prodigal Son, the lost son. This example, the story that Jesus tells, giving a picture of God and trying to help us understand what He's actually like. And so Jesus says there's two sons. There's a younger one and there's an older one. And the younger one goes to his father and asks for the inheritance that his father would be able to give to him. But inheritance, they're supposed to go to you when the father passes on. And so the son is looking to break relationship with the father and to take what he is owed, but to take it and to spend it in the ways that he wants, away from this family, away from the relationship, away from all that he was brought up to know.
[11:30] And so he takes the inheritance, and he goes, and he spends on what the Bible says is wild living. So you can fill in the blanks on what wild living means, but it would have been embarrassing for the father to have given up a significant portion of what he was building for his family and for his legacy, for this inheritance to give it away to the son and for it to be squandered in wild living. And then the son comes to grips with what he has done, because he's lost it all. And he's hungry. And he turns around, and he decides he's going to go home and hope that maybe he could convince the father to let him just be a servant. And so we pick up the story. Luke records, at Luke chapter 15, verse 20, it says this: "And while the son was still a long ways off, his father saw him coming."
[12:18] How did the father see him coming? He was waiting for him. He was watching for him. He was there at the gate, hoping and praying and waiting for the moment that the son would appear on the horizon. And because he was a long way off but he was waiting, he could see him. And it kind of begs the question: Why? Why didn't the father run and connect with the son when he was leaving? And I think the answer is interesting. I think it's helpful. I think it helps us understand who this God is, but the father wasn't just looking for where the son would be. He was hoping for the relationship and the connection.
[13:07] He was hoping to be reconnected in relationship with the son. And so while the son is a far ways off, the father is filled. He's filled, and if he was a regular father, if he was experiencing it as if he was one of us or a father in the ancient days, he would likely have different emotions. It might be something like, maybe it's rage and indignation. How dare he squander the business, the safety net that we built for him, and now he's coming back and just, oh, might have been disappointment, right? Can you imagine? All that I gave to this kid, all that I trained him, and then he just, he walked away with it. The father would have felt shame, surely.
[13:54] Everybody would have known, all of the people and the home and the business, the people from away. The story would have gone. The family name has been Man, it's just, it's the shame. But of course the father, God, instead, is filled with love and compassion. Love and compassion. He ran to his son, which in those days would have been actually quite undignified. It would have been a little bit difficult, in the way that they had, you know, their clothing. And yet he runs, and he embraces him, and he kisses him, and there's no, like, "Hey, watch the pigs off of your, you know, your face." Like, you've been dirty, you're smelling, you know. He immediately is excited, ecstatic to regain this relationship that was broken.
[14:41] And while the son was still a far ways off, when the son was pointed and moving towards the father, the father closes the gap. Now the son, of course, moves into his story, and the story is really, really, you know, helpful, honest, upfront. His son says, "Father, I've sinned against both heaven and you, and I'm no longer worthy being called your son." Surely, that's true. The father has none of it. He doesn't even engage with it. Instead, his father said to the servants, "Quick, bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. Kill the calf we've been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, because this son of mine was dead and is now returned to life. He was lost, but now he's found." The listeners and Jesus's audience, I mean, the son wasn't actually dead. Like, he was alive somewhere. He wasn't really lost. Like, he was just in that town that you go when you want to squander your wealth.
[15:28] But the Father to the Father. Who was hoping for that relationship, in that connection? He's like, "This is what I've been hoping for." And this is how the Father views you and me. Right, when we ask the question, what does it actually mean for God to be Father to you and to me? It means that He views us as connected or disconnected. And for those of us that are disconnected and have moved away or pointed our eyes away from the Father, He waits for us. And it's so interesting to note because even though He has all the power, authority, the power to punish, and the ability to control, God could be the kind of angry, vindictive God that a lot of people expect or a lot of people anticipate. Instead, the Father, the Father that we read in Scripture, that we discover, He waits, He waits eagerly at the road for you and your coworker and your kids and your neighbor and whoever else is disconnected from Him.
[16:32] But not just that. This is kind of the fun part. And this is the part that is maybe surprising. The Prodigal Son story is maybe something that you have heard before, that you kind of get, the love of God, is something that we talk a lot about because it matters so deeply and it's important, so it's worth talking about, but He does something else. The Father does something that sometimes maybe we miss. Even though He's got all the power, authority, power to punish, ability to control, He gives you your identity and your inheritance upon your return, which begs the question, what is that identity? And what is that inheritance? And so here is something that I think is surprising and shocking, that when we turn our eyes to Jesus, when we move towards the Father and He closes the gap to us, that He restores us into the kinds of people that He was hoping for from the beginning.
[17:25] He puts the robe on you, you're part of the family again. You get the inheritance again. You've already squandered a bunch of it. You get it back. It is now this great opportunity to become the kinds of people that God was hoping for us to become. So, what does that actually mean? Well, Paul the Apostle, Paul actually writes about this. He writes about this in his letter to the Galatians, in the churches in Galatia, because what he was hoping to do is that there was a number of folks that were Jewish that were kind of wrestling with their Jewishness and trying to understand what it meant to follow Christ, and then there's also the group of Gentiles, and that's a lot of us. If you're not Jewish, you're Gentile, it's just kind of how it goes. And so there's all these Gentiles that were coming to Christ and again trying to understand what it meant to begin to follow Christ and to cast off this commitment that they had to their old life. And so Paul writes it and He explains it this way, says, for you all, you are all children of God through faith in Jesus Christ. So it's the act of putting faith in Jesus that allows us to turn our eyes to the Father, and the Father closes the gap and He comes and restores us. That is the act of faith in Jesus, and because of that, we become His children.
[18:34] Right, because calling God the Father says something about who God is, but it also says something about who we are for those of us that have chosen to follow Jesus. He goes on, He says, in light of that, there's no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. These power structures that the world has implemented, this idea that you are different than this person, is all kind of crumbles down, and we're a little bit the beneficiaries, a little bit. I know that this isn't perfect and we haven't solved this as a culture, and yet if you go back 2000 years, these distinctions were way more intense and the implications were way more heavy on people. And so for in this moment, Paul is trying to explain what does it mean to become a part of the family of God. It means that you experience equality amongst everybody, that there's no longer these kinds of categories in the way that allows us to tell stories about those people or these people. No. No, we're all one.
[19:35] And because of that, because we're all one, we are His children. We become a part of the family. God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, "Abba, Father." We now get to approach God as if He was a father close to us, the best possible view of a father. If it's messed up in your mind, well, I understand that's challenging. It's difficult, but what you might long for and hope for in a relationship with a father, that's just a small section of what God actually comes and offers to us as our heavenly Father. He goes on to explain. He says, you are no longer a slave, but you are God's own child. And since you are His child, God has made you His heir, your inheritance. You become a part of this Kingdom. You become a part of this family, and it brings with it all sorts of incredible things that you benefit from, that you are no longer a slave. And not just that, before you Gentiles knew God, you were slaves. You remember those days, to the so-called gods that do not even exist, and yet now that you know God, or should I say, now that God knows you, why do you want to go back again and become slaves once more to the weak and useless spiritual principles of this world?
[20:51] And so what are the spiritual principles of your world, the weak and useless things that you shoulder and take on, the identities that you try to achieve and become because it seems like it's the right thing to do in the moment, that you're kind of wrestling with who you are? And God says, yeah, all of that stuff fades away. You don't have to be a slave to any of that anymore. You've got a new identity in My family. And so what does it mean for God to be Father? Well, it means for all of us that we become adopted into the family of God, and what that means is that you now have brothers and sisters in your city, amongst a bunch of them.
[21:38] And that together, those of us that call Christ our King and that follow Him and put our eyes on Him, we become this family of God. Now that interestingly also has some requirements, and so you also now have responsibilities to your family in the same way that you would hope a family is meant to look out for one another and to care for one another. God also invites us into this heavy responsibility of being brothers and sisters to one another, that your faith, if you've been pastored by podcasts for the last couple of years and that your faith has been like, you, Jesus, and whatever you see on Instagram from that preacher, like that is not actually how it works. Your faith is a family that you have been a part of now, and you have to be in the midst of that family. You've got to show up to family dinner. You've got to show up and be a part, not just for you, but for the people around you that need you to be a part of the family.
[22:32] And not just that, but you also have a fourth point, you have an inheritance, and lastly, you are no longer a slave to this world. So, like, when I think about this big question, and it's a fairly sizable question, and obviously we're not covering the whole scope of it today, but when we ask ourselves, what does it actually mean? Like, what does it actually mean for God to be Father to you and to me? It's something that we have to wrestle with, because we have an expectation or idea of who God is, and when we learn that He is Father, it teaches and tells us a story about the kind of God that He is to us, and we have to go back to Scripture, and we have to dig in, and we have to understand.
[23:17] Because if we're not careful, we can read too much into it from our own experience and from our own culture and from our own world. And miss the sight of that father with his eyes eagerly on the road, waiting for the disconnected son to come home. And friends, interestingly, and this is a bit of an aside and maybe you know a different message, but if we're going to be the body of Christ, as the church, which should be true for us corporately is what was true for Jesus personally. So where Jesus is inviting us to understand how He looks to the outside, there, and calls in the disconnected. Those are the kinds of things that we need to be about corporately as the body of Christ.
[24:04] So we learned about what it means for God to be the Father, and it tells us a story about Him. But it also tells this deep story about us as family, as brothers and sisters, of people who now are a part of a rich community. And yet, I don't know about you, but trying to figure out what it means to actually live in community with my brothers and sisters, it's a challenge. Like, it's a lot of work. And sometimes it's a little bit messy, and sometimes people say and do the wrong things. But I want to tell you that for some reason God has called us into this and has talked about it extensively through the Scriptures, that we've been adopted into this family. And this is what we've got.
[24:52] And there's so much richness to it when we are together as a family. And so it's worth it, for any of you that feel like you're on the margins or that you're disconnected, to find your way to be connected, to introduce yourself, and to take steps, and to do whatever you can, so that you can be a part of this incredible family that our Heavenly Father has gathered together. Not just today, not just online, but for all time and in all places. So what I want to do is I want to actually stand together. So if you would stand, I want to pray for us. Because something like this isn't like, sometimes it's easy to say, "Hey, this is the message, and this is what you need to do. You need to do this thing and go from this place," and like, three-step plan, and you know, God's with you.
[25:45] This is different. I don't know where the Spirit's at in your world, and what you're dealing with, and what you're wrestling with. But the great news is that the God who I get to pray to certainly does. And so I just want to pray for a moment that, for those of us that need that Heavenly Father, that He would be real to us even today. For those of you that might be disconnected and you're in that different land, that maybe you might turn your eyes towards the Father and watch how fast He runs and closes the gap with you. And then for some of us that have been a part of this journey for a while, it can be disheartening to feel like we're alone in the midst of it, and you need to hear today that your family is a spiritual family, and God has called you to it, and the Spirit might lead you in such a way that you can be a part of this family in a real, significant way.
[26:45] So let me pray for us all. Heavenly Father, You know and in moments like these, You know, it is kind of complicated. It's tough to know exactly where You're going to call us and what we're needing to be about. And so I just ask that the Spirit in these moments, and as we sing this song, would be at work in each and every one of our hearts and lives. You know, we're incredibly grateful that when we discover who You are as God, that You, as a Father, are so good, and so perfect, and so filled with love and compassion, and yet You could be filled with rage and indignation because we, man, we mess things up so often. And so for each and every one of us, I pray that, as we turn our eyes to You, even as this last song plays, that we would experience and feel and just know that You are running to us.
[27:41] And then, God, this idea that this isn't just something between You and me, You and the person in the front or in the back or watching online. But Heavenly Father, this is something that You've invited us all to, that as a family of God, this world needs to see more than ever the kind of unity and togetherness and love and compassion for each other and then for our world. And so I pray that like in those early days, when people would kind of peek in and see the kind of love that was experienced in these Christian communities that were so different, I pray that our family would be the kind of place where people were wanting to come, maybe not even at the start because of what we believe, but because of the way we treated each other, the way we loved each other, and the way we looked out for each other as a family, and that people would be desperate for Your love through us.
[28:36] We pray these things in Jesus' name.