Meet Your Father

Matthew 7, I'm going to start reading in verse 9.

It says, You parents, if your children ask for a loaf of bread, do you give them a stone instead?

Or if they ask for a fish, do you give them a snake?

Of course not.

So if you sinful people know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly father give good gifts to those who ask him?

Go ahead and hold, we're going to hold that thought for a second, hold that in this hand.

In the other hand, we're going to look at Hebrews 12, 6 through 11.

It says, For the Lord disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his children.

As you endure this divine discipline, remember that God is treating you as his own children.

Whoever heard of a child who's never disciplined by its father?

If God doesn't discipline you as he does all of his children, it means that you are illegitimate and you really aren't his children at all.

Since we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us, shouldn't we submit even more to the discipline of the Father of our spirits and live forever?

For our earthly fathers disciplined us for a few years, doing the best they knew how.

But God's discipline is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.

I'm gonna read that again.

But God's discipline is always good for us, is always good for us, is always good for us, so that we might share in his holiness.

No discipline is enjoyable while it's happening, it's painful, but afterwards there will be a peaceful harvest of right living for those who are trained in this way.

Matthew 7 uh Jesus does what Jesus often does, which is he introduces an analogy that is easy to grab onto.

You get it right away.

And it's simple, but it's deep and it's profound, and in its simplicity, it also introduces complexity.

And this is probably a chief example of him doing that.

He brings up the analogy of a father and a parent.

And so right away you can get it.

If you're if you're a parent, and you frankly you don't even have to be a parent to kind of understand, but if you are, you know, you know that when you look at your child, all you want is good for them.

You you want good.

I mean, you want good, and and you want it so bad that it stresses you out.

Um, it's one of the reasons why parenting is stressful, it's overwhelming at times.

Uh, inevitably you'll feel a bit guilty, like you're not doing good enough.

Whether you're a mother or father, you'll carry that weight.

And as unpleasant as the feelings of mom guilt or dad guilt might be, that you think you could be a better father if you measured up to the profile, the reality is in some ways it's a sign to you, it's a signal that you care deeply.

The opposite of love isn't hate, by the way.

There's a thin line between love and hate.

The opposite of love is apathy.

I don't even care.

I could care less about you.

That's the opposite of love.

Love, love is that you care.

And because you care, you're stressed out.

You feel this tremendous responsibility.

You're trying to get it right.

This is why parents often get together and commiserate about how hard it is to raise these kids.

And we sit and we commiserate.

And it's not because we don't love them, even though we act like they get on our last nerve, but the whole reason they do is because you love them that much and you want to do right by them.

So that's not hard to understand.

Jesus, when he says about a father, hey, which of you parents, with all of your imperfections, we'd all admit that we're imperfect.

Which of you parents, with all of your flaws and imperfections, okay, if your kid asked you for food, you'd give them a rock.

Or if they asked you for a fish, you'd give them a snake.

No, you wouldn't want to hurt them.

You wouldn't want them to be bitten with venom.

Uh, you you wouldn't want them to have something that they had to carry as a weight that wasn't edible.

He's like, You you you know this instinctively.

And he said, and you're not, you know you're not perfect, and I'm not perfect.

But he said, how much more your heavenly father?

Now he starts to introduce some of the complexity because he says, How much more your heavenly father gives good gifts to those who ask?

Now think about that.

If you're a parent, you have you know that you don't just give your kid everything they ask for.

This is not like this guarantee that what baby wants, baby gets.

And all baby has to do is ask daddy for it, and daddy's gonna give it to him every time, because that's not good parenting.

You know that.

Like we all know that.

And of course, you know as a parent how often, especially when your kids are younger, and you tell them no for something that they do not understand that it's for their good.

They just think it's cruel and unusual punishment, and it's unfair, and why, and I don't get it.

They're not happy with you that you won't let them have Oreos for breakfast.

Right.

Right.

They're not like, you know, mom, thank you for you know helping me make good, nutritious decisions.

That's ultimately going to help my teeth come in well and it's gonna be good for my own.

No, they're not thanks for, mom, thanks for helping me with my health habits.

No, they they they just throw the stuff in the trash or they refuse to eat it.

They're not when you put boundaries and restrictions and disciplines on your kids, they they often just think you're out of touch.

They think you don't get it or that you're being unfair or unkind, but you know better.

And so that's what ultimately, even though they cop an attitude, you you know that it's for their good.

You know that it's for their good.

You're not excited to disappoint them.

I want you ultimately to learn these disciplines because what I don't want to do is follow you around the rest of your life, smacking your hand.

Okay, I want you to learn these things so that you can put restrictions and boundaries on yourself and live the best life you possibly can.

So there's a lot of no that's being told.

So what Jesus is not saying here in Matthew 7 is that all you got to do is ask and say, pretty, please, and you'll get it.

That even as human beings, when you sense that your kids, like it's it's nothing wrong with setting up a reward system, a reward system.

Hey, if you do this at the end of it, okay, you'll get this.

That's not bad, because that's that's okay.

But but if you caught one whiff that your kid was manipulating you and doing these things just to get the reward, you you'd dry that deal up real quick.

You you'd you'd rip up the contract because ultimately this isn't just about you learning to manipulate, this is of spiritual and personal formation of your character to do the right things for the right reasons.

So all of this we understand.

We're just getting aligned.

What Jesus is introducing here is that relationship with God, with us.

Number one, he starts talking about the fact that you can trust God's heart.

When you look at your loved one, you look at your child, the person you love the most, and the the desire that you have to help them, to support them, to help them uh have a good life.

That is just a taste.

It's a taste, it's a human taste of what God feels towards you and how God thinks towards you in perfection.

That is the image of God in you.

And so you you you you have a taste of it.

So what Jesus is saying is in Matthew 7, there's no way you're a better dad than God is.

There's no way I'm a better dad than God is.

And so he says, look at your heart towards your kids.

That's God's heart towards you.

This was a very necessary lesson Jesus was teaching.

And he would spend his whole ministry running this thread through everything he does.

Um, this is important to note context.

So let's think about this.

We when we talk about God as Father, um, you know, in 2024, uh, Columbus, Ohio, we talk about this.

It's like, yeah, we've heard this before.

This is very common.

Okay, we sing songs about God as Father.

You're a good, good father, it's who you are.

Um we we know the prodigal son story, okay?

So we know the story about the son who was tremendously disrespectful and immature, and he went off and he didn't even really know how compassionate, loving, and gracious his father was.

And when he came home, after his worst mistake that he's ever made, the father has been waiting on him.

He's been anticipating, hoping his son will come home.

And just a glimpse of his son, he runs to him.

Okay, so we know all that.

We've talked about all that.

They did not know all that.

That was not part of the paradigm of the people Jesus came to when they thought about God.

They were looking primarily at the law and the prophets.

So think 39 books of the Old Testament, which is a lot of stories and scriptures about God.

Now, here's a stat for you, just to start to wrap our brain around the psyche or the culture that Jesus came into.

39 books of the Old Testament, there are only 15 references to God as Father.

Only one person in the entire Old Testament addressed God as Father.

I'm not saying talked about him.

Again, there were 15 of those references, but to say father, there's only one person in the entire Old Testament that did that, and it was Isaiah.

He's the only one.

So when you think about the culture Jesus came into, what their paradigm was or how they viewed God, they didn't view him as an affectionate father.

Even the idea of father, when it was used, it was used more as the originator of human beings, the one who created us, and then the one who sits at the head of the table and is powerful.

What he, it wasn't about the affection.

So these are new things.

By the way, Jesus, okay, 15 times in the Old Testament is even mentioned, even in an abstract uh sense, in a literary sense, when Jesus shows up, he calls God dad 165 times recorded.

If you keep going through the the uh apostles and their writings hundreds of times, so you can't miss it.

I mean, you would just have to not want to see it to know that in the New Testament, in the New Covenant, starting with Jesus and followed by everybody else, is this emphasis on God as Father and not just the guy with all the money and all the power, but the guy who has affection for you.

By the way, it was embedded and foreshadowing in the Old Testament, but because of the complexity of 39 books and all the law and prophets, it got lost and uh it got buried in the text.

Look at this.

This is what's hiding in the Old Testament.

Psalm 103, 13 and 14.

The Lord is like a father to his children, tender and compassionate to those who fear him.

For he knows how weak we are, he remembers we are only dust.

The Lord is like a father to his children.

What kind of father?

Tender and compassionate.

And then it goes on to say, he knows how weak we are.

But but what about when I mess up?

Have I ticked him off?

Have I upset him?

Have I set him up?

No.

He knows how weak you are, he knows it better than you.

He knows you're only dust, he knows you're finite.

And so he's a compassionate father.

Now, notice what it says in there.

It says to those who fear him.

And that's something we have to make sure we understand, because what you know, we we use this term, God fearing.

It's a God-fearing man.

Fear God.

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.

Fear.

What do we mean by fear?

Okay, well, the Hebrew word for fear in this context is Yari or Yarit, or a derivative of that word.

But the the the idea is it's it's awe and respect for someone.

It's not terror and phobia and and and that I'm worried you're gonna abuse me.

That's not the connotation at all.

It's it's it's the type of honor and respect that would come if if you had a father or grandfather that that loved you and they were powerful, and you saw their character, and you saw their character in the toughest times, and you saw that they were consistent.

They were the same yesterday, today, and forever.

And they were kind, compassionate, they understood you, and they supported you, and they corrected you when you needed corrected by the by by their rod and their step, they comfort you and they prepare a table before you.

Okay, we're we're we're talking about that kind of thing, would produce now an awe and a respect and an honor that would end up in obedience, but it would not be drowned in fear.

So, so you gotta understand this idea of fear.

Let's think, um, let's think about fear both logically and theologically.

So we're gonna think about it logically, then we're gonna look at both the Old and New Testament around this concept and make sure we're thinking about this right.

No healthy relationship originates and is sustained or held together by fear.

Like you already know that.

If your daughter came home and said, Dad, I I've fallen in love, okay, or I have a new boyfriend, you're like, okay, tell me about him.

And she said, Well, he told me that if if I didn't go out with him, he was gonna kill me.

And if I left him, he was gonna kill me.

And and and there's not one sane, healthy person in this room that would go, oh, well, hope you guys are happy together.

Like, nobody would do that.

You would absolutely intervene, you would take it so seriously, you would look her straight in the eye and you say, That is not healthy.

That is wrong.

And you would start very tactfully maneuvering your way to help her through that.

There's nobody, none of us would go, oh yeah, that's okay.

That's not okay.

And some of you have lived it, or you supported a friend who lived it, who was in a relationship, and it was being held together by fear.

What will happen if I leave?

He's gonna, he told me he would kill me if I left.

She told me she would kill me if I left.

So the nature of that relationship, it's not even arguable.

Every last one of us knows that's not right.

That's not healthy.

And so to think about any relationship, particularly a relationship with God being originated or started, birthed out of fear and held together by fear, is not healthy.

That's why his kindness leads us to repentance.

That's why God demonstrated his love toward us, in that while we were sinners, Christ died for us.

It's not that we loved him, but that he loved us.

I read a book one time, it was talking, it was called How God Changes Your Brain.

And basically the idea was about if you have poor theology and you have some twisted theology around God, and you try to go into a relationship with God through fear and to be sustained through fear, it literally does brain damage.

And they start talking about how, so think of an earthly relationship.

Let's say you had an abusive father.

And here's the reality: when you grow up, your father, if he's in the home, he's omnipotent, omnipotent, all-powerful.

He's bigger than you, he's stronger than you, more physical than you.

He can if he wants to do it, he's gonna do it.

And that's why you know that you're you're prone uh to that control.

If he pays your bills, puts food in your mouth, roof over your head, gives you a bed to sleep in, so all of your core needs are met through this person.

And so imagine, and some of you don't have to imagine, because it was your reality that you grew up with somebody who was tremendously unstable and abusive.

And so now they show up.

I don't know what mood they're gonna be in.

I hear the footsteps coming down the hall and I have a visceral reaction.

I'm afraid.

I it triggers me, it scares me because I don't know.

One day they may bust in in a good mood, next day they bust in, and I don't even know what set them off.

So you you walk on eggshells around the house trying to do anything to try to set to not set them off.

Because dad can't figure out what mood he's in, and sometimes his punishments are arbitrary, they just he just got mad, and now he's he's blowing off steam in the way that he punishes me.

And so if that was your reality and those footsteps coming down the hall triggered you to fear, okay, that's trauma, that's traumatic.

So even if your dad no longer was in your life, even if you he died, you would need to sit down with a counselor and work your way through a healing process because that type of trauma has affected your mind.

It does damage to your brain.

And praise God that you can be healed and you can come through that, but that's real.

You take that and you extrapolate that out to your relationship with God.

Because your dad was omnipotent, but God's way more omnipotent than him, so to speak.

God's way more powerful than him.

God knows more than he does.

He's he's capable of way greater punishment.

And by the way, at least your dad, you could read his signals and his facial expressions, and you could try to figure out how to survive the moment, but God, it's even a little more am a lot more ambiguous than that.

I've never seen his face.

I just know what he's capable of, but I have no idea how he feels about me.

So it's like if you start out from that place that that this the ultimate powerful being in the universe can't be trusted because he's volatile and because what he might just want to scorch you, and that's where you start out, it literally does brain damage.

Let's think about this for a moment.

Why would Yahweh, why would Almighty God create a brain to be damaged by that type of psychological torture and then introduce you into a relationship with him that way?

It doesn't, that's not how it is.

That's not how it works.

Any relationship, especially a relationship with God that is originated and sustained through fear, is not healthy.

Well, Greg, show me in the word.

I got you.

Psalm 139, 17 and 18.

How precious are your thoughts about me, O God.

They cannot be numbered.

I can't even count them.

They outnumber the grains of sand.

And when I wake up, you're still thinking about me.

Look at this.

1 John 4, 18 and 19.

If you forget everything I said and you didn't write anything down, write this one down or take a picture of it or something.

1 John 4, 18 and 19.

Such love has no fear.

Because perfect love expels all fear.

Where do you get perfect love?

Because we don't get it necessarily from each other.

We try to pattern our life, our love after Christ's love, but perfect love ultimately comes from God.

So perfect love expels all fear.

Well, how would it do that?

He says, if we are afraid, it is for fear of punishment, and this shows that we've not fully experienced his perfect love.

What he's saying is, you have allowed the most important, powerful scriptures about who God really is to be lost in the sea of scriptures.

He said, you've got to see this for what it is.

He said, if you are still afraid when you hear God's footsteps coming down the hall, what mood is God gonna be in today and how does he feel about me?

And is God still trying to make up his mind about me?

Hear me.

God is not trying to make up his mind about you.

He has already made up his mind about you.

He loves you.

So when you hear those footsteps, you can trust with confidence that even a punishment, even discipline, even hardship that you go through is for your good.

God is not blowing off steam.

He's not somebody you have to endure the moment and try to survive.

He is helping you to endure.

If we're afraid, it's for fear of punishment.

This shows we've not yet fully experienced his perfect love.

Verse 19.

We love each other because he first loved us.

Look what he said, you know, a few verses earlier.

Verse 9, 1 John 4, 9.

God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him.

A lot of people know that concept.

Look at verse 10.

This is real love.

This is real love.

What I'm about to say is real love.

Not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his son as a sacrifice to take away our sins.

I wonder how many of us in this room, if any, have any spiritual disciplines at all about sitting and receiving the love of God.

Just receiving the love of God.

I feel like there's this mentality out there that somehow if we think God loves us too much, we're gonna get a big head and become narcissistic and just go send our brains out so that grace will abound.

And certainly someone in their immaturity might do that.

But I tend to think if we had disciplines and consistency around sitting and receiving God's love.

Most.

But what we really need to be thinking about is how much God loves us.

I tend to think that if we could sit in that and we could bask in that and we could let that seep into our being, we probably would have enough security and foundation that all of the narcissistic behaviors wouldn't even be appealing because we were built on that type of foundation.

He says it's not how much we love him, it's how much he loves us.

Romans 8:15.

Romans 8:15

So we have not received a spirit that makes you fearful slaves.

Instead, you've received God's spirit when you were adopted as his own children, and now we call him Abba Father.

We call him Dad.

Jesus went over and over and over again to bring this, and he knew it was a missing piece.

He knew what he had was with a whole nation of people, a whole nation of people who had turned into God pleasers, people pleasers, dad pleasers, which it was coming from the wrong place.

Think about this.

If you have a loving parent, let's just, it's Father's Day, so we'll just stick with dads for a minute.

If you have a loving father who loves you and you know he's for you, and you know even when he takes you through hard things, you've learned when you were little, you were mad about the Oreos for breakfast, but you've learned over time that no, he really does love, and you know it.

There's not a doubt in your mind.

Okay, and so what happens is you develop this sense of trust and and and a sense of awe and respect.

And yeah, you want to please him, but you it's not that you want to please him because you're afraid of what'll happen if you don't.

You want to please him because you trust him so much and you know that what he's taught you and what he's brought you into is ultimately good.

He showed you what good is.

So Jesus showed up to a nation of people who took 613 laws of the Torah, and yet they were under judgment, they were under the oppression of the Romans.

And so what they thought was we have to walk on eggshells because somehow we've we've upset God, we've ticked them off, and now he's lowering the boom on us.

And so they became God pleasers or people pleasers, not because from a good place, it was for fear of what will happen if we tick him off.

So they started adding, they do all the wrong things.

They add more law, more restriction, more legalism, and it just creates more division around them, and it just wasn't working.

And Jesus shows up and says, Look, let me give you an analogy, let me help you understand.

And he he calls God dad.

And and he he talks about the prodigal son, and he talks about just look at the people you love and think about what you feel, and know that God, even more so, feels that for you.

If we jump now over to Hebrews 12, that whole section where it talks about, you know, whoever heard of a child that's never disciplined by its father, and we respected our earthly fathers who disciplined us the best they knew how, and um, you know, and and and all of this, there's a huge assumption in that text when you're reading Hebrews 12.

The big assumption is that you had a healthy father.

And for those of you that are here, when I read that about, yeah, the earthly fathers disciplined us because they loved us and it was ultimately for our good, it all makes sense.

You're sitting there going, amen, brother, thank you.

I got the lesson.

Some of you are here and you're like, I have no idea.

I have no idea what that's like.

Whoever heard of, this is uh in verse 7, whoever heard of a child that's never disciplined by his father?

Some of you are like, I have, it was me, my dad wasn't there.

I would have, I would have preferred to have somebody that, and some of you are going, you know, what do you mean their earthly fathers disciplined us and we respected them for it?

You're like, no, I didn't.

Because I I I was the object of his wrath because of all the things going on in his life.

I was someone he could pick on, I was someone he could unload on.

He said things to me that damaged.

Okay.

So so this text assumes a healthy parent, but what it also does to those who don't have that in your experience, what it does is it gives you truth, it puts truth in front of you.

It says, regardless of this was your experience or not, this is what's true about God.

And for some of us who were set up at a disadvantage because the footsteps down the hall made you sick to your stomach, I don't know what's coming in that door.

You've started out at a disadvantage, but you are not hopeless.

The failures of your earthly father do not represent the character of your heavenly father.

If that's you, man, are you in the right place?

And boy, is Jesus the one for you.

They said, show us the Father, we'll be satisfied.

He said, if you've seen me, you've seen the Father.

They had 39 books of the Old Testament, they were drowning in data, they were drowning in content, and they had no idea what the Father was really like.

They were so distorted in their thinking that when Jesus came with the purest picture of the Father, they killed him for it.

They killed him for it.

It says in, sorry, it says third service, so I can't remember if I've read this verse or not already.

So if I'm reading it again, just forgive me, I'm going on a vacation.

John 5.18 says the Jewish leaders tried all the harder to find a way to kill him.

Look at this.

For he not only broke the Sabbath, he called God his father, thereby making him equal with God.

They were so put out by the fact that Jesus was calling God, they thought it was too loose, they thought it was disrespectful, they thought he wasn't giving him enough reverence, he wasn't giving enough honor.

Who are you to think that God would have affection for you?

And yet, what is Jesus doing?

He's bringing the purest picture.

And if you're here and you're set up for failure in your life, and you find yourself in a moment that you find it very hard to trust, and you find yourself feeling the same type of feelings about the divine footsteps coming down the divine hallway, and what does God think about me?

Look, I'm not your counselor.

I can't go sort out everything that happened there.

Keep fighting that fight, keep untangling those knots.

But what I can stand here today with boldness to tell you the truth, that those failures do not apply to God.

God has made up his mind about you, he loves you, he's tender and compassionate, it says in Psalm about you.

It's been there the whole time.

Jesus came to fulfill it, he brought it to the surface, but it's been there since the beginning.

And so today, I want to give you an opportunity to respond to that.

Before I do, I'm gonna give you a summary of today's message because I've said a lot and I want to make sure you don't miss any of it.

So here's the summary.

Alright, it's gonna come up on the screen.

First is this the love you feel for your loved ones is a small taste of the pure love that God has for you.

And if you're struggling to find and to feel the love of God, I want you to think about the person in your life who you love the purest, you love the most, that you're able.

And I want you to go look at them.

And I want you to feel your feelings toward them and think about how you think about them, and to think about you being imperfect.

If you think that way about them, that is a taste, it is a glimpse of the image of God in you.

And God feels what a glimpse of that feeling, he feels it in perfection toward you and toward them and everybody else.

Second one, fear of God comes from a high view of God that results in honor and respect.

And I could say also, I put on, I should put on there also, obedience.

Fear of God comes from a high view of God that results from honor and respect.

And when I truly honor and truly respect because of the actual character, not just because you intimidated me into obedience, but I actually trust you and love you, then it does result in obedience, and that's a high view of God.

It's not a low view of God that results from the fear of his footsteps and anxiety related to his volatility.

And the third thing I want you to get is this divine discipline is always, always, always for our good.

Sometimes God introduces things into our lives and sometimes he doesn't, but he uses all of it for our good every time.

Amen.