Arrival: Everlasting Father | Part 3

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Awakening Church, uh, happy Advent season.

So good to see you.

And it was great to see some of you at our Christmas drive-thru party this past Sunday.

I really enjoyed interacting with you, and our our whole goal was to show you and to join with you in the joy of Jesus that he brings to us during Advent, during the Christmas season.

And I think we accomplished that.

I think the joy of Jesus was present.

We had booths and treats for you.

And if you weren't able to make it, man, we missed you.

But um it got me thinking because I was talking with so many of you and I was asking a lot of you, like, how is it going this Christmas season during 2020?

And, you know, even behind masks and stuff, I could tell there was uh, you know, a little bit of hesitation.

It was like, yeah, we're doing the best with Christmas this year.

Yeah, we can't go home and see family.

Yeah, we're not gonna be able to be around the same people this year.

We're not gonna be able to go to the same holiday parties we love to, but we're doing our best.

And what I sensed at the drive-thru was maybe, you know, a sense of tension, you know, a time of tension that we are in.

And this Christmas has that tension, the tension between the joy of Jesus and the reality of 2020, right?

And you might be thinking, man, I'm just not in the mood of Christmas for Christmas.

I don't have the spirit of the season or the spirit of Christmas around.

But I want to argue that while you may not have the spirit of Christmas, I think that tension between joy and reality and pain is actually the habit of mind for Advent.

That's really where Advent places us.

You know, Advent is not the same thing as Christmas time.

You know, Christmas time, Christmas time is actually, I don't know if you knew this, it's one word.

It's like a way to talk about a season.

Christmas time and Advent are not the same thing, right?

Christmas time is the bright lights, the smattering of sweet treats, it's the uh ability, the joy in a child's face when you unwrap a present.

It's um, you know, ads targeted towards your nostalgia of Christmases long, long ago.

But Advent is is is not that.

Advent is the habit of mind that reflects reality.

Advent is able to look at the pain and the darkness of this world with a light shining on it.

You know, Advent is the tension between the joy and reality.

And so, might I just tell you if that's the way you're feeling this Advent, you're like trying to navigate the joy and the difficulty.

I just have to say, welcome to Advent.

Um, Fleming Rutledge is a theologian I admire, and she writes this in her book on Advent.

In a very real sense, she says, the Christian community lives in Advent all the time.

It can be well called the time in between because the people of God live in the time between the first coming of Christ, incognito in the stable of Bethlehem, and his second coming in glory to judge the living and the dead.

Tension is a habit of mind for Advent, but tension that we are sure will be broken.

We wait in hopeful expectation that the tension will be broken.

Advent declares reality, right?

Life is tense and dark, but not forever.

Fear is real, but not our master.

Why?

Because, like Fleming Rutledge says, Advent is about the celebration of two arrivals, two advents.

That's what the word literally means.

Ryan said this last week.

The word literally means uh arrival.

And we sit in the habit of Jesus' once and future coming.

Um, and we've been reflecting on this over this series uh through this series, looking at Isaiah 9, okay, this famous Christmas passage, right?

You maybe have heard it before.

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, his name shall be called, wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.

And we've been looking at this passage, right?

And we've been saying each of these names are not only about Christ's coming, but the way Christ can inhabit our lives today and how he will come in the future.

So Advent declares the reality that Christ has come and Christ will come again in these ways.

And we heard Christina talk about Wonderful Counselor, and Ryan last week on Mighty God.

And next week, Nassim will be preaching on Prince of Peace.

Today I want to talk to you about the everlasting Father.

The everlasting Father.

How the everlasting father enters into this tension.

Maybe you have a good experience with that word or a bad experience with everlasting father.

I want to show you today how the everlasting father enters into our tension and helps break it, helps ease it, helps relax it, helps embrace that season that we're in right now.

I want to do that through showing you this passage of Jesus teaching his disciples.

I'll set up the context a little later, but just read with me Matthew chapter 10, starting in verse 26.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

Jesus is teaching his disciples, he says this.

So have no fear of them.

For nothing is covered that will not be revealed, or hidden that will not be known.

What I tell you in the dark, say in the light, and what you hear whispered, proclaim on the housetops.

And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul, rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in hell.

Are not two sparrows sold for a penny, and not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father?

But even the hairs of your head are all numbered.

Fear not, therefore, you are of more value than many sparrows.

What does the everlasting father offer us in a time of tension?

Jesus is teaching his disciples about a truth about the Father.

And this truth can be taken to us in Advent, a time of tension.

What does the everlasting father offer us in a time of tension?

Just a couple thoughts for you.

First, the everlasting Father offers everlasting truth.

The everlasting father offers everlasting truth.

The context of this verse in Matthew 10 is interesting.

Jesus says at the start of it, have no fear of them.

Well, who's them?

Who's he talking about?

You know, the disciples at this point are being sent on mission by Jesus.

They're being asked to proclaim good news of the gospel of the kingdom of God, but they also are in the knowledge that by proclaiming that good news, they're going to be persecuted and face danger.

So there's the tension.

They want to share the joy of Jesus to the world, but they are coming up against the reality that it is not going to be easy.

And many of them will face danger, physical harm, and even death.

And Jesus is saying as you're going on mission and you experience that tension of the joy of my message and the difficulty that comes with proclaiming it, you have an everlasting Father who's able to care for you and share with you a kind of truth that you need not be afraid.

The disciples are not instructed to leave the crisis or avert their eyes from the tension, but to walk in courage in the tension.

And how are they going to do that?

Well, Jesus tells them that they have a truth.

They have something that is, you know, Jesus calls it hidden or said in the darkness that they're going to say in the light because they have a knowledge and a wisdom that the rest of the world does not have.

They've been shown Jesus.

They've experienced the revelation of Jesus.

And this right here is why it's an Advent passage, if you can believe that or not.

You know, it doesn't seem like a traditional Christmas passage, but it kind of is because Jesus is saying one day all the things that are hidden will be revealed.

All the ways in which Christians are misunderstood and the gospel message is not heard correctly, one day it will be made plain.

It has been made plain through Christ, and the disciples know that, but one day at the second coming of Jesus, it will be made plain to all.

So Jesus says, What you hear in the dark, say in the light, because the Jesus who has come will come again.

The Jesus who showed up in Bethlehem will show up again in the new heavens and the new earth.

Both advents teach us that God reveals Himself.

The first Advent is the disclosure of Christ.

And the second advent, he arrives in glory.

The truth Jesus shares with us at Advent is this, right?

Our life is bookended by the once and future coming of Jesus Christ.

Human history is bookended by the once and future coming of Jesus Christ.

We live in between two Advents, two arrivals of God in humility, coming in humility, and God is his arrival in glory.

God arriving in a manger, God arriving in the clouds.

And this is the truth that frames our life, bookends our life, that gives us the knowledge that we can live in this world with joy and with pain.

You know, when I was first a Christian, this kind of stuff really helped me because it helps me make sense of the world that we live in that is both painful and joyful at the same time.

We understand these things as Christians, and we understand that because we know them, because we know Jesus has come and will come again, we don't need to be afraid.

And it's not that we don't need to be afraid because we're like stronger than other people or better than anybody else, but because we've been shown someone, we've been shown Jesus Christ, we've been granted a perspective of wisdom.

Paul writes it this way in 1 Corinthians 2, verse 6.

1 Corinthians 2:6

Yet, he says, Among the mature, we do impart wisdom.

Now look at this.

Although it's not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age who are doomed to pass away, but we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory.

Look at that verse just for a little bit.

God decreed before the ages for our glory.

It was a secret and hidden wisdom that was revealed in Jesus Christ.

And in Jesus Christ, we're given a revelation of life and what's going on.

God has given us profound, eternal knowledge as the everlasting father.

It's like a father grabbing a son around the arm around his shoulders and saying, Let me tell you about life a little bit.

It's okay.

Things are gonna be okay.

You can get through this day of school, you can get through this difficult soccer game you're going through, right?

Buddy, it's gonna be okay because I have superior knowledge as your father.

And as the father instructs us with his superior knowledge, we know the truth.

I remember even singing this in Catholic Mass growing up.

It's still a profound truth.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

That revelation eases us in our attention.

You know, when I was a kid, um, I was terrified of lightning storms.

I don't know if you were, um, but I was frightened of like lightning storms.

I was like six or seven or something like that.

And we wouldn't get them that often.

I grew up in Oregon.

We especially didn't get them that often in Portland.

I grew up in the city.

But when we would, I would actually hide in the basement, paralyzed.

I remember shaking and awaiting the next thunderclap or boom of you know, thunder or something like that.

But my father, uh, he grew up in Michigan, and in Michigan they have incredible storms, storms beyond anything this organ boy had ever seen.

And I remember him consoling me one day, telling me about the beauty of the storm, the beauty and the majesty of a storm.

He, as a boy, he would watch the clouds roll over Lake Michigan and the Great Lakes, thunder and lightning, rain and hail, and watching the storms come across the lake was a beautiful sight for my father.

Beyond that, he would tell me about being a teenager and driving around in his old cars with his friends, going into the heart of the storm to try to chase them.

I remember him even telling me that being in a car was one of the safer places to be because you were low to the ground and grounded by rubber, therefore leaving many storms or lightning strikes, rendering them ineffective, right?

He was giving me this insight, this wisdom that I didn't really have.

And over time I became convinced, I'm happy to say now, as a 33-year-old man, I'm no longer afraid of storms.

And the reason I am is because I'm not anymore, is because my father taught me.

And for one predominant reason, I really trusted my dad is that my dad had been into the middle of the storms and he'd come back to tell me about them.

He was an authoritative voice who had been there and come back.

And so I could trust him, right?

So one of the ways our fears are assuaged is when we receive information from a source of wisdom much more experienced than we are.

Someone who has been there and come back to tell us about it.

So why are Christians unafraid?

Look at this.

Only because we have received information from a profound source of wisdom.

We have heard from the only one who has been to death and back again.

The only one who's harbored and gone through the center of the storm and come back to tell about it.

The only one who has physically died and spiritually taken on the consequences of death in the cross.

Scripture says that he in his he bore his um our sins in his body on the tree.

And because Jesus did that, because he went there and came back, that's why Jesus says, you don't have to be afraid of somebody who just kills the body.

Have no fear of those who just kill the body, because I'm the one who has gone to hell and back for you.

No one else will.

It's why Jesus, he's like, who cares, those who kill the body?

Christ has taken the existential and physical sufferings of sin on the cross.

He did not just physically die, but on the cross said, My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

He took on the consequences of sin, of spiritual abandonment, and then he rose from the dead to proclaim life to all creation.

There's no need to be afraid of anything once we know our Father has come back from death.

That's why Isaiah, by the way, calls him the everlasting Father, the triune God, Father, Son, and Spirit in Jesus on the cross, resurrecting from the dead.

That's why Isaiah calls him everlasting Father.

You know, you might think it's not just that the Father lives forever, everlasting Father.

It's not just that the Father lives forever, it's that he lives through anything.

He can live through any pain or anything.

He's gone to death and rose from the dead.

Therefore, you and I can trust him, and we don't have to be afraid.

One thing the Father brings us.

He goes, I know how this story goes.

And death is not the end of the story.

Pain is not the end of the story.

A pandemic is not the end of the story, economic collapse is not the end of the story.

The story is between Christ's once and future coming.

And we have great hope in his coming again.

So the Father offers us everlasting truth, but the father also offers us everlasting love.

The everlasting father offers us everlasting love.

It's not just that he shares with us information, but he shares with us his very self.

When I was a kid growing up, scared of storms, going back to that time in my life.

Um as I said, I found my fears calmed because my father provided me information, authoritatively sharing with me truth.

But you know, I also got over this fear for another reason.

My father accompanied me through various hiking trips, and my dad owned a Jeep, so we'd go out on these Jeep rides together through various storms in eastern Oregon.

I can remember going through the bad lands of the high desert, storms of hail, thunder, and lightning with my dad driving the Jeep, going through these windy roads, experiencing these storms together, enjoying them after a while.

One summer in particular, I was like 12 or 13, and my dad rented this RV.

Uh, and me and my family went from Oregon to Wyoming and back.

I don't know how much I'd recommend this trip, but we did it, okay?

And in this large RV, we went through some apocalyptic storms.

I remember one in particular, towards the tail end of our trip when we were out in Wyoming, out in the vast country of the American Midwest and these massive skies, and we were going through this intense storm, like the worst storm I've ever seen.

I'd never seen a storm like this: hail, lightning, thunder, darkness, blackness.

And I remember still having moments of my own fear at being 12 and 13, afraid of those storms, sitting in the back of the RV, gripping the side rest of the chair.

And I remember looking, though, in the rearview mirror at my father, who was lightly gripping that large RV steering wheel.

And I realized that he was smiling.

He was smiling, he was he was at ease.

You see, an experience of terror for me was an experience of peace and maybe even joy for him.

And suddenly I was able to receive the peace and joy that was in his eyes and his face was transmitted to me.

Because now not only had he gone there and come back, but I was with him too in the midst of this storm.

And it's not just that the everlasting father equips us with truth about circumstances in which we will endure, or even about death itself.

You see, God does not just give us information to alleviate our fears.

No, more profoundly, he accompanies us inside the terror.

God goes before us, but he also goes with us.

He went to the grave and he came back, and he will not abandon us to the grave.

You see, God not only goes before us, he comes with us.

He has been on this ride before, he accompanies us.

And the everlasting Father, it doesn't just mean that his care never runs out.

It's that he cares for us in such a way that is demonstrably different from any created being.

No one will be able to accompany you the way God will accompany you.

No one will be able to love you the way that God is able to show his vast love and care for you.

And here in the text in Matthew 10 that we originally are reflecting on, Jesus expands our vision of this, that God's care doesn't run out.

He expands, showing us where the everlasting Father is present with his creatures.

And he does this through that metaphor with the sparrow.

Remember, he says, sparrows are like a penny.

This is the cheapest bird.

And he's right, by the way, sparrows were the cheapest bird in the market.

Many people in the ancient day would buy them.

Poor people, especially in lower classes, would buy sparrows to sacrifice them at the temple.

They were worthless, essentially, worthless.

They were only reserved for the poorest of the poor to buy to do religious obligations.

They were never seen as a delicacy in any way.

And Jesus says that even when a sparrow falls, the line he says is, not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your father.

And I think that's a beautiful rendering of the Greek sentence because studying it, you know, it it's that bare of a sentence.

Um, the sparrow will not fall to the ground apart from your father.

Notice, he doesn't say apart from your father's knowledge, he doesn't say apart from your father's sight.

He says apart from your father.

And the Greek sentence literally just says that.

You see, it's not just that God knows the cheapest bird on the lot falls, it's that he's with the cheapest bird as it falls.

See, no sparrow falls apart from the father.

God accompanies even the cheapest of all creation to its death.

And Jesus' argument is this wouldn't he do the same thing for you?

You're so much more valuable than that.

And so if God accompanies the sparrow to its death, will he not accompany you through life's greatest storms, including death itself?

You see, you and I have nothing to be afraid of.

Why be afraid if God will accompany you anywhere?

He's been to death and back again.

He'll go with you anywhere.

That's why Dallas Willard says, he says, we live in a God-bathed world.

That God is so present with us everywhere.

Catherine Sonderager, in her systematic theology, she writes this: God is not an object encountered in the world of creatures, nor in the vast silence of limitless space of the universe.

God is not located.

Despite much loose talk, there is not, quote, more God in some places rather than others.

Listen to this.

He is everywhere present through his cosmos, not locally, but rather harmoniously, equally, generously, and lavishly in all places at once.

And right here, the profound truth of God's omniscience.

Omnipresence, his all-accompanying power over our lives.

Right here is where my metaphor with my dad it kind of breaks down.

And it breaks down in a beautiful way and it breaks down in a little bit of a painful way.

A lot of you know that my story with my dad doesn't really have a happy ending.

My father was there for me at a young age in a thousand ways.

And but later in life, when I was turning 19, 18 or 19, my dad left.

He left our family and he left my mom and he was gone.

And really, from that point on, his presence in my life has only diminished slowly over the years through choices he has made.

My father has all but receded from my experience.

And you know, when he was first leading, leaving, I was um, I was dealing with these fresh fears and pain.

And I had this tension.

Um, I was, you know, looking to get married in the next couple years and um looking forward to all the things that were going to happen in my life, but I was realizing that my dad would not be there for them.

And and he wasn't.

He he missed many things.

Um many moments of adulthood, right, that were difficult to navigate.

He wasn't there for paying for college or weddings, funerals, times in my adulthood where you just need that assistance.

Now I had plenty of family support and amazing people around me, but to miss the my father was a difficult part of my life.

And during that time, I was um I was in Celebrate Recovery, which is kind of like the Christian AA.

And it, I was there.

Um, you know, I was a part of the group, and then I led a group for a little while.

And I was there not because I was addicted to anything.

I fortunately have just never suffered from addiction, but I just needed a healing community.

And so when I was there, um, the first year when I was being led by a group of guys, and um, I remember one of them telling me, you know, when I was dealing with the pain of knowing if my dad would be there or not, he was like, he told me, you know, your earthly father was put in your life to show you the everlasting father.

I said, how?

To show me that he's just gonna be gone, you know, that just the same way my dad was gone.

And he said, no, he shared with me this.

He said, the gaps of our earthly fathers, uh, the gaps that they leave are invitations to experience the care of the everlasting father.

The very spaces that you feel abandoned by whoever are potentially the precise location of God's presence.

Okay, so maybe your dad didn't leave, maybe it's something else.

Maybe it's a divorce, maybe it's financial pain, maybe it's family tension, maybe it's uncertainty of a job, but there's a gap in your life of trust.

There's a gap in your experience of knowing that God is near to you.

And sometimes in those gaps, we feel tension when we should be feeling the very presence of our father.

Because if he doesn't abandon the sparrow, he will not abandon you.

And the gaps that our fathers leave, or the gaps that pain in our life leave, are not the vacancy of God's presence, but the abundance in which he will fill his presence in.

And so, in fact, it's both good fathers and bad fathers can bring us to the everlasting father.

Good parts of our life and bad parts of our lives, because the best news of this text is the dramatic difference, the vast difference between earthly and everlasting fathers that Jesus paints.

No sparrow falls apart from this father.

No hair goes uncounted, Jesus says.

He has the hairs on your head counted, right?

Earthly fathers, no matter how good or how bad, right?

They're gonna miss something, right?

Dads, whether they miss a soccer game or miss most of your life, I mean, earthly fathers are just earthly fathers.

They're they're limited in their capacity.

You know, at some level, like we're we're not gonna be there for uh our kids.

I'm a dad myself, right?

And I'm not gonna be there for my kid, maybe because I'm, you know, probably gonna die before him.

He's gonna live a life without me.

So we need an everlasting father, but both good fathers and bad fathers lead us to the everlasting father.

And this is what I'm learning this Christmas, kind of as a new dad, right?

Okay, I'm learning, my son Jude.

I've already failed at being a perfect dad a year in.

I hope that the gaps of my inaction or action are places where Jude feels the sense and the presence of Jesus Christ.

And so we're faced with this question here, which is will we acknowledge the reality of the personal God, the everlasting Father?

I didn't conclude the verses because I want to conclude them now.

This is the very end of this section of scripture, Matthew 10, 32.

Jesus says this, okay, so everyone who acknowledges me before men, I will also acknowledge before my father who is in heaven.

But whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before my father who is in heaven.

Here's what Jesus is saying.

The Father acknowledges you.

Do you acknowledge the everlasting Father?

So the Father acknowledges you and will not leave you.

You must acknowledge the Father.

Because in order to be a child of God, we must call upon the Father, not run away from home, not try to disassociate ourselves from the Father, but acknowledge the Father in his presence.

And this is our precise problem with God a lot, you guys.

God is personal.

God is relational.

God wants to know you.

And that can be a problem for some of us.

We want to scoot away, we want to run away.

But what if God is pursuing you and has found you?

What if his personality, his aliveness is actually here to sustain you?

Look at what C.S.

Lewis writes.

An impersonal God, well and good.

A subjective God of beauty, truth, and goodness inside of our own heads, better still, a formless life force surging through us, a vast power which we can tap, best of all.

But God himself, alive, pulling at the other end of the cord, perhaps approaching at an infinite speed, the hunter, king, husband, that is quite another matter.

There comes a moment when children who have been playing burglars hush suddenly.

Was that a real footstep in the hall?

There comes a moment when people who have been dabbling in religion, man's search for God, suddenly draw back.

Supposing we really found him.

We never meant it to come to that.

We're still supposing he found us.

Don't miss the grand invitation of Advent.

It's this simple.

God is near to you as the everlasting Father.

And that in fact you don't have to go looking for God because God has come to you in Christ.

Searching for God, it's okay to give that up in light of the coming of the Father.

You now, as the Son and Daughter of God, can acknowledge the Heavenly Father, but you must acknowledge Him to be the child.

And so, my friends, would you cry out to God today and ask Him to be your everlasting Father?