Names of God: Abba (S09, E05)

Greetings, and welcome to the Faith Chapel podcast. My name is Jason,

and I am the pastor of Faith Chapel.

In the podcast today, we are continuing to go through an eight-episode series on the names of God.

In the teaching today, we are going to be learning about the name of God,

Abba, which means Father.

This name of God shows us that God is loving and someone we can run to in all circumstances.

Thanks for joining us as we dive into this discussion.

A dad camp with two of my kids. And at dad camp one of the weekends,

we had a speaker come in and talk about his experiences with his dad.

His dad was somebody that was super harsh. He was a farmer and he was constantly

out in the fields. He was constantly doing something, whether it was planting

season or harvest season or summer or winter.

He always had something to do to keep him busy and out of the house.

But his son, he had two sons and his younger one saw the glint in his father's

eye when his older brother joined the military.

Like he had something finally to be a proud of as a dad from his son.

So it caused the younger son to want to go into the military as well.

And so in high school, he joined the junior ROTC and then eventually he made

his way into basic training and into the military, when he hoping to bring pleasure to his dad,

when he found himself in basic training.

As he was going through that process, his birthday came up.

And so they let him call home to his parents, his dad.

And his dad was had a girlfriend at that moment. And the girlfriend is the one who picked up the phone.

And as he asked about talking to his dad, she said, he's out, he's busy.

He's not going to come to the phone.

Even on his birthday, the dad wouldn't talk to the son.

He got over that, he got past that or so he thought, and he went on.

He got deployed overseas on exercises and actually in active combat.

And then he came back home after he was discharged from the army.

He pulled into his driveway, and his dad had boxed up his entire room.

Changed that room into something else, and his possessions, his dad didn't even

help him carry it out to the car.

It was a heartbreaking moment for this person.

And I want to contrast it with the video that we just saw.

There are two types of responses. There are two types of the ability to really

receive and to give love as a father.

The one in the video showed the type that his dad said a phrase over and over

and over again to the point where it was ingrained into his son that it didn't take God by surprise.

His dad was there literally behind him, but also figuratively behind him saying,

you are my son, I will always have your back.

His dad was the place that he wanted to go when he had this life-changing news that he quit his job.

It was somebody that he wanted to share with. It was a place where he felt safe.

And then when you contrast that with the man who gave his testimony at dad camp,

they are so vastly different.

Support versus no support.

They both sons wanted to be home, but one found a loving, receptive father,

and the other one said, I'll help you carry things out to your vehicle.

You're going to have to go find a place to live on your own.

When we think of our earthly dads, we can have one of those two experiences

or something in between.

We can have a dad that we really care about and that we want to share our deepest

secrets with, the one that we feel the safest around.

We can have a dad that shows us a cold shoulder that we don't even know if he

appreciates us, if he loves us, if he accepts us.

We have an opportunity to be like the dad who wants to really show compassion

and mercy instead of the other one.

Another thing I learned from my dad camp experience is something that just blew my mind.

If you, as a man, are the spiritual leader of your house, your kids who you

and your wife are raising and sending out into the world,

are more than 80% likely to have a relationship with Jesus throughout the rest of their lives.

If the dad is not the spiritual leader of the house, the likelihood that the,

children will carry on a faith after they leave their home is less than 20%.

Of the time.

It is a dramatic, dramatic difference.

And it shows the importance of fathers and their faith.

And it makes sense because as we continue to go through the names of God,

one of the names of God is Father.

It is Abba. And that's what we're going to be discussing today.

How God is our Abba Father.

How he is the one that we want to be like in the movie that we saw the one that

we run to when we have struggles the one that we run to when the world is collapsing around us.

And not like the other father we mentioned, but somebody who is generous,

kind, compassionate, who has an ear, who is willing to turn off the TV when

there is something that you need to talk about.

And someone, whether you are still being raised by that father or that father

has sent you out into the world, someone that you want to share with,

your deepest secrets, your hurts, your pains, when you don't even know how to take one step forward.

Our Father who lives in heaven is that God. It is our Father.

And so before we get into it, I just want to talk about just a little bit how

the word Abba came into being.

It is a Aramaic word, which is the word that Jesus spoke. And so when Jesus

taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer, which we prayed earlier today,

he would have said our Abba.

This is an Aramaic word.

And so it's transliterated into the Greek language.

And that's a crazy word, but simply what it means is you take the sounds of

a word in its original language and you put your alphabetic words to it.

So I have a very weird example of this.

When my growing up, I knew that I made up words or the culture that I was around,

we had words that we said that were nonsense words, but we just said them just for fun and just.

We had our own language, so to speak.

Well, that hasn't changed. Teenagers still have their own language.

And so when my teenage daughters come home and they bring home some of the words

that they say, I don't always pay attention, especially when I have selective hearing issues.

So I swore that I heard my children say the phrase earth nerfin, like earth nerfin.

Like it's a nonsense word. Like I was, when I was selectively listening, that's what I heard.

And when I brought it up again later, they were like, I have never said that.

That is too weird even for me is basically what they were saying.

So I transliterated this word for you, which means it's a nonsense word.

It's not a word, but I spelled it in English language.

And it should appear on the screen here. Irf Nerfin.

It'll be the next one.

Oh, oh, sorry. It didn't make it on the screen.

So, Erfnerfin, I spelled it E-R-F-N-U-R-N-E-R-F-I-N.

Erfnerfin. And anyway, it's a word that we do say in our household nowadays because it was so funny.

And one of our kids even likes to say it in a British accent,

which makes me laugh so hard.

But Abba is a transliterated word.

And they took the sounds that they heard from Aramaic and they put Greek letters to it.

And we get the term Abba. We get the term Abba.

And that's how that word came to be. But it is an Aramaic word and it means father.

But even more than that, it is the word that is used for children and their earthly dads.

So it's a word that is used throughout their whole life.

And for me, it translates better as the word dad.

When I was a kid, I called my dad, dad. I would say, happy dad's day or,

hey, dad, can we go play catch?

I would use the word dad and I still use the word dad today.

And so for me, it's better translated as the word dad.

Somebody that you have a close connection with and you have your own word for them.

For some of you, it may be something completely different. It may be papa or pops.

It may be, you may use the word father.

But for me, I see this word as meaning dad.

Dad, I have a close connection with you, and this is the name that I've called you my entire life.

And so that's where this word comes from. It is this idea that we have a close

relationship with this person.

And Jesus used it of his heavenly father and his disciples came to him.

And when they came to him, he said, pray like this, our Abba, our dad.

And so he invites us as his children to use this name of God as well.

There are three times in the New Testament where this word is transliterated as the word Abba.

Two come in the letters of the Apostle Paul, and one is a direct quotation from Jesus.

That's the one we're going to look at today. It's found in Mark chapter 14.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

But before we get there, let me pray.

Gracious Heavenly Father, we

come before you today and we just ask that you give us ears to hear you.

Teach us, open our hearts to receive what you want us to hear and challenge

us and transform us by your spirit. Just let your spirit flow upon us right now, Father.

Jesus, I ask this in your name. Amen.

Mark chapter 14, starting in verse 32.

Mark 14 · chapter mention

This is right after Jesus gets done with the last supper, where he tells his

disciples that one of them is going to betray him, where he takes the cup and

we get communion from that.

He takes the cup and blesses it and passes it around. He takes the bread,

he blesses it and passes it around.

And then he tells his disciples that you will all fall away from me today.

And Peter is very adamant and stern. No, I will never deny knowing you. I will never deny this.

And the others vowed the same.

And so we pick it up in verse 32.

They, this is Jesus and the disciples, went to the olive grove called Gethsemane.

And Jesus said, sit here while I go and pray.

He took Peter, James, and John with him, and he became deeply troubled and distressed.

He told them, my soul is crushed with grief to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

All right, so Jesus is right now in this section of scripture relying upon his earthly connections.

He is relying upon those that are closest to him.

He is relying upon those that he's been with for three years,

that they've seen miraculous things done, that they've seen Jesus heal,

that they've seen Jesus bring people back from the dead.

They've seen amazing things.

And he's with his closest friends here on earth.

And he takes three of them. He leaves eight of them behind because Judas has already left the group.

He leaves eight of them behind and takes his inner circle with him even further into this garden.

And he says, I need you to stay here and keep watch over me.

I need your protection around me. I need your presence and I need you to start praying for me.

And my hope is that we all have people that we can trust and that we can rely

upon, that we bring our secrets to, that we bring our heartaches, that we bring our...

All of our junk to. I hope that we have people that we can trust,

that have our best interests at heart.

Whether we want to hear the advice or not, they are providing the advice we need to hear.

Jesus is showcasing that this is what he has around him.

And it's a good, good thing to have people surrounding us in prayer,

to have people who are asking how we are doing, to have all,

of the connection and community that we have available to us through these relationships.

Jesus had it, and so should we. But this wasn't all Jesus needed.

And in the next verses, we'll find out what else he needs.

Jesus, he went on a little farther and he fell to the ground.

He prayed that if it were possible, the awful hour awaiting him might pass him by.

Abba, Father, he cried out, everything is possible for you.

Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

And so he comes before his heavenly Abba, his heavenly dad.

This is the connection and the community that he needs most desperately.

And at his most desperate hour, yes, people are surrounding him,

but he's left them behind a few paces back.

And he's falling on the ground and he's crying out to his Abba, his father.

There's a story that's circulating online about a Civil War soldier.

He lost his dad and his brother on the same day in the same battle.

And he was totally in a mode of grief.

And he was fearful for what this meant for his mom and sister who were back home.

And so he asked his commanding officer, can I go and ask for a release of my duties here?

Can I go and ask somebody else that they can send me home honorably and not just by deserting?

And so the commander agrees and this guy goes to Washington, D.C.

And he approaches the White House and his intent and his goal is to get to President

Lincoln and to tell him what's happening.

He gets as far as the gate around the White House and the soldiers there,

those guards, they won't let him through.

They're telling him the president's time is too valuable. It's too important

for you to interrupt his daily activities.

And so dejected and out of options, he goes and he sits at a nearby bench.

And looking sad and solemn, this kid comes along.

He's not yet a teenager. And he asks the soldier, what's wrong? What's happening?

And the soldier just opens up to him.

And he shares to him about these, the events that led him to this location.

And the kid says to him, follow me.

He grabs him by the hand and they start running across Washington, D.C.

They come to the gate around the White House and they just run right on through it.

They come to the door of the White House and they just run on through it.

No one is stopping them. No one is saying anything to them. And the soldier

is like, what is going on? How is this possible?

They make it into the West Wing of the White House and they open up the president's

office where a lot of officials are.

The president looks at these two that just interrupted his meeting.

And he says, Tad, what's going on?

Tad looks up and says, Daddy, you have to hear this guy's story.

You see, the soldier, he couldn't come into the presence of Lincoln on his own

merit because of who he was. He didn't earn it at all.

But if we are the children of the president, we have untethered access to him.

We can go to him any time that we want.

And the good news is that you and I are children of the Most High God.

We are the ones who have untethered access to him.

I also saw stories this week where this Tad Lincoln would sit at the feet of

his father as he was giving addresses in public where he was speaking like he was there all the time.

And that's what you and I can be like with our Abba who lives in heaven.

We have the access to him 100% of the time. And Jesus shows that here.

And he says, when we are at our lowest point possible, this is when we turn

to, this is when we have access to God.

It's not just then, but we have this access to God.

This week I had lunch today.

Two of you and suffering came up during that time that we had together.

And during the prayer time, something just hit me that I'd never heard of before,

or never thought of it in this way before.

And as one of you were praying, you prayed about how much God hated suffering,

and how much God hated pain.

And then I was thinking in my head, yeah, well, you're strong enough.

You do something about it. Take the pain away.

But then you continued to pray and you said, that's why you didn't want sin to be in this world.

And I was like, wow, that is a perspective that I needed to hear,

not just because of things that are going on personally, but because of what happened that night.

You see, while it may give Dean a lot of joy, what happened Friday night for

the second time in history did not give me any joy at all.

When the team that I followed my entire life, the team where I have

positive memories of my dad taking me to these games, where I have positive

memories of playing catch with a football with Purdue on it.

It was such a hard hurt that they lost to a 16 seed that I had to go to God.

I wasn't sleeping that night.

I was tossing and turning and,

honest with you, I don't watch the games. Like I cannot watch the games because

this is how I always respond and react.

And so I put that parameter in place, but I still felt it.

And I remember that prayer. You hate suffering.

And that's why you didn't want sin in this world. and it hit me.

I still have Purdue as an idol in my life. I still have that brokenness inside

of me where I exalt it to a place where I shouldn't exalt it anymore.

And it's so happy for you, Dean. So happy for you. If I want to watch it,

thank you. I appreciate that.

It is reality. We have sin in this world, and so we have suffering.

But we have to remember that we have unhindered access to our King and our Master

and our Lord, and we can cry out to Him, Abba, Father,

I have pain.

And there's a lot deeper pain going on than just us, one seed losing to a 16 seed.

And when we experience that, we call out to him, Abba, Father,

I know you can take this away from me.

So please take this away from me.

And that's what Jesus is saying here. He has this unfettered access to the king,

and he's crying out because this is who ultimately can do something about it.

Because what happens next shows the frailty of the human condition.

In verse 37, we read, then he returned and found the disciples asleep.

He said to Peter, Simon, are you asleep? Couldn't you watch with me even one hour?

Keep watch and pray so that you will not give into temptation for the spirit

is willing, but the body is weak.

Then Jesus left them again and prayed the same prayer as before.

He went away and he said, Abba, Father, everything is possible for you.

Please take this cup of suffering away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.

He again calls out to God, I need you.

But it wasn't until after he went to his friends and it's not any of their faults.

I've fallen asleep during my prayer time before.

I'm sure I'm not alone in that. And that's what the disciples seem to be doing

here. Their eyes got heavy and they just fell asleep.

Jesus is like, I needed you. This was the hour I needed you the most. This is the time.

Rise and wake, watch and pray with me.

But then he goes back to the one who's never going to let him down.

And he says, Abba, Father, I need you.

Lastly, we read in this section, when he returned to them again,

when Jesus returned to the inner circle, he found them sleeping for they couldn't

keep their eyes open and they didn't know what to say.

When he returned to them the third time, he said, go ahead and sleep,

have your rest. But no, the time has come.

The son of man is betrayed into the hands of sinners.

Up, let's be going. Look, my betrayer is here.

And Jesus comes back to him and they had fallen asleep again.

In their time of watching and praying, their eyes got too heavy and they couldn't keep them open.

But his father was there connecting with him and conversing with him.

And in these three times where he calls out, Abba, father, all things are possible

for you. Let this cup pass from me, but not my will, but yours be done.

In this interaction with his father, he knew what to do and he had the courage

and the strength to do it.

Just like the video where the father gave him the advice, take your wife,

go to the diner. We'll take care of the kids.

You need to work this out with your spouse.

God was saying to him, hey, I am with you.

You are my son whom I love and you, I cherish you.

He understands it, all right? And he's strengthened and he's encouraged and

he's pursuing this relationship with his Abba, with his dad who lives in heaven.

And that's what we have access to.

As a newly driving teenager, I was driving between 114 and Coventry on 24.

I worked in the dairy department at what was then called Scott's, and I...

Caught in a construction zone going more than 10 miles over the speed limit.

I was pulled over and I was issued a ticket.

My dad enrolled me in a program where if I didn't have any accidents or speeding

tickets in the first two years, I would get $1,000.

And so I was pretty devastated about that.

But I knew I couldn't share, I couldn't keep this information to myself.

I knew that I would have to come to my dad to tell him, even though I didn't want to.

And when I did bring this ticket home from work that night, I didn't know what

to say. And so I just handed it to him and I just stood there waiting for his reply.

His reply is not what I remember, but what I remember is the next day I called

the number to see how much the ticket would be. And they were like,

oh no, you gotta go to court to work that out.

Because of it being more than 10 miles per hour over in a construction zone, I had to appear in court.

And I remember that I was desperately nervous, but I also remembered my dad was there right with me.

As case after case went on, he was right there giving me advice, giving me wisdom.

And when it was my time, I had the courage to stand in front of the judge alone

and to take responsibility for what I had done.

That is what our dads can do.

And that is what our heavenly dad does all the time.

He is there for us when our knees are knocking.

He is there for us when we check the scores on our feed.

He is there for us if we have days where we can't get out of bed because the pain level is too high.

He is there for us when our wayward children are going their own separate ways.

He is there for us every moment of our lives.

He is our dad.

And as we call out to him and as we pray for him, he is going to do the right thing.

And he is trustworthy. And he is so good.

He is our Abba.

Let me pray.

Abba, Father.

Thank you again for joining us in the discussion about the name of God,

Abba, which is the Aramaic word for Father.

Abba shows us the personal relationship we can have with God and that we can

come to God in every situation, even our hardest and most difficult moments.

If you would like more information about Faith Chapel and its ministries,

please visit the website gofaithchapel.org.

Next week, we continue the series on the different names and titles of God in the Bible.

Each of these descriptors show us something about who God is.

Join us next week as we look at the name Yahweh Sabaoth, the God of the angel

armies. Have a great week.