Who is God really? /// Red Letters: Part 1

Welcome to the Plum Creek Church Podcast.

We're so thankful that you're listening along with us in this way.

Now, if you're a returning listener, welcome back.

But if you're new or newish, we'd love to become part of your listening rotation.

So be sure to subscribe and follow to be notified when new episodes are available.

Now, before we get into the message, we want to remind you of one thing.

Home Creek Church, we are all about changed lives, changing lives.

We really believe that if Jesus is right about God, about life, about the soul, then it only makes sense to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

Because when you choose to follow Jesus like that, it really does change everything, including the lives around you.

Okay, let's posture our hearts for what God has in store, this message.

Hey everyone, welcome.

Good morning.

I'm so happy to see you here today.

Thank you for choosing to join us and making sure you got to come before the, I don't know, football game later today.

And for those of you joining us uh at home, online, or on demand, we are so glad you decided to um be with us.

It is an honor to have you as part of our family.

Well, today we are kicking off a brand new series called The Red Letters, where we're looking at Jesus' words in the book of Matthew.

For most of you in your Bibles, uh, Jesus' words will be read in the book of Matthew and all of the Gospels, in fact.

So that's why we're calling it the Red Letters.

Now, for the last year or two, you've heard us say that if Jesus is right about God, life, and the soul, then it only makes sense for us to rearrange our lives around what he says is true.

However, what if we don't know what he says?

So we are intentionally through this series focusing on Jesus' words.

Now, uh, some of you may have got one already, but if you didn't, you need to know that we have a brand new guide out.

Is this not lovely?

This is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.

We have an incredible team that has designed this.

Eric Parks has written this, uh, and you definitely want to get one of these.

You can get it today after the service out in the atrium.

Um, they will be available until October 11th, so make sure you grab one.

Now, that said, I need you to know that these guides are a little bit different than the other guides that we have produced.

Um, for one, it has less content and more space for personal engagement.

We really want this to be about you engaging, not just getting head knowledge, but literally having a heart experience with Jesus' words.

So, how do we use this guide?

Well, first of all, it has 93 different entries where we look at 93 different sayings of Jesus.

Now, there's no reading plan, there is no schedule, there is no deadline.

If you want to spend the next year going through this guide or you want to get it all done within the next week, it's entirely up to you.

Nobody is going to be grading you on how quickly or slowly you go through the guide.

We want you to work through it at your own pace and to remember that you want to sit with Jesus' words, but then use the space, the lines and the pages that are empty, to write out what it means to you.

It's not about just cognitive knowledge.

We want you to have a heart experience.

Now, this message series is built around nine of those sayings of Jesus, what we like to call nine red letter declarations.

And these declarations reshape how we understand God, life, and the soul.

And our goal is not for you just to admire Jesus' teaching, although he was a fantastic teacher.

Our goal is for you to know what Jesus, the Son of God, said about God, life, and the soul.

And then you can rearrange your life around what he said, and that right there is what following Jesus is all about.

Now, here we are, week one.

And for week one, we're asking the question: who is God really?

I mean, really, who is God really?

And according to Jesus, the best place to answer that question is Jesus.

So we're going to look at his words right now.

Turn to John 14, verses 8 and 9.

John 14:8

John 14.

In this particular scene, Jesus and his disciples are interacting.

And quite honestly, the disciples right now are feeling kind of discouraged.

They know something is coming, they're not sure what it is, and they're needing some reassurance.

And this is what happens.

Philip, one of the disciples, looks at Jesus and he says, Lord, show us the Father, show us God, and we will be satisfied.

Just show us God and then we'll be okay.

And Jesus replied, Have I been with you all this time, Philip, and yet you still don't know who I am?

Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father.

Anyone who has seen me, Philip, has seen God.

You want to see God?

Look at me, Philip.

Now, this is incredible when you think about it.

You see, Jesus was fully divine and fully human.

He wasn't half and half.

He wasn't like an Arnold Palmer where it was half tea and half lemonade.

Okay?

He was fully God, fully human.

In theological terms, we call this the hypostatic union.

It's so hard for our brains to make sense of it, but you need to know when you look at Jesus, he is fully God, fully human.

And Jesus is telling us right here, when you see me, you have seen the Father.

He's saying that when we look closely at Him, when you look at what He said, how He lived, what He did, we get a glimpse of who God really is.

So now, with that as a basis, let's turn to Matthew 6, where we're spending most of our time today.

Matthew 6, it's just a little bit to the left in your Bible.

If you don't have your Bible, it will be on the screen.

Now, Matthew 6 falls in the middle of a three-chapter section of text that is called Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Have you heard of that?

Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

It may be the most famous sermon in all of religious literature.

One commentary calls it Jesus' Kingdom Manifesto.

I love that.

Jesus' Kingdom Manifesto.

In other words, it is a three-chapter sermon where Jesus teaches us what it means to live as a member or participant in God's kingdom.

And right in the middle of this kingdom manifesto is a few verses in Matthew 6 where Jesus is teaching about prayer.

He's teaching us how to engage with the Father.

It's known as the Lord's Prayer.

Those of you who were raised Catholic would have called it the Our Father, many of you, right?

And now we're going to focus on one verse.

Like we are shrinking down, and all of today is going to be one single verse.

Matthew 6, 9.

Jesus says, Pray like this.

Or in the New International Version, it says, Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Now, before we unpack what that one little verse means, let's set a little bit of context.

First of all, in verse 5 before the Lord's Prayer, Jesus issues a very stern warning about what not to do when you're praying.

He says, When you pray, don't be like the hypocrites who love to pray publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them.

Don't do that.

And then after the Lord's Prayer in verse 16, Jesus issues a similar warning, almost exactly like this.

And so what I want us to know before we go any further is that the Lord's Prayer, Jesus' teaching on how to engage with God Himself, is sandwiched between two warnings against religious performance.

Okay.

Jesus wants us to know when it comes to relating, interacting with God, that it is not about rote recitation or public attention.

It's about meaningful, authentic relationship with God Himself.

That's what prayer is about.

And this relationship is established with the first two words of Matthew 6.9.

So now we're going to shrink it down even more.

And look at two words.

What are the first two words of Matthew 6 9?

Our father.

Now, newsflash, everybody in this room has a father.

You may not like the one that you have, but you have a father.

It's like biological facts.

Okay?

And even though everybody within the sound of my voice has a father, the reality is we all have widely varying experiences with our father.

And when I say the word father, for some of you, you have an almost physical reaction to that word.

Some of you hear the word father and you just feel warm and fuzzy.

Some of you hear the word father and you are deeply sad.

A gentleman came last night and he told me he lost his father just two weeks ago.

So let's just be clear.

The phrase our father has a wide variety of connotations.

And even those of you in this room who have had amazing fathers, I'm pretty confident that you would agree he was not perfect.

Is not perfect.

And this is important because when we look at God as Father, when Jesus says that we're to interact with God as Father, we need to understand that our beliefs about who God is and how he relates with us is directly impacted by our personal experience with human fathers.

And if our beliefs are skewed at all based on our experience, then any conclusions we reach about God are likely skewed a little bit in the wrong direction.

All right?

So as we look at this one verse, I want you to do two things for me.

One, if you are someone that grew up saying the Lord's Prayer every single day, multiple times a day, it's so familiar to you that it's going to be hard for you to be able to lean in and learn something new.

And I want to challenge you to do that.

Pretend like you've never heard it before.

And then two, whatever experience you've had with a human father, I want you to kind of wipe the slate clean right now.

I want you just to put that to the side and look at it with fresh eyes.

Can we do that?

All right.

Now I am blessed to be married to a man who is a good father.

He is not perfect by any means.

I have stories if anybody wants to hear them.

But he is a good father to our children.

We have, my husband, Troy and I, we have four sons, two daughters, two daughters-in-law.

Holy cow, I can barely remember their names, right?

Like it requires a whole calendar to keep track of birthdays and anniversaries.

So we have four sons, two daughters, two daughters-in-law, and sometime in the next month, we are adding one more member to our family.

Yes, you can, Claud.

No, I'm not pregnant.

I would not be giving a message this morning if that were the case.

It's a boy.

And that means our son Ryan is going to be a father.

And most importantly, most importantly, I'm going to be a Gigi.

Yes.

That's my new name from now on.

Just call me Gigi.

This is certainly a season of transition for our family.

For my husband and I, we are finding ourselves having to like completely reorient our brains to a different reality.

We've been parenting a long time.

Like grandparenting is entirely new.

But as much of it, as much as it is a transition for my husband and I, it's even more of a transition for our son and daughter-in-law, right?

This child is a gift.

We have prayed for him.

He is a miracle.

And yet, even though we are thrilled, this is going to bring significant change for my son and daughter-in-law.

Like it's going to change their relationship.

It's going to change their individual roles.

They're going to experience a change in their independence and how they make decisions.

There's going to be a change in their responsibilities, their calendar, their finances, their sleep.

I informed them like in the next few weeks, this is the last sleep of your lives.

You will never sleep again until you're dead.

Enjoy it.

And eventually it's going to change their self-awareness.

You see, because as much as they want to be the perfect parents, as much as my son wants to be the absolute best father, the reality is they're not always going to get it right.

And nothing exposes our weaknesses and flaws, quite like raising another human being.

Anyone hear me?

Yeah.

My husband, Troy, as good of a father as he is, he's feeling the weight of that reality all the time.

You know, something happens, you get older, you parent for longer, and the truth is, is we are more aware of our flaws and weaknesses and failures today than we ever have been before.

There are so many times.

Those of you who have been parents, not all of you are, but those of you who have been parents for a long time, you probably get me here, where you spend some time, you know, when you're not sleeping at 2 o'clock in the morning, rehearsing all the things you wish you might have done just a little bit differently.

In Matthew 6, 1 through 18, though, Jesus says, This is how you should pray, our Father.

What's interesting is in verse 1 to 18, just 18 verses, the term father is used 10 times.

Now, this is noteworthy because in the rest of the book of Matthew, it rarely appears, but in this section of Scripture, it is pregnant with the word Father.

This tells me that Jesus wants to pay attention to this, that this is not a random phrase, that he wants us to address God as Father.

Why?

Why is it so important?

Well, to understand that, we've got to go back in time to the Old Testament and ancient Israel.

Now, ancient Israel, thousands of years ago, was a patriarchal tribal society, right?

We don't have a patriarchal tribal society anymore, so you need to like exit 2026 Casherach and think in terms of ancient Israel.

Ancient Israel was patriarchal tribal society, which means that the household, the household was the center unit of society, the central unit.

There was the household, the household resided within the clan, the clan resided within the tribe, and the tribe resided within the nation.

And this structure of household, clan, tribe, nation ensured that the people group, this particular people group, would survive.

All right?

This was not just a matter of preference, this was absolutely a matter of survival.

Now, this household unit in ancient Israel, in Hebrew, it's called the Beit Av.

B-E-T-A-B, Beit Av.

And it simply means father's house.

Father's house.

Because in a patriarchal tribal society, not only was the Beit Av the central source of security, safety, and redemption and restoration, but the Beitov was the sole responsibility of the father.

Okay?

The father was the one that was responsible for ensuring that the family members, the family name, the family land and property survived.

If anything threatened the household, the Beitov, it was the father's job to step in, to put his life on the line in order to rescue, save, redeem anything that was threatened, anything that was lost.

Now it's super important that you understand that just because ancient Israel had a patriarchal tribal society, God is not saying that the only good society is patriarchal tribal.

Okay?

That's not what he's saying.

What God is doing, he's using a familiar social construct, a familiar paradigm to people living within that society to reveal something about his character and his nature.

You tracking with me?

He's using something that was very familiar to them so they could see who he really is.

And all of this, all of this background is wrapped up in Jesus' teaching to disciples that day in Matthew 6.9 when he said, This is how you should pray.

Our Father.

I see at least four implications of God as Father as we go through this.

The first implication is intimacy.

Intimacy.

And Abba was a very intimate, familiar term that could be translated almost, not quite, but almost daddy.

It is a familiar, tender, intimate term for father.

Now, this term, Abba, was rarely used in first century Judaism.

And yet, it is the term that Jesus wants us to use when addressing Father, and it's the term that Jesus used when he was praying himself.

I want you to look at Mark 14.

In Mark 14, Jesus is in the Garden of Gethsemane.

It is the night of his arrest, right before his torture, crucifixion, and death.

He's in the Garden of Gethsemane and he's pouring out his heart to God because he's in agony over what's about to happen.

And this is what Mark 14 says.

He went on a little farther and fell to the ground.

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

And he cried out, Abba, Father.

You know, in moments of stress and challenge, um, we often see what is most true about ourselves at times, right?

Not always, but at times.

Right?

I often think, like I shudder when I think about it.

If I if my body outlives my cognitive ability at self-control, I shudder to think what my 90-year-old mouse will say.

Jesus is in incredible strain, the extraordinary suffering of his impending arrest, torture, and death.

And at this moment of agony, what comes out of Jesus' mouth is Abba.

The most intimate of terms.

You see, God as Father was Jesus' ultimate comfort.

When you and I pray our Father, our Abba, we are entering into a safe, tender, intimate haven of relationship.

But that's only the first implication.

The second one is sovereignty.

We have intimacy, but we also have sovereignty.

Matthew 6, 9.

Let's go back to it.

This then is how you should pray.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Now there are three parts there.

We've got our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.

Now, our Father is that intimacy and access that we just talked about.

In heaven, anchors that intimacy, anchors that tenderness to God's divine authority.

He's tender, but he's not soft.

Do you hear me?

And then hallowed be your name is an old English term that means holy or set apart.

Holy is your name, is Jesus' way of saying that God's identity, God's character, which is his name, is set apart.

It's completely other.

It's holy.

So when you put them all together, Jesus is telling us that God has Is unlike all other fathers.

So, regardless of your personal experience with your father, no matter how much your earthly father has let you down, you need to know that God as father is in a category of his own.

He doesn't even compare.

In first century Palestine, when Jesus was teaching us, the Israelites were under Roman rule.

Rome was the dominating power.

And the ruler of Rome was Caesar.

And Caesar was often called a divine father.

In fact, the Roman Synod in 46, something like that BC, had designated Caesar as officially father of the fatherland.

However, what's so interesting is Caesar accomplished his sovereignty, his divine fatherhood through violence and war and fear.

And Jesus is letting us know that God is not just sovereign, but he's also tender and intimate, our Abba.

Intimacy, sovereignty.

But the third implication of God as Father is security.

We are children and heirs.

If God is our father, you and I are children of his, and we are his heirs.

John, 1 John 3:1 says, see what great love the Father has lavished.

1 John 3:1

Lavished, I love that word.

See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God, and that is what we are.

That is what we are now.

You see, when we have a father and we are the father's children, what he has becomes ours.

What is his is now mine.

My son's about ready to discover this.

Like the food on his plate will no longer be his.

But this is what's happening now.

They come home for holidays, and my six kids start going through the house and giving up who's gonna get what when we die.

I'm like, I'm right here.

I'm standing right here.

But the truth is, is they are children and heirs.

Our God is not on a budget.

Everything he has is ours.

Psalm 50, God reminds us that the cattle on a thousand hills are his, every bird in the sky, every animal on the ground.

He says, if I were hungry, I would not tell you, because everything's mine.

And as children, we have the security of knowing that he will provide and protect and give us a place and a name.

Intimacy, sovereignty, security, and the final implication is belonging.

Now we've spent most of this message talking about the first two words, the first two words of Matthew 6.9, our father.

And most of the time we've been focusing on Father, but now I want you to back up and look at that first word.

Our.

It is a first-person plural pronoun.

And what that means is we belong not only to our father, but also the entire family that is his.

It is not my father because I'm the only one with him, it is our father because we are all in this together.

Recently, a good friend of mine was telling me about her experience as an only child.

It was just last week, in fact.

And uh it was interesting for to me.

You know, I have six kids, so our house, when everybody was home, it's like absolute chaos all the time.

And so she was giving me a window into what her reality looked like as an only child.

And she said, as a young girl, she was lonely all the time.

There wasn't that built-in companionship when there's a snow day or a holiday, and when they had family gatherings like birthdays and weddings and things like that.

There wasn't like built-in sibling structure that gave her companionship.

But she said the hardest thing right now is as a grown woman, she feels a constant weight of responsibility as she's caring for her aging parents.

She has no one to go to to help with decisions.

She has no one to help her with the physical task to taking care of her parents.

Now, hear me, this is not a judgment about how many children anybody should have.

That's not what I'm saying.

She was just sharing her experience as an only child.

And then she told me at the end of this interaction, she said, Michelle, I just have to say, for me, I would not wish that on anyone.

When Jesus taught us to pray, our Father, he not only placed us in intimate relationship with God Himself, but he also placed us squarely in relationship with each other.

There is not a person within the sound of my voice that is an only child.

Do you hear me?

Your entire family may have failed you and abandoned you.

You still have a family.

You belong here.

You are not alone.

Not one of us is an only child.

Nothing gives me more joy than going to the store.

Usually I have no makeup on and I'm in workout clothes.

It happens every single time.

And I meet somebody from Plum Creek who comes up to me and we've never met before and we're instantly family.

That's what it's about.

Intimacy, sovereignty, security, belonging.

Four implications of God as father.

A few weeks ago, I threw a baby shower for my daughter-in-law and my son.

It was a family-only baby shower, so just extended relatives.

But before I do that, let me do any of you, well, those of you who were living in the 70s and 80s, I realize like every time I get up here, fewer of you are from my generation.

But those of you in the 70s and 80s, you remember the game shows on TV?

Like the old, the oldies but goodies, right?

Things like um Family Feud, the original, not the remake.

It was pretty aggressive.

We loved it.

The Gong Show.

Anybody remember The Gong Show?

Okay, all you young people are going to have to Google it.

I mean, what's better than the Gong Show?

Of course, we had Bob Barker's Price is Right, the original, and I would be remiss if I didn't mention Hollywood Squares.

Anybody remember Hollywood Squares?

Yes, thank you.

I mean, come on.

You guys remember this?

Was it back before reality TV, back before social media, when our only glimpse of the rich and famous was like this.

So it was a game where they had famous movie stars on the screen in the Hollywood Squares, and we would watch it because we got to get a glimpse of how the other half lived, right?

And we'd look at it, and it was so glamorous, and we'd be like, Oh, I wish I had a wife like that.

That's so nice, it's so sweet.

Well, when we threw my daughter-in-law and son a baby shower, we decided to do kind of like a Hollywood Squares.

In other words, it was called Zoom.

We did a Zoom call.

Everybody lives all over the US, and so the only way for us all to be together for the shower was to mail the gifts and then do it over Zoom.

And so you can picture now me at home in front of my screen with all the different squares of extended family members.

We had grandmas and grandpas and great-grandmas and aunts and uncles and brothers and sisters and moms and dads, we had all of them.

And it was a really sweet baby shower.

However, as I was looking at the screen toward the end, I also felt sad.

Because I was looking at all the different faces on that screen, all of Ryan and Rachel's extended family.

And as much as I wanted to give this new grandchild a perfect family, the reality of all of those squares is it's not glamorous, it's messy.

Our family is complicated.

There are people who weren't there because they have long since passed, people that we miss every day.

There are people who were not there because they've chosen not to be in a relationship with us anymore.

There were people on that screen who struggled with mental illness, others who struggle with disability and health challenges.

There were at least three or four different divorces represented on that screen, a couple remarriages, and all kinds of financial and other challenges.

And I'm looking at that screen and I'm thinking, what a mess.

This is not what family should be.

It's so complicated.

I wanted to give my grandson something better.

But then God reminded me.

That night we came to church, I was heavy hearted.

I sat over here in worship and we sang a song about God as Father, and I realized that I do not have a perfect family.

You don't either, but we do have a perfect father.

And that's not an exaggeration.

And the best thing that I can give my sweet grandchild and the rest of my family and everybody else I know is for them to know that they have a perfect father who is in the category of his own, and he will always give them intimacy and sovereignty and security and belonging because that's who he is.

Today we asked the question: who is God really?

And so what did Jesus say?

Jesus said, God is our father.

Now go back for a moment to that patriarchal tribal society, the nation, tribe, clan, household, the Beitov, the Father's household.

Now I told you that the Beitov, the Father's house, was a central unit of society.

It helped held everything else together.

But there was one more member of the Beitov that was really important.

You see, if something happened, if a family member was lost, if the family was threatened, if it was broken beyond repair, if something had happened where that household, that family needed rescue, there was one more person that was of critical importance.

You know who it was?

The firstborn son.

You see, if the father couldn't perform his duties, the firstborn son would step in and put his life on the line.

And you and I, our family has been threatened.

We're a mess.

We can't do it all right no matter how much we try.

But we have a father who cares about us so much.

He has brought us into the father's household, the Beethoven.

And when he realized we needed a rescue that we could not provide, he sent his firstborn son.

Do you see that?

And rather than be like Caesar, who would use violence and fear, Jesus laid down his weapons and died.

This is our good father.

We have a father who loves us, who gave his only son so his children could experience the intimacy, sovereignty, and security and belonging that he has in mind for them.

Because his entire goal is to bring us home.

To bring us home so that we would always be where he is.

Okay.

I want you to pray this week that God would take your skewed perception of fatherhood, that he would take it and replace it with a vision and understanding of who he really is as your father.

Can you do that?

Our father.

We receive your name and our place within your households.

And we ask for your healing and your rescue, God.

Replace our faulty story about you as Father with the truth.

Help us to know you as a good father.

In the name of your firstborn Son, Jesus.

Amen.

Thanks again for listening.

Our prayer is that this message encouraged and challenged you in your journey to follow Jesus.

If you'd like to learn more about our church, please check us out online at plumcreek.church or if you find yourself within driving distance of Castle Rock, Colorado, we would be honored to see you in person on a weekend.

So until next time, praise and peace in the name of Jesus.