God the Father, Almighty

Sermon

“What comes into our minds when we think of God is the most important thing about us.”

A.W. Tozer wrote that in his book, The Knowledge of the Holy.

And he’s right. How we answer the question, “Who is God?” determines what we think about everything else.

If God is an overbearing disciplinarian, we will and ought to sit in complete fear of Him.

If God is a cosmic grandpa who sits in the good chair doling out sweets, we will put him out to pasture when his time comes and his weird rules get uncomfortable to our modern sensibilities.

If God is the “Big Guy in the sky,” we will treat Him like a buddy that we can hang out with every once in a while and maybe ask for some money when things get tough.

What we mean when we say the word God reveals everything about our theology, our worldview, and our worship. If we begin with a wrong conception of God, we will miss the entirety of the Christian faith.

Go ahead and turn in your Bibles to 1 Corinthians 8, which is on page 650 of the pew Bible. This morning, we are continuing in the Apostles’ Creed with the first full confession of a truth: I believe in God the Father, Almighty.

From the first line, the Creed establishes who God is. We do not merely confess, “I believe in God,” because we do not believe in and worship an abstract deity or an unknown God or a God of our own design. The God of the Bible, which the Creed describes, is a God with an identity and character. He is someone. We believe in God the Father, Almighty.

We’re going to cover a lot of ground here this morning: the Trinity, paternity, questions about gender identity,

Look at verse 6 of 1 Cor 8:

1 Corinthians 8:6 CSB

yet for us there is one God, the Father. All things are from him, and we exist for him. And there is one Lord, Jesus Christ. All things are through him, and we exist through him.

Let’s pray, and we will unpack what it means that we have one God, the Father who is Almighty.

Our Father, make your Word a swift Word,

passing from the ear to the heart,

from the heart to the lip and conversation;

that, as the rain returns not empty,

so neither may your Word,

but accomplish that for which it is given. Amen.

One God, Three Persons

As we begin, it is important for us to remember that the One God we believe in is the Triune God. We believe in one God who exists as three distinct but equal persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. This is not a lecture on Trinitarianism, so I won’t delve too deeply here, but it is important for us to keep that in mind.

We will see that God is the father of Israel and he is the father of believers (who are the continuation of True Israel), but both of those are derived from the fact that God is the Father of the Son, both of whom are equally and eternally God.

That’s why Paul can say we have one God who is Father and one Lord Jesus Christ, ascribing divinity to both. He doesn’t mention the Spirit here, but He is evident in other passages. One God in three persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

Now, before we move on — we’re going to spend the bulk of our time looking at what it means that God is the Father and our Father — however, I need to address two objections to the language of God as the Father. There are objections to that language, and it doesn’t do us any good to ignore them. “That’s what the Bible says and you just need to get over it,” doesn’t open any doors to gospel conversations. I don’t want us to miss opportunities to engage people because we’re afraid to look at the objections that our world has with the words we use.

First, many have a visceral reaction when we refer to God as Father because of the bad experiences they’ve had with their own fathers. They may have been absent or abusive or just distant and unloving. And if you have that reaction when you hear God referred to as Father, if you imprint your painful experience of your earthly father onto God as Father, listen to me: you are normal and there is nothing wrong with you. You don’t have to beat yourself up for feeling that way. This morning, I want to show you that God is better than your earthly father. I want to help you reverse that projection to start seeing God as the template for Fatherhood and that your dad didn’t live up to that, instead of seeing your dad as the template for fatherhood and believing that God is like Him. He’s not.

Secondly, the language of God as the Father can sound very patriarchal and lend credence to the wrong association of maleness with power and authority. We need to address the hot topic of God and gender pronouns.

Mary Daly, who was a pioneer of what’s called feminist theology, famously wrote, “If God is male, then male is God.” I want to work through that, because she’s starting in the wrong place and therefore came to a wrong conclusion. But, the language of God as Father has been used in the past, and still is really, to place men in positions of authority at the expense of women and prop up systems that are disempowering, demeaning, and potentially abusive to women.

Now, believe it or not, this discussion of the language of “he” is not something that’s new in the Church — though it is relevant to us today in the world with questions about gender identity and pronouns and what it means to be masculine or feminine — these are actually questions that the Church has wrestled with from nearly the beginning.

Remember that the Church of Jesus Christ was established during the time of the Romans with their enormous pantheon of gods and goddesses. And if you’ve ever taken a class or read a book about Greek or Roman mythology you know that the morality of the gods, particularly particularly when it came to sexual morality, was lacking at best. And so from early on in the Church, writers and thinkers were careful to make distinctions between the God of the Bible and the morally degenerate gods and goddesses of the pantheons. And one of those distinctions was to make it very clear that the Bible uses the words Father and he without any connotations of sex or gender. The One true God transcends gender and the body.

It’s normal to think of a male when we hear the word “he.” But in God’s case, it’s just wrong. God is not male nor is he female. One of the questions from the children’s catechism is as follows:

Q. 9.“Who is God?”

A. “God is a Spirit, and does not have a body like men.”

We read this just a little while ago in John 4, when Jesus is talking to the woman at the well, he says

John 4:24 CSB

God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

God does not have a body, therefore he is neither male nor female. Which means, when we use the word “he” to describe Him, we are merely using the words of His own self-revelation, not ascribing any masculine aspects to Him.

Carl Henry, a very important Baptist theologian and the founder of Christianity Today magazine said it this way:

The God of the Bible is a sexless God. When Scripture speaks of God as “he” the pronoun is primarily personal (generic) rather than masculine (specific); it emphasizes God’s personality—and, in turn, that of the Father, Son and Spirit as Trinitarian distinctions—in contrast to impersonal entities.

Essentially, when we refer to God as He, we are not distinguishing from “she,” but we are distinguishing from “it.” Our God is a personal God, not an impersonal force.

This is not Star Wars where we feel the Force around us, we must. Our God is a personal God who lives in relationship with Himself in the three persons of the Trinity and in relationship with us, through the person and work of the Son, Jesus the Christ.

Don’t let the language of he make you associate God with maleness or masculinity, because that is not how He reveals Himself.

Now, having looked at those objections, let’s turn for the rest of our time to fill in the gap we just made. If God not a bad father and God is not male, what do we mean when we call Him Father?

The Bible reveals three different but related paternal relationships of God the Father. First, we see that God is the Father of Israel.

God is the Father of Israel

Turn to the Book of Hosea and chapter 11, that’s on page 514 of the pew Bible.

The major story of the Old Testament is that part of God’s plan to redeem humanity was that He would enter into a covenant with a people from the line of Abraham. From that covenant, He would create a people in special relationship to Him. And over and over, He proves his commitment to those people, especially in THE major event of the Old Testament, the Exodus. Look at verse 1 of Hosea 11:

He shows love and compassion

Hosea 11:1 CSB

When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son.

One aspect of God’s Fatherhood is that He loves His covenant people. When His people were crying out in suffering, God sent a deliverer to lead them back to Him.

God is a loving Father who shows compassion and care for His covenant people. Later, when Jeremiah is looking toward the coming Exile from the Promised Land, God reveals that He already intends to rescue them even before they are taken captive:

Jeremiah 31:9 CSB

They will come weeping, but I will bring them back with consolation. I will lead them to wadis filled with water, by a smooth way where they will not stumble, for I am Israel’s Father, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

God is not a harsh master, but a loving Father.

In our good moments as parents we get that, right? I had a good moment as a parent the other day. One of my children was doing something they should not, namely leaping from chair to chair around our kitchen table. I asked them to stop and explained that it was dangerous. As soon as I turned around, what do you think happened? Of course, leaping commenced followed soon by a crash and sobs as the child hit the floor.

I could have, in fact my first instinct was to say, “Told you so,” then discipline them for disobedience. But, again by God’s grace I had a good father moment and simply climbed down onto the floor, took them in my arms and told them how sorry I was that they were hurt.

God loves His people and He is compassionate toward them. He’s not waiting for you to mess up so He can scold you. But he is there when you mess up so He can hold you. Because God is a loving Father to His covenant people.

Secondly, God is revealed as the Father of Jesus Christ.

God is the Father of Jesus Christ

As we heard Hamilton read this morning from the account of Jesus’ transfiguration, God from heaven declared openly that Jesus was His Son, the second person of the Trinity, and that He loved Him. He did the same at Jesus’ baptism, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased.”

God is the Father of the Son, who is Jesus Christ. And God is the Son of the Father. This relationship has existed eternally, before time and outside of time. And it is a relationship of perfect love, which is manifested in the Holy Spirit.

Everything comes back to the love that the Father has for the Son, including the final paternal relationship, that which the God the father has for believers, His children. Because God the Father is the Father of God the Son, through God the Son God the Father is also our Father.

God is the Father of Christians, the True Israel

Turn one last place, Hebrews 2, page 680 of the pew Bible.

If you are a disciple of Christ, if you have come to him in faith, having repented of sin and trusted his work wholly for your salvation, you are united with him in such a way that Paul says you are in Him.

And listen to what the writer of Hebrews says about that relationship:

Hebrews 2:10–12 CSB

For in bringing many sons and daughters to glory, it was entirely appropriate that God—for whom and through whom all things exist—should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings. For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father. That is why Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sisters, saying: I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters; I will sing hymns to you in the congregation.

Jesus gives all who receive Him, who believe on His name, the right to be children of God. Through the Spirit, Paul says, we are adopted into the family of God, made coheirs with Christ. That means our status completely changes in Christ. We are no longer slaves, but sons of the one Father of all.

And one Father means there is one family. We as the church catholic are united together in Christ with a unity that transcends gender, race, and language. All are united and are called to keep the unity, because there is one body and one Spirit, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all.

Through Jesus, the Son, we have an intimate and accessible relationship with the Father. In fact, Jesus tells us to pray to whom? Our Father. God is our Father just like He is Jesus’ Father. And so we can go boldly before the throne.

Did you see those Super Bowl ads from the organization He Gets Us? It’s a new evangelistic endeavor and I think they’ve done some good work so far.

But, one of the taglines of the ads was: Jesus didn’t want us to act like adults. And it’s various shots of children doing sacrificial things for others, one is holding an umbrella over a cat, one is helping her obviously sick younger sister lean over he toilet, kids running up to hug each other. It was really cute. Kids not caring about themselves, but caring about others.

Now, thinking about being like a child, which Jesus calls us to do, think about about the last time a child needed to ask you something? Did they wait around to make sure you weren’t busy first? Did they think about the reasonableness of their request? No way! They get right up in your face and “Hey, can we go catch some unicorns to play baseball with?”

That’s the kind of boldness we can approach God with because He is our Father who loves us. Knowing very well that he can do far more than we ever imagine and that He is never too busy for us. Knowing that He will always give us what we need. And that He will always listen. If his eye is on the sparrow, how much more is His eye on you, His beloved child.

In Christ, God is our Father. And He is a good Father.

There is so much more that we could say about God the Father. And I do have one more thing to say, because the line of the Creed doesn’t end with God the Father. But I want to pose some questions to you by way of application.

There’s gonna be more questions that you could possibly answer, but maybe one will stick out to you. If it does, maybe write it down and think about it this week. I can almost certainly direct you to a book or an article that might flesh out some of the doctrinal answer and help you come to some experiential answers.

Thinking about God as our Father, do you understand your adoption into His family? Do you value that status? Are you regularly reminding yourself of the privileges and inheritance you have as a child of God?

Do you believe that God is a loving Father to His children? Is your own experience with your earthly father affecting your ability to treasure God as your Father?

Are you seeking to please the Father through caring for the poor and practicing mercy for the marginalized?

If Christ is your Savior and Lord, do you understand Him as your brother, as well? Not just as a divine authority over you, but also a divine-human who sympathizes with you? Are you seeking to follow your brother down the path of sacrifice for the good of others?

J.I. Packer once wrote,

If you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God’s child, and having God as his Father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all.

Do you know your Father and do you recognize yourself as His son? If you don’t I’d love to talk to you about that sometime.

One more thought about God as Father. Like I said, the line does not just say “I believe in God the Father.” It says, “I believe in God the Father, Almighty.”

God our Father is almighty —which means that he can and will do everything that he intends to do. And for His sons, His intention is that they share all that their elder Brother enjoys now.

Romans 8:16–17 CSB

The Spirit himself testifies together with our spirit that we are God’s children, and if children, also heirs—heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him.

We will suffer in this life, make no mistake about that. But we will not miss the glory of being with Jesus in the end. God our Father Almighty will make sure of it.

Let’s pray.