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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Paul Aurandt in his book, Destiny, tells of the powerful impact a single father can have on a whole society.
Norman's father was a salesman in Connecticut.
He did not like people who were different from himself, and that was almost everybody.
In other words, he was a bigot.
He constantly insulted people, and cut them down for their race or color.
Women were degraded, and his own wife was not allowed to speak her mind.
Home life was one of constant tension with fighting and shouting.
Norman's father ended up involved in some shady deal on the sale of stocks.
Norman was 12 years old when his father got out of prison.
But this did not change him at all.
He was still as narrow, dogmatic, and critical as ever.
Norman still loved his father, for in spite of all his weaknesses, he had a good and loving side to him.
So when Norman grew up he made his father's image one of the most popular images America has ever known.
Norman became a famous TV producer, and one of the biggest hits of all time was Norman Lear's Archie Bunker in All In The Family.
Archie Bunker was not portraying a figment of someone's imagination.
He was portraying the life of a real father.
His views and values were those of Norman's own father.
When we come to the life and teachings of Jesus we need to recognize also that they represent the views and values of a real father.
Jesus was the express image of the Father.
He said, "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father."
If we want to know what God is like, we look at Jesus, for He is the full and final revelation of God the Father.
Henry Drummond said, "We can unlock a man's whole life if we watch what words he uses most."
The word Jesus used most for God was Father.
He calls God Father 17 times just in the Sermon on the Mount, and 12 of them are here in chapter 6.
He uses this name for God in this chapter more than anywhere else in the synoptic Gospels.
This is the God is Father chapter.
I call your attention to this so you do not think we relate to God as Father only because the Lord's Prayer begins with our Father.
Jesus makes clear that everything we do is to be done in the Father-child relationship.
All we do is done either in obedience or disobedience to our heavenly Father, and so the Christian life could properly be called, all in the family.
A Sunday school teacher, after a service on the omnipotence of God, asked her class if there was anything God could not do?
There was silence, and then one little guy put up his hand.
She felt disappointed, thinking he must have missed the point of the lessons.
She asked, "What do you think God can't do?"
He said, "Well, He can't please everybody."
That, of course, is literally true, for not even our heavenly Father can please everybody, even those in His own family.
The story of the Prodigal Son illustrates this.
The Father was an ideal father, and there is not one thing you can detect in him that makes him a poor father.
Yet he had two sons, and both of them were not pleased by his values.
The younger son did not want to stay around and live under his ideal love.
He wanted to take off and live an independent life.
The father did not please him enough to hold him at home.
The elder brother, on the other hand, was not pleased with his father when he accepted the rebel back.
Here were two boys who had as good a father as anyone could ever have, yet they were not pleased.
The point is not, that it is impossible to be a good father, but that it is impossible for a good father to always please his children.
Not even the only perfect father, who is God, can do this.
The result is God's children all through history are like the two sons in the parable of the Prodigal.
One side goes to the extreme of stressing God's justice and discipline, and this causes many to want to leave the family.
The other side stresses the love and compassion of the father, and this makes the other side feel like walking out of the family, because this seems to them to make God a wishy-washy indulgent parent.
The family of God is often torn by the conflicting pictures of the nature of God's fatherhood.
Is He a Divine Domineering Disciplinarian, or is He a Passive Permissive Parent?
History would indicate that people tend to lean one way or the other depending on what kind of an earthly father they had, and whether they accepted or rejected their father's values.
Whole cultures have followed one or the other concept of God.
Eastern, or the Greek church, tended to develop the idea of God as the Father-Creator, and the Father-Redeemer.
His main purpose in history was to restore His fallen family to Himself through our Redeemer-Brother, the Lord Jesus.
The Western, or Latin church, followed Tertullian, the brilliant theologian who was also a lawyer, who established a more legalistic approach.
God was the judge, and the penalty must be paid, and so if you have no alternative you are condemned.
God, however, provides a substitute to take your condemnation.
It is the Lord Jesus who sets you free.
Both of these have a Biblical foundation, but our Western emphasis can be easily distorted, and lead to all kinds of fears of God as a condemning judge.
The problem with trying to lock God into one form of fatherhood, or another, is that the universe cannot contain God, let alone some form, category, or description that men formulate for their own convenience.
God's fatherhood is as varied as it needs to be to meet the needs of all His children.
God is Father to both the legalistic and the freedom loving.
Both the Prodigal and his elder brother were equally sons of the same father.
The father is not responsible for the weaknesses of either son.
He did not want his youngest to go off and live for sensual pleasure.
He knew that road would end with hogs and humiliation.
But neither did he want his eldest to be such a legalistic snob, who would rather see his brother perish than be welcomed back and forgiven.
The father was not the problem, but he was the center of that family, and the only hope of the families survival.
The father is the only hope of the two sons ever being reconciled.
So it is in the family of God.
The fatherhood of God is the foundation for all Christian unity.
Christians will differ on many things, even on the meaning of fatherhood, but the reality of that fatherhood is the basis for their oneness.
And that is why the first word of the Lord's Prayer is OUR.
Not any father in heaven, but our Father.
Not the father I have created in my own image, for my own satisfaction, but the father of all the great family of God, with its multiplicity of personalities, and varied backgrounds and cultures.
Here is all the world of human complexity tied up in divine simplicity: OUR FATHER.
It is the same concept we have when we say our nation.
The United States is one nation, yet 50 states.
It is E Pluribus Unum-or, the many in one.
Such is the family of God.
The Lord's Prayer, therefore, is a family prayer.
You will search in vain to find an I, me, my, or mine in this prayer.
It is always the plural you will see: Our Father, give us our daily bread, forgive us, and lead us not into temptation.
Jesus said we are to get alone to pray, but not to pray for ourselves alone.
You are to shut out the sight and sound of others, but never the sensitivity to the needs of others.
The poet captures this truth so beautifully-
You cannot pray the Lord's Prayer,
And even once say "I."
You cannot pray the Lord's Prayer,
And even once say "My."
You cannot pray the Lord's Prayer,
And not include another;
You cannot ask for daily bread,
And not include your brother.
For others are included
In each and every plea,
From the very beginning
It never once says, "Me."
Author unknown
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