God the Father: Almighty Maker of All

Lead Vocalist (Kelly)

Welcome & Announcements (Mike L.)

Good morning family!

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Announcements:

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Now please take a moment of silence to prepare your heart for worship.

Call to Worship (John 4:23-24)

Prayer of Praise (Trish Figgers)

Psalm 150

How Deep the Father's Love for Us

Prayer of Confession (Ronnie Evans), Idolatry

Assurance of Pardon (Psalm 103:13-14)

Only a Holy God

The Love of God

The Nicene Creed

Pastoral Prayer (Mike L.)

Prayer for PBC—Faithful theology

Prayer for kingdom partner—Peninsula Community Chapel (Garrett Spitz)

Prayer for US—Against loneliness

Prayer for the world—Zimbabwe

Pray for the sermon

SERMON

START TIMER!!!

Nadia couldn’t imagine calling God “father.” [1]

For one thing, it was against her religion.

As a good Muslim girl, Nadia knew there were 99 names for Allah, and not one of them is “Father.”

As the Qur’an states, “Allah is but one God. Exalted is He above having a son.” [2]

But Nadia’s refusal to call God “father” wasn’t just against her religion. It was against her experience.

She wrote this:

“I am from a family of six children. My father never showed us love. Whenever I heard of people speak about the love and support of their fathers, I had no idea what they meant.

My father was an angry man. He abused us, especially my mother, emotionally and physically. She was beaten several times to within an inch of her life. Yet she put up with this in order to protect us children.

I also remember the day when my father tried to kill my brother, forcing him to run away barefooted into the street.”

And as an adult, she watched as her father left her mother for a much younger woman.

Is it any wonder that Nadia grew to hate the word “father”?

What would you say to a girl like Nadia—a girl who had experienced considerable pain from the man she called “father”?

Would you, as some have done, try to reword the Bible so that it talks about a “heavenly parent” or a “heavenly mother”?

Or maybe you approach would be far more subtle. Maybe you would simply try to avoid the passages in the Bible that call God “Father”?

Is it right to insist on calling God “Father,” even if doing so brings up painful memories from one’s past?

Turn to 1 Corinthians 8:4.

Like Nadia, the people in Corinth had been deeply affected by their religious upbringing.

The city of Corinth was filled with false gods.

It had become such a sensitive issue that some didn’t even want their fellow church members to purchase meat that had once been offered to the gods they used to worship.

That’s the conflict Paul addresses in our text...

1 Corinthians 8:4–6—Therefore, as to the eating of food offered to idols, we know that “an idol has no real existence,” and that “there is no God but one.” For although there may be so-called gods in heaven or on earth—as indeed there are many “gods” and many “lords”— yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

If Paul’s goal was to avoid bringing up painful memories from the Corinthian’s past, he might have avoided the term “father” entirely.

After all, gods like Zeus, Poseidon, Asclepius, Serapis, and Helios were regularly called “father.”

And in service to those gods, people were engaged in temple prostitution, sexual exploitation, pederasty, and slavery.

But Paul didn’t ignore or twist the truth to make it easier for the Corinthians to accept.

Some of you have stories like Nadia’s.

Perhaps you don’t share her Muslim upbringing, but you have experienced the excruciating pain of a bad father.

The Nicene Creed—and our text this morning—teach us that the Fatherhood of God isn’t a doctrine we can ditch when it’s convenient to do so.

Because Understanding God begins with calling Him Father.

That’s the Big idea I hope to communicate today with God’s help.

As J.I. Packer writes in his book Knowing God, “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.” [3]

I want to show you TWO REASONS we should delight in this doctrine, no matter your past.

The Fatherhood of God reveals His TRIUNE NATURE

The Fatherhood of God reveals His OVERFLOWING LOVE

1) The Fatherhood of God Reveals His TRIUNE NATURE

Few concepts in the Bible are more difficult to understand, yet more important, than the Trinity.

In his book The Forgotten Trinity, James White summarizes what Christians believe about the Trinity with...

Three Foundational Truths About the Trinity:

1) There is Only One God

2) There are Three Divine Persons

3) The Persons are Coequal and Coeternal [4]

Did you know that we can see hints of all three truths in our passage this morning?

A) There Is Only ONE God

People in Corinth may have had a Golden Corral buffet of gods to choose from, but the truth is there is only One true God.

1 Corinthians 8:6a—yet for us there is one God…

We see the same idea in the creed we cited a moment ago: “We believe in One God...”

This idea is all over the Scriptures.

Deuteronomy 6:4—“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one.”

This is part of the Shema, the most essential prayer in all Judaism and is recited by observant Jews every morning and every evening.

When Jesus comes along, we get a fuller picture of the Trinity. But Jesus does not overturn the Bible’s teaching about God being one.

When He was asked which commandment was the greatest, He answered...

Mark 12:28-30— “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’”

The Apostle James also believed there was only one God...

James 2:19—You believe that God is one; you do well. Even the demons believe—and shudder!

But what does it mean to say that God is One?

It’s not the same as saying God is a mathematical singularity.

We know this because in Genesis 2:24, Moses uses the same word for “one” to describe the man and woman being “one flesh.”

When the Bible says God is “One,” I think it means that there is only one object of our worship. There is only one Being we call God.

And yet, that One being exists in three persons...

B) There Are Three Divine PERSONS

Technically speaking, I became a father nine months before my oldest was born, but my fatherhood didn’t become real to me until the moment I saw him.

I was overwhelmed with emotion. I wept like a baby.

My life was forever changed.

As beautiful as that moment was for me, and for all of us that have the joy of being a father, it is VERY DIFFERENT from the Fatherhood of God.

I needed help to become a father. God, by definition, doesn’t ever need anyone’s help for anything.

Becoming a father changed me. God, by definition, does not change. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever.

The truth is, God has ALWAYS been Father.

1 Corinthians 8:6b—…there is one God, the Father,…

Notice, the Apostle Paul isn’t listing God’s Fatherhood as something He becomes, but as who He is.

Now in order for God to be the Father eternally, He must have an eternal Son.

Which means the three persons of the Trinity must be eternal.

C) The Three Persons are COEQUAL and COETERNAL

In 318 AD, when a pastor named Arius began teaching something different, he wasn’t denying the deity of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Not exactly, anyways.

If you asked Arius, “Is Jesus God? Is the Holy Spirit God?” He would’ve said “Absolutely!”

But even though he would’ve used the same vocabulary, he had a different dictionary.

He taught that God became the Father at some point in the past. He created God the Son, then together the Father and Son created the Holy Spirit, and then everything else.

Arius believed that Jesus and the Spirit were God, but there were lesser than God the Father.

And so, the writers of the Nicene creed made it clear that both the Son and the Holy Spirit are equal with the Father.

As we’ll see next week, they said God the Son was “begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father.”

And as we’ll see in a few weeks, they said God the Spirit is “with the Father and the Son. . . worshiped and glorified.”

But more important that what the Creed says is what the Bible says.

1 Corinthians 8:6—yet for us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and for whom we exist, and one Lord, Jesus Christ, through whom are all things and through whom we exist.

Notice two things Paul is doing here.

First, he says the Father created all things AND the Son created all things. Creation is from the Father and through the Son. Jesus cannot be a created being if He created all things.

Second, Paul says we have one God—the Father—and one Lord—Jesus Christ. It doesn’t make any sense to say that the Father is God but not Lord. Or that the Son is Lord but not God. The Father is God and the Son is God. The Son is Lord and the Father is Lord.

If you’re paying attention, you might be wondering, “What about the Holy Spirit?”

Paul has already said earlier in this letter that the Holy Spirit is God.

1 Corinthians 3:16—Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

If you know the Old Testament, you know that the temple was the place where God dwells. Here Paul calls the local church (it’s “you all” in the original language) God’s temple. Under the New Covenant it is the local church where God is.

But which person of God dwells in the believer? The Holy Spirit!

In other words, the Spirit is God!

This is even more clear in passages like...

Matthew 28:18–20—And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”

Notice Jesus tells us to baptize in One name. It’s singular. There is only One God.

But notice also, Jesus mentions three divine persons: Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

And notice finally, the fact that these three names are mentioned together in the symbol of baptism suggests that these three persons are coequal and coeternal.

Understanding God begins with calling Him Father.

We should delight to call God Father because the Fatherhood of God reveals His Triune nature.

Some people object that the Trinitarian language we see in the New Testament is much more explicit than what we see in the Old Testament.

A few weeks ago my son got his first job. And I’ve found myself talking to a lot of different people about it. There’s something about a father sending his son off to work that has caused this dad to bubble over in ways that I wouldn’t normally do. I’m proud of him, and I want people to know it!

Something similar is happening in the New Testament as the Father sends His Son by the Spirit to work for us and our salvation. The Father is bubbling over in affection for His Son. We see it in the angelic messengers at His birth, in the Father’s voice at His baptism and on the mount of transfiguration, in Jesus’ high priestly prayer before His death, and in the blackened skies on the cross.

Of course the New Testament is overflowing with Trinitarian language! It’s because at this point in history, God Himself steps on the scene to rescue His people.

And God the Father is overflowing with love for His Son.

Which leads us to the second reason we should delight to call God Father.

Because...

2) The Fatherhood of God Reveals His OVERFLOWING LOVE

Let’s recite one more time the portion of the creed that we’re studying today...

We believe in One God, the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible.

It is incredibly significant that the word “Father” comes before the word “Almighty.”

If we begin describing God by raw power alone, the result could be frightening.

It’s not a coincidence that Adolf Hitler’s favorite term for god was “Almighty.” [5]

It’s also significant that the creed calls God “Father” before it calls Him “Maker” or Creator.

If we start by calling God Creator, we might think that God becomes a Father by creating.

We might think that God created because He needed someone to love.

But if we begin by describing God as Father, the results are drastically different.

Listen to the way Michael Reeves describes it in his book Delighting in the Trinity…

“Since God is, before all things, a Father, and not primarily Creator or Ruler, all his ways are beautifully fatherly. It is not that this God ‘does’ being Father as a day job, only to kick back in the evenings as plain old ‘God.’ It is not that he has a nice blob of fatherly icing on top. He is Father. All the way down. Thus all that he does he does as Father. That is who he is. He creates as a Father and he rules as a Father; and that means the way he rules over creation is most unlike the way any other God would rule over creation.” [6]

Everything that God does—even things like disciplining His children and judging His enemies—is an expression of His Fatherly love.

Because Father isn’t just something God does, it’s who He is!

Because God is Father, and because God has always been Father, He has always existed in an overflow of love.

In the 1150s, there was a theologian named Richard of St. Victor who thought very deeply about the love of God.

Richard argued that, in order for God to be love, there must be both a lover and a beloved. That makes sense. You can’t be love if there is no one to love.

True love requires at least two persons. But perfect love requires even more.

All of us have seen that couple who are so infatuated with each other that they ignore everybody else.

What calls itself love can actually turn into something that is exclusive, introverted, insulated, and ungenerous.

When love between two persons is happy, healthy, and secure, they rejoice to share that love with another.

So, Richard argued, perfect love requires not two persons, but three.

Since God is perfectly loving, from all eternity the Father and the Son have delighted to share their love and joy with and through the Holy Spirit. [7]

When you put all this together, it can absolutely transform your conception of God.

Why did God create “all things” as our passage proclaims?

It was not because He was lonely and needed someone to love.

It was not because He was selfish and wanted someone to serve Him.

The creation of all things visible and invisible is simply the overflow of God’s love!

As Michael Reeves says, “the Father is essentially outgoing.” [8]

It is the outgoing, overflowing love of God that led Him to create this world and everything in it.

You may not feel like God loves you. But He is the One who created you. He knit you together in your mother’s womb.

In love and joy He made you you! Your personality, your body type, your smile, your eyes, your upbringing, all of it was hand-crafted in love for you!

It is the outgoing, overflowing love of God that led Him to send His Son to redeem His people.

Jesus, the only begotten Son of God, came to this earth so that God could expand His family.

John 1:11–13—[Jesus] came to His own, and His own people did not receive Him. But to all who did receive Him, who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God, who were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God.

If you turn from your sins and trust in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, you can be adopted into the family of God!

If you have done that, you have been adopted into the family of God. God is now your heavenly Father.

Which means God is overflowing in love towards you.

Do you struggle believing that, Christian?

Sometimes we say “I love you but I don’t like you.” Which is a way of saying, “I’m going to choose to love you, but my feelings aren’t in it.”

Hear me carefully: God’s love for you isn’t like that. If you have been adopted into His family, He loves you with all that He has and all that He is. God DELIGHTS in you.

Perhaps you think, “You don’t know how messed up I am! How could God possibly delight in someone so sinful and so needy?

I’m a sinful, imperfect, often distracted dad. But do you know when I am most aware of the love I have for my kids? It’s when they’re in greatest need.

Like the time Jonah was hurting after watching another close friend move away.

Or the time Zoe’s finger was slammed in a door and I held her screaming body as the doctor stitched her back together.

Like the time Phoebe was very sick in the hospital as a baby with an IV in her head.

Like the times Ella wept as Holly and I left for a trip together.

Like the time I heard the most pitiful cry from Ezekiel in the recovery room after multiple surgeries.

In each of these moments, my heart felt like it was going to burst because of the love I had for them.

Christian, if you have been adopted into the family of God, your sin and your need doesn’t push your Father away. It draws Him near.

Understanding God begins with calling Him Father.

That’s why it was so hard for Nadia when she first heard the truth about Jesus.

She had been raised as a Muslim to believe that God is not a Father.

And she had been taught by her earthly father to believe that fathers were abusive, selfish tyrants.

But as she studied the Bible, she saw the grace and love of the Father. As she prayed, she felt the attention of the Father. As she worshiped, she felt the embrace of the Father.

Nadia was the first person in her Iranian family to become a Christian and call God Father.

Over time, Nadia shared the Good News of Jesus with her mother, her nephew, her sister-in-law, her sister, her brother, and more.

One by one, eleven different family members came to repent and believe in Jesus.

But not her earthly father.

Three days before her father died of cancer, Nadia called him and spoke to him one last time.

She told him again about the good news of Jesus.

She told him about the dying thief next to Jesus on the cross.

Like that thief who was forgiven just before he died, Nadia’s father could be forgiven too.

And in that moment, Nadia’s earthly father—a lifelong, hardened Muslim man—turned from his sins, trusted in Jesus, and was adopted into the family of God.

Unbeliever, like Nadia’s father you too can turn from your sins and put your faith in Jesus. It’s not to late for you to be adopted into the family of God. Would you turn from your sins and trust in Him today

Christian, like Nadia, you can move beyond the wounds you have from your earthly father. You can see the glorious Good News that God the Father is everything you could ever hope for in a father, and infinitely more!

Prayer of Thanksgiving

Glorify Thy Name

Benediction (1 Corinthians 1:3)