Before the World

I have a big family. My dad is one of four kids, but mom is one of fourteen (!) I have a lot of uncles and aunts. One of my favorites was Uncle Jim, married to one of Mon’s sisters. A lot of you might know someone like Jim. We thought he was awesome...and we were a little frightened of him the same time. He always treated us as grown-up, let us make our own decisions, and would also happily whup us whether we were playing horseshoes, cards, or Trivial Pursuit. But we loved it. And him.

I have a big family. My dad is one of four kids, but mom is one of fourteen (!) I have a lot of uncles and aunts. One of my favorites was Uncle Jim. A lot of you might know someone like Jim. We thought he was awesome...and we were a little frightened of him the same time. He always treated us as grown-up, let us make our own decisions, and would also happily whup us whether we were playing horseshoes, cards, or Trivial Pursuit. But we loved it. And him.

Found out after he died that he was adopted. His adopted parents couldn’t have kids, so they went to the orphanage and made Jim their son. They were quiet, a bit distant, but they were the only family Jim knew. When he was 13, his mom and dad became pregnant...and had a son!

That’s when Jim discovered he was not a son, but rather a renter living in their house. Because these people who raised him...sent him back to the orphanage. For all those years he called a man “father”, that man saw him as a renter, trading work on the farm for food and shelter.

I wish Jim were alive today to hear this message, to see these words from God’s word, and know that the God we follow does not see us as renting our relationship. He is a different kind of Father. Let’s dive in and find out.

We are going to begin the message today in the gospel account of the apostle John, chapter 17. So please open, turn on, swipe or otherwise prepare to read with me from . If you don’t have a bible we’ve got you covered in a couple ways. One, there is a Bible in the pew right in front of you. Second, you can download the FBC app and go to the “worship” tab at the bottom. Once there, you’ll see sermon notes. The scripture is right in the notes. Additionally, we have bibles for free for you to take home at the welcome desk. We buy them to give them away.

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you. Second, you can download the FBC app and go to the “worship” tab at the bottom. Once there, you’ll see sermon notes. The scripture is right in the notes. Additionally, we have bibles for free for you to take home at the welcome desk. We buy them to give them away.

If you are able, please stand as we read God’s word part of a prayer from Jesus Christ

a prayer from Jesus Christ

John 17:20–26 CSB

“I pray not only for these, but also for those who believe in me through their word. May they all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us, so that the world may believe you sent me. I have given them the glory you have given me, so that they may be one as we are one. I am in them and you are in me, so that they may be made completely one, that the world may know you have sent me and have loved them as you have loved me. “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, so that they will see my glory, which you have given me because you loved me before the world’s foundation. Righteous Father, the world has not known you. However, I have known you, and they have known that you sent me. I made your name known to them and will continue to make it known, so that the love you have loved me with may be in them and I may be in them.”

Please join me in a word of prayer.

21 that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

22 I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—

23 I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

24 “Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am, and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you loved me before the creation of the world.

25 “Righteous Father, though the world does not know you, I know you, and they know that you have sent me.

26 I have made you known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.”1

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Please join me in a word of prayer.

The speaker here is Jesus Christ. It’s the final words of a fairly-long prayer to His heavenly Father, and immediately after the prayer ends Jesus’s purposeful walk to death begins. So these are last words. Weighty words. This prayer was to God his Father, in front of the disciples...but it was for us too. (V20)

⁃ “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message2”

⁃ This prayer is not a model prayer - that’s called “the Lord’s prayer”, and it is much shorter. This is a personal plea. And it’s for all believers - not just Peter, John, Simon...but us, too, today.

There are two very different ways or approaches to thinking about God. The first way is like a slippery, sloping cliff-top goat path. On a stormy, moonless night. During an earthquake.

It is the path of trying to work God out by our own brains. I look around at the world and think, well, it must have come from somewhere. Someone or something caused it to be, and that someone I will call God. God, then, is the one who brings everything else into existence. God is, The Creator, the Ruler, the Large and in Charge. That is who he is, his identity.

There are two very different ways or approaches to thinking about God. The first way is like a slippery, sloping cliff-top goat path. On a stormy, moonless night. During an earthquake. It is the path of trying to work God out by our own brains. I look around at the world and think, well, it must have come from somewhere. Someone or something caused it to be, and that someone I will call God. God, then, is the one who brings everything else into existence. God is, The Creator, the Ruler,

Introduction - 6/18/17, 7:43 AM / 4 Large and in Charge. That is who he is, his identity.

It all sounds very reasonable and if we met someone in C-ville and, while talking to them, found out they thought God was Creator we’d probably be quite happy. Bu hold on! if I do start there, with that as my basic view of God, I will find every part of my Christianity covered by mold to grows and infects everything I love.

Why? First of all, if God’s very identity is to be The Creator, The Ruler, then he needs a creation to rule to be who he is. For all his phenomenal cosmic power, then, this God turns out to be pitifully weak: he needs us.

The problems don’t stop there, though: if God’s very identity is to be The Ruler, what is he going to do when his creation breaks the rules?

If God is The Ruler and the problem is that I have broken the rules, I’m either going to get punished - which I fear, or saved from punishment. The salvation God the Ruler offers is to forgive me and treat me as if I had kept the rules.

He’s the divine judge, causing either fear or relief: Fear of punishment, or relief that I’ve been saved by him letting me off and counting me as a law-abiding citizen.

Introduction - 6/18/17, 7:43 AM / 5 and counting me as a law-abiding citizen.

But that is terrible, because it means I can never really love the God who is essentially just The Ruler. And that, ironically, means I can never keep the greatest command: to love the Lord my God. That is a dark and moldy place indeed.

The other way to think about God is bright and clear: it is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. It is, in fact, The Way. It is a well-lit road that ends, joyfully, in a very different place, with a very different sort of God.

How different? Just the fact that Jesus is “the Son” says it all. Being a Son means he has a Father. The God Jesus reveals is, first and foremost, a Father. “I am the way and the truth and the life,” he says. “No one comes to the Father except through me” (). That is who God has revealed himself to be: not first and foremost Creator or Ruler, but Father.

But, you might ask, is that true? Let’s look at our text, right here, the last words of Jesus “Father...you loved me before the creation of the world.” THAT is the God revealed by Jesus Christ. Before he ever created, before he ever ruled the world, before anything else, this God was a Father loving his Son.

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God was a Father loving his Son.

So, the most foundational thing in God is not some abstract quality, but the fact that he is Father. Again and again, the Scriptures equate the terms God and Father: in Exodus, the Lord calls Israel “my firstborn son” (); he carries his people “as a father carries his son” (), disciplines them “as a man disciplines his son” (); he calls to them, saying: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion” () and “‘How gladly would I treat you like sons” ().

Since God is, before all things, a Father, and not primarily Creator or Ruler,

all His ways are beautifully Fatherly.

It’s fair to ask, at this point, what makes a Father? Or, what is the essential aspect of being a Father?

It can’t be having kids, because God did not “have” Jesus. Jesus existed for all time and eternity, just like God the Father. (Come to VBS if you have questions about that.)

To be a father means to pour out love

Father is God’s primary identity. Everything else is colored by it, for it came first. It’s a filter, coating everything else.

He creates as a Father Which means he rules as a Father And he judges as a Father This answers deeply the question of why God created this world, and created us. Because he delights to pour out love. He’s been doing that for all eternity along with Jesus wo receives and returns that love, the whole time the Holy Spirit shouting with joy about it...why wouldn’t he create life to pour out love?

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He creates as a Father Which means he rules as a Father And he judges as a Father This answers deeply the question of why God created this world, and created us. Because he delights to pour out love. He’s been doing that for all eternity along with Jesus wo receives and returns that love, the whole time the Holy Spirit shouting with joy about it...why wouldn’t he create life to pour out love?

Some of you at this point might be struggling with the idea of a kind, loving, Father God because, frankly, your earthly father was overbearing, indifferent, or even abusive.

Know this: “God the Father is not called Father because he copies earthly fathers. He is not some amped-up version of your dad. To transfer the failings of earthly fathers to him is, quite simply, an error. Instead, things are the other way around: it is that all human fathers are supposed to reflect him—only where some do that well, others do a better job of reflecting the devil.” (Passion of Michael Foucault)

I want those of you who struggle with the concept of God as loving Father to see in the failings of your earthly Father, and the ache that’s left, as the longing for your true Father. The reason it hurts so bad is because it was made to be so good. Take those wounds to him and he will heal you, and for perhaps the first time in decades your Fathers arms will be a safe place to be.

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the ache that’s left, as the longing for your true Father. The reason it hurts so bad is because it was made to be so good. Take those wounds to him and he will heal you, and for perhaps the first time in decades your Fathers arms will be a safe place to be.

That’s what I want for all of you. Whether you are 13, 27, 51, or 84, please see yourself - in his eyes - as a two-year old. Come to the Father as a child. He cannot help but to give out love and life...it is who he is, all the way down.

And it is only when we see that God rules his creation as a kind and loving Father that we will be moved to delight in Him....like a two-year-old, gleefully giggle because she is being tossed in the air by her father, who just got home from work. She knows she is safe, and loved. ——————————

And so, children loved by God want to please him. And our best guess at how to do that is to be like Jesus was when he was in the world. Even unbelievers read about Jesus and are amazed, and say things like “I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians.” As followers of Christ, we become more determined to look like Jesus did when he was in the world.

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Why is this a problem? After all, Jesus healed the sick, raised the dead, opened the eyes of the blind...well, never mind that. Most of us don’t think “today, I’m going to go raise the dead!” Instead, we tend to think of what Jesus did when he forgave the unforgivable, loved the unlovable, and advanced the Kingdom of God!

We want to be like Jesus in that way!

But that supposes something false. That supposes Jesus did these things on his own, and therefore we can do these things on our own. But Jesus tells us very clearly in John chapter 5 “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise.” And immediately follows it by stating how he does this, echoing saying “For the Father loves the Son...”

Jesus did what he did in the world because he has been loved by God the Father before the creation of the world.

To be like Jesus was in the world, we first have to be like Jesus was...before the world.

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So let’s revisit how Jesus actually forgave the unforgivable, loved the unlovable, and advanced the kingdom of God. He did it because of the love he had with God the Father. So, if we want to forgive, love, and advance, we need to deepen our love with God the Father.

So let’s revisit how Jesus actually forgave the unforgivable, loved the unlovable, and advanced the kingdom of God. He did it because of the love he had with God the Father. So, if we want to forgive, love, and advance, we need to deepen our love with God the Father.

If we want to be like Jesus was in the world, we first have to be like Jesus was...before the world.

Here’s a simple application for believers. You don’t even have to wait 24 hours for it. Tomorrow morning, many of you will wake up for what is called quiet time, or bible study, or devotion time. After all, it’s what good Christians do.

If you want to do it the way Jesus did it, be like him before the world. Wake up and point your thoughts towards your heavenly Father. Tell him “Good morning Dad!” Delight in the fact that you are loved, and your whole day will change.

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A lot of us, today, have a subtle (or not-so-subtle) concern that our life in Christ may be like my Uncle Jim’s early life. Adopted, yes! Raised in the family, yes! But, our thoughts and heart and actions betray a concern that maybe - just maybe - our Father God is going to tell us aren’t good enough to be a son.

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Here’s a more complicated application. Most believers have some place in their life where they think that God is going to tell them they aren’t measuring up. Maybe for dads it’s frustration at the ability to provide for your family, or your handyman skills, or even being a dad, itself. This frustration changes when you realize you are loved with the breathtaking love that has existed before the world began. God’s love for Jesus is the same as his love for you.

God is going to tell us weren’t good enough to be a son. Here’s a more complicated application. Most believers have some place in their life where they think that God is going to tell them they aren’t measuring up. Maybe for dads it’s frustration at the ability to provide for your family, or your handyman skills, or even being a dad, itself. This frustration changes when you realize you are loved with the breathtaking love that has existed before the world began. God’s love for Jesus is the same as his love for you.

<PRAY FOR EVERYONE>

My fervent prayer is that these words from God convince you all the way down that God already has a son, and has promised him the whole world. But instead of rejecting you, you have been called to share the love God the Father has for his son Jesus since before the world began.

If you don’t know that love, come to Jesus, and he will bring you to the Father and ask that you be loved just as he is loved.

If you are a follower of Christ who has forgotten this truth, do not fret. The Holy Spirit recorded Jesus’s prayer because he knew we’d forget! Those words are for us.

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And if you are new here and you want to join a big church family not based on rules, but on the relationship Jesus has with his Father before the world, then we’d love to have you join us

Let’s sing praises together!