The Loving Example of Our Heavenly Father

Bible Introduction (2m)

What’s in a Name?

F - "faithfulness," written on the heart.

A - "acknowledge" God in all your ways.

T - "trust in the LORD with all your heart".

H - "honour the LORD" with your money.

E - "eyes," which can sometimes trick us if we follow them instead of God.

R - "reproof," because God reproves and guides the people he loves in order to make them better people.

No one perfect, but challenged to try. See one quality you see in own father? God wants all fathers to be like this so they are more like him.

Matthew 6:5-18 (Olu) reminds us who are Father is.

Introduction (5m)

What do/did you call your Father?

Father/Dad/Daddy/Pop/Name. Consider what we call our heavenly Father and why.

Explanation (5m)

Father’s Day is the right time to consider our Father in heaven

Father is the supreme name for God. // Occurs in the Gospels 150+ times.

The term Father is the first thing Jesus is recorded as saying

Luke 2:49 NLT

“But why did you need to search?” he asked. “Didn’t you know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Jesus also used this title for God in his last dying breath

Luke 23:46 NLT

Then Jesus shouted, “Father, I entrust my spirit into your hands!” And with those words he breathed his last.

In Jesus’ time, calling God, Father, was revolutionary

J: Address God personally as Father - not strange to us but revolutionary in his day.

The Old Testament sees God in terms of a sovereign Creator-Father

OT writers believed in Fatherhood of God, but mainly in terms of a sovereign Creator-Father.

The term Father is used in relation to a nation not individuals

God = Father - 14 times in OT. Every one - Father used with reference to the nation, not individuals. Nowhere in OT does one individual speak of God as Father.

People would not utter the covenant name of Yahweh

Even in Jesus’ day, people so focused on sovereignty/transcendence of God never repeated his covenant name - Yahweh. Invented word Jehovah, a combination of two separate names of God. In this way, the distance from God was well guarded.

But Jesus never called God anything else

Jesus addressed God only as Father. Never called him anything else. All his prayers address God as Father. No one had ever in the entire history of Israel spoken and prayed like Jesus.

Not Father, but Daddy

Word Jesus used for Father not formal, but common Aramaic word with which a child would address his father, the word Abba. Jesus would have used the word Abba to address his father Joseph. Everyone used the word. But the Bible and other literature of that time shows that the word Abba was never used of God, under any circumstances.

To the traditional Jew, this was revolutionary

Jesus’ prayer was revolutionary. Just imagine. God Father - only 14 times in the OT, and only as corporate Father of Israel. Now, when disciples ask Jesus for instruction on how to pray, he tells them to begin by calling God their Father, their Abba!

... in the Lord’s Prayer Jesus authorises His disciples to repeat the word abba after Him. He gives them a share in His sonship and empowers them, as His disciples, to speak with their heavenly Father in just such a familiar, trusting way as a child would with his father (Joachim Jeremias).

Jesus placed great emphasis on helping his disciples to accept and to respond to the God who reveals himself as a loving Father.

It’s essential to our spiritual life

Understanding the Fatherhood of God and of our adoption as a son or daughter of God is of essential importance to our spiritual life:

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. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new, and better than the Old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. “Father” is the Christian name for God. (Dr. J. I. Packer)

Application (5m)

God wants to be in relationship with us

Spend time with us. To enter his presence. Not just in worship/quiet time/particular place.

Anything done with an awareness of his presence becomes worship

When we dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence:

Romans 12:1 The Message

So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him.

Everything for the praise, glory and pleasure of God. As if doing it for Jesus and be aware of his presence as you do it.

Carry on a continuous conversation with God

God wants to be included in every activity, every conversation, every problem and even your every thought. How do you share all your life experiences with God? You do it by carrying on a continuous, open-ended conversation with him throughout your day, talking with him about whatever you are doing or thinking at that moment:

Practising the Presence of God is the classic book on learning how to develop a constant conversation with God. It was written by Brother Lawrence, a humble cook in a 17th- century French monastery. He was able to turn the most commonplace and menial tasks, like preparing meals and washing dishes, into acts of worship. He believed that by changing your attitude towards what you do you would begin to do it for God:

I worshipped [God] the oftenest I could, keeping my mind in His holy presence and recalling it as often as I found it wandered from Him. I made this my business, not only at the appointed times of prayer but all the time; every hour, every minute, even in the height of my work, I drove from my mind everything that interrupted my thoughts of God. (Brother Lawrence)

What an inspiration! God is with you all the time. So, no place is any closer to God than where you are right now. What is needed is for you to practice being aware of his presence.

Seek his presence in all you do

Today is Father’s Day. Today is His day. On His day, you are as close to God as you choose to be. Make it your intention today to seek his presence in all that you do. Make today the day you ask God to reignite your passion for him. There is nothing in your life more important than developing your relationship with God your Father. God loves you. Your heavenly Father created you so he could love you. He longs for you to love him right back.

Next Steps

Video - In His Presence

Video - In His Presence | 6:00