Sermon Tone Analysis

8 When she had weaned No Mercy, she conceived and bore a son.

9 And the LORD said, n“Call his name Not My People,2 for oyou are not my people, and I am not your God.”3

10 4 Yet pthe number of the children of Israel shall be qlike the sand of the sea, which cannot be measured or numbered.

rAnd sin the place where it was said to them, o“You are not my people,” it shall be said to them, t“Children5 of uthe living God.” 11 And vthe children of Judah and the children of Israel shall be gathered together, and wthey shall appoint for themselves one head.

And they shall go up from the land, for great shall be the day of Jezreel.

God then is in an improper sense1 the Father of many, but by nature and in truth of One only, the Only-begotten Son, our Lord Jesus Christ; not having attained in course of time to being a Father, but being ever the Father of the Only-begotten2.

Not that being without a Son before, He has since by change of purpose become a Father: but before every substance and every intelligence, before times and all ages, God hath the dignity of Father, magnifying Himself in this more than in His other dignities; and having become a Father, not by passion3, or union, not in ignorance, not by effluence4, not by diminution, not by alteration,

For the name of the Father, with the very utterance of the title, suggests the thought of the Son: as in like manner one who names the Son thinks straightway of the Father also11.

For if a Father, He is certainly the Father of a Son; and if a Son, certainly the Son of a Father.

Lest therefore from our speaking thus, IN ONE GOD, THE FATHER ALMIGHTY, MAKER OF HEAVEN AND EARTH, AND OF ALL THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE, and from our then adding this also, AND IN ONE LORD JESUS CHRIST, any one should irreverently suppose that the Only-begotten is second in rank to heaven and earth,—for this reason before naming them we named GOD THE FATHER, that in thinking of the Father we might at the same time think also of the Son: for between the Son and the Father no being whatever comes.

He therefore that refuseth the Way which leadeth to the Father, and he that denieth the Door, how shall he be deemed worthy of entrance unto God?

They contradict also what is written in the eighty-eighth Psalm, He shall call Me, Thou art my Father, my God, and the helper of my salvation.

And I will make him my first-born, high among the kings of the earth7