We Address God as Our Father
I’m going to ask you the same question 4 times in a row this morning, but instead of chiming in with your answers this time, I want you to bank them in your brain. Answer each question silently in your mind and keep track of how similar or different your 4 answers are.
You’re 5 years old. It’s 2:00am. You are rocked out of a peaceful sleep when a peal of thunder rattles the panes of your bedroom window. You’re terrified. What do you do?
You’re 14. You tried out for the team or the play or the band. It took a lot of courage just to try out, and they laughed you off the rink or the field or the stage. You’re devastated and embarrassed and angry. What do you do?
You’re 19. You’re off to university or you’re moving out of the house to do your own thing. You just unloaded all of your boxes into your empty room and you’re about to spend your first night alone and on your own. You’re excited but anxious. What do you do?
You’re 25. You just found out that you’re going to have a baby! You’re overjoyed and a little overwhelmed. What do you do?
Did any of you have the same answer for all 4 questions?
Parents are special people. And they remain special to you whether you’re worried about wetting your bed or how to raise a little human of your own. And I understand that not all of you feel that way about your parents. You might not be crazy about your parents because they might not be great people. You might not even know who your biological mother or father are. But what we learn from Jesus’ perfect prayer today is even more poignant for you because of the contrast between your parents on earth and our Father in heaven.
Technically speaking, our sermon text is just 4 words long today, but there is so much to say about our Father in heaven. Let’s start by talking about why he chooses to make himself known the way he does, why he refers to our relationship with him in this very paternal, parental way. Or, in other words, why is it fitting for us to call God our “Father”?
There are a couple different ways to answer that question. The first is the most basic:
Do we not all have one Father? Did not one God create us?[1]
God is our Father because he created us – he brought us into this world. Without God, we would not exist.
If you knew nothing about God other than the fact that he is our Father, the one who brought us into this world, what could you assume or at least hope would be true about the way he feels about us?
How many things have you brought into the world? Some of you have children, and I know you love them very much. (They may make it difficult to love them from time to time, but on the most basic, primal level, as their parent I’m sure you have a deep affection for and personal investment in your child.)
We could even think of it in terms of things you’ve made. Maybe you started your own company, you wrote a song, you built something with your own two hands. Even if you’re a little embarrassed about how it turned out, chances are you feel similarly. You have a deeper affection for something you made than for something someone else made. You have a personal investment in it and you care about it.
If that’s how we feel about the things that we bring into the world, imagine how God feels about his creation – and about you, especially, as the crown of his creation! God refers to himself as our Father, in part because he created us, and in part because, as our Creator, he loves us like a father loves his children.
In the best case scenario, what kinds of things does a parent do for their children?
They provide for them – food, clothes, shelter. They care for them; they bandage scraped knees and wipe tears off cheeks. They comfort and console them when they’re sad. They support and encourage. They discipline and correct. They offer advice and sometimes write a cheque. Parents love their children and take care of them. God does the same and more for you:
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”[2]
Your Father in heaven always provides for you, even better than your earthly parents can and do. He gives you everything you need for your body and life. He takes care of you. He gives you good gifts.
Though my father and mother forsake me, the Lord will receive me. Teach me your way, Lord; lead me in a straight path.[3]
Your Father in heaven never forsakes you. Even if your earthly father or mother abandons you, God never will. He’s always with you, teaching you his will and leading you in a straight path – giving you guidance and support and direction.
God loves you like a Father loves his children, and this is just a sampling of the kinds of things that God does for us as our Father in heaven. But there are two sides to this coin. If God is our Father, then that makes us his children. If God loves and provides for and cares for us as our Father in heaven, what should we be feeling about and doing for him as his children on earth?
“Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.”[4]
As our Father’s children, our first priority is to love him with every fiber of being, not holding anything back, not reserving room for anyone or anything to challenge God’s place as our first and greatest love.
But our responsibilities to God go beyond just what we feel about him. We also have certain expectations for what we should do:
As obedient children, do not conform to the evil desires you had when you lived in ignorance. But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: “Be holy, because I am holy.”[5]
As our Father’s children, we should also be obedient. We should do everything in our power to be like him. And how does God describe himself here? Holy, i.e. sinless, perfect.
Is that you? Do you love God without reservation, without hesitation, with all your heart, soul, strength, and mind? Are you obedient, as God wants you to be, let alone holy as he commands you to be? I mean, how many of us can even say that about our earthly parents?
What kinds of things do you owe your earthly parents? How should you treat them? With love and respect and honor. With willing obedience and cheerful compliance. Not dragging our feet or grumbling under our breath, but with a smile on our faces and joy in our hearts, happy to be helpful and cooperative.
Is that what we always do? No. Sadly, how can we often treat our parents? With resentment and bitterness in our hearts. Begrudging our obedience to and dependence on them. Maybe neglecting or forsaking them. Talking back or mouthing off to them. Taking them for granted. And these are the people who put food on your table, who changed your dirty diapers, who got you through school, who helped you become the person you are today and bailed you out of who knows how many bad situations.
It's sad to say, but it’s even easier to resent and begrudge our obedience to an unseen God, to take his gifts for granted and to neglect our relationship with him, to be delinquent in prayer, lackadaisical in worship, indifferent in faith. It’s even easier to doubt and question the motives of a God you can’t speak with face to face. Sometimes we can go days without even thinking about him. Those are not the ways that we as children are meant to treat our Father in heaven.
If you disobey your earthly parents, what do they do? They punish you. They take away your internet privileges. They cut off your allowance. They ground you to your bedroom for a month.
If you disobey God, what does your Father in heaven do?
Since you call on a Father who judges each person’s work impartially, live out your time as foreigners here in reverent fear.[6]
Your Father in heaven judges you according to what you do. How does it make you feel to know that you will be judged? Peter talks about fear here, that would be understandable. God’s justice can be terrible. The wages of sin is death. The ultimate consequence of sin is hell.
But that’s not quite the kind of fear that Peter is talking about. Yes, our Father in heaven is our judge and will judge our works impartially; he will not show favouritism to us just because we are his creations. He won’t wink away our sin. But he did do something about it:
For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed from the empty way of life handed down to you from your ancestors, but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect.[7]
You are not the perfect child. Even if you think you are better than your siblings, you have still disobeyed and let down your earthly parents more times than is worth mentioning. Much more than that, you have disobeyed and disappointed your Father in heaven more times than we’d be able to count.
But God is not just your Father. He is Jesus’ Father. And unlike you, Jesus is described as “a lamb without blemish or defect.” He is perfect, sinless, holy, just as called God you to be. But unlike you, Jesus was actually able to pull it off. He was the perfect son to Mary and Joseph, always willingly obedient and cheerfully compliant. He was thoughtful and considerate and did things without needing to be asked to do them.
More than that, Jesus was the perfect Son of his Father in heaven, being so obedient that he was willing to go all the way to death to be your Saviour. Your Father in heaven loved you so much that he was willing to sacrifice his one and only good child to save you a sinner, to redeem you with the precious blood of his sinless Son poured out on the cross to cover over all your sins.
When the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship.[8]
Why did God send his Son Jesus? To redeem us, to be our Saviour – yes – but look especially at that last line: “that we might receive adoption to sonship.”
God is our Father in heaven by virtue of the fact that he created us. That’s true and that’s good to know. It gives us the hope that he loves us and has a vested interest in us. But I’m sure you know plenty of bad dads who don’t care at all about the children they brought into the world. If you ever had that fear about our Father in heaven, this truth can put that fear to rest, because God is not your Father in heaven just by virtue of the fact that he created you. He is also your Father in heaven by his gracious decision. He chose to adopt you into his family through the sacrifice of his Son Jesus.
That makes you God’s child by nature and by choice. That means that you do not have to fear that God doesn’t care or is unaware of what happening to you. He is aware. He does care. He cared so much that he sent his Son to be your brother and then to be your Saviour.
That’s the kind of God you have. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray, “Our Father in heaven.”
Since you have a God who created you and loves you and provides for you and takes care of you and redeemed you and forgave you and saved you, then what kind of attitude can you have as you pray to him?
The Spirit you received does not make you slaves, so that you live in fear again; rather, the Spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship. And by him we cry, “Abba, Father.”[9]
Instead of fear, how can you feel when you pray to God? You can call him “Abba, Father.” “Abba” is the familiar form of the word Father in Hebrew. It’s not the formal, “dearest Father, would you please…” It’s more like, “Dad, I need your help.”
When you pray, you can pray not to some distant deity, but to your familiar Father. When you’re afraid, you can go to your Father in prayer with the same attitude you had when you crawled into bed with mom and dad when you were 5 years old and afraid of the dark or a monster under your bed. There’s familiarity with our Father that dispels fear.
Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.[10]
When you’re feeling blue, when you’re down in the dumps, depressed, discouraged, embarrassed, ashamed, what can you do? You can pray to God. And with what assurance? That he cares for you. If you can vent to your parents in the van on the way home after a failed audition, imagine God’s capacity to hear your concerns and listen to your complaints without judgment or impatience, but with love in his heart and an eagerness to hear and heal.
Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.[11]
When you ask God for anything, what kind of attitude can you have? You can have confidence that he cares about you and that he not only can but he will help you. If you can have confidence to ask your earthly father for help when times are tough – to write a cheque to cover your rent, to fix your leaky faucet, to give you advice on how to be a good parent – then imagine the confidence you can have going to your almighty, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in heaven. He can and promises to do so much more for you than the best dad on earth ever could.
So, what do you do when you’re afraid, angry, anxious or overjoyed? You pray to our Father in heaven. Amen.
[1] Malachi 2:10
[2] Matthew 7:9-11
[3] Psalm 27:10,11
[4] Matthew 22:37
[5] 1 Peter 1:14-16
[6] 1 Peter 1:17
[7] 1 Peter 1:18,19
[8] Galatians 4:4,5
[9] Romans 8:15
[10] 1 Peter 5:7
[11] Hebrews 4:16