By Pastor Rob

God the Father – God and Ice cream cones

“A simple experiment can sharpen our understanding of the problem of having content about God and communicating it meaningfully to those around us. I’ve used it on people of all ages and levels of theological sophistication, and the results varied little.
Ready?
Close your eyes and think in concrete images about a two-dip cone of your favorite ice-cream flavor.
What flavor are you visualizing? The answers vary from pistachio nut to raspberry ripple. In a large group, the summary looks like the flavor menu at an ice-cream specialty outlet. We have little trouble contemplating ice-cream cones in concrete terms.
Close your eyes again. This time think in concrete images about God—not God the Son, not God the Holy Spirit, but God the Father.
A little tougher? Some people respond by saying they visualize “love.” The concept love is as abstract as the concept God and gives us little concrete insight into what or who God is. These people mean that the word God evokes positive feelings similar to feelings evoked by the word love. This association reveals something of our personal relationship with God, but adds little to concrete imagination. With a little effort, though, most people can conjure up a mental image for the word God. A child’s images differ little from those of a theological scholar. The images may be of an old man with a beard on a white throne or Michelangelo’s God of creation on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The image may be a cloud of gray smoke, a red button on a massive instrument panel, a beloved family member, a volcanic eruption; a nuclear explosion, a lightning flash across a black sky, a brilliant white light, or a giant brain.
Now answer a question: Do you think God is a cloud of smoke, a volcanic eruption, or a giant brain? Every time I’ve asked the question, the response has been unanimous. Of course not! God cannot be absolutely identified with any of these images. But the ideas still communicate something concrete about God. They help pour substance into the term God, which is hazy and ambiguous, yet still meaningful.
Analyze the images mentioned above and others you may have come up with. Each concept is similar to the others. All describe God in common, familiar human terms. All help us think of God analogically. God is in some way like the white light or the red button, though God extends far beyond the likeness of the analogy. The Bible’s references to God also take advantage of human, analogous images.” (Sproul)
Something I discovered preparing for this Study. There are many, many books written about the person and work of Jesus Christ. There are also so many books written about the Person and work of the Holy Spirit. But there are very few books written about God the Father. Maybe it is because of the reason I shared, from Sproul in the Introduction. We find it hard to describe, or explain in concrete terms God, and specifically in this context “The Father”.
Let’s look quickly at a verse that grips my heart regarding God the Father.

Romans 5:6-11
For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. [7] For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— [8] but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. [9] Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God. [10] For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, now that we are reconciled, shall we be saved by his life. [11] More than that, we also rejoice in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

That is what this whole thing is about, our being reconciled to the Father by the death of His Son. Yes, the work of Christ is essential, the work of the Holy Spirit is essential. But the purpose of their work is equally essential, because their work wouldn’t be, without the Love of the Father causing us to be brought into a restored relationship with Him. For His Glory.

A. We’re going to look at the High Priestly prayer of Jesus.

As we look at a portion of it remember, Jesus’ chief function during His earthly ministry was to reveal to mankind Who? The Father. He did it by obeying The Father’s will perfectly. Remember some asked Jesus, “Show us the Father” What did He say? “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father.” By looking at the life of Jesus Christ, we can see what the Father wanted to reveal about Himself, in His Son. So if we want to find anything out about the Father, where’s the best place to look? Jesus Christ His only begotten Son.

John 17:1-5 Jesus, prayer reveals the Father.
When Jesus had spoken these words, he lifted up his eyes to heaven, and said, “Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son that the Son may glorify you, [2] since you have given him authority over all flesh, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. [3] And this is eternal life, that they know you the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. [4] I glorified you on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do. [5] And now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed.

Praying Jesus lifts His eyes to heaven: God the Father is in heaven, it is His dwelling place. He rules from that great throne, as the Almighty God. To imagine, or picture it, we cannot. God is Spirit, and whoever worships Him must do so in spirit and in truth. Remember when the disciples asked “Jesus teach us to pray” then Jesus gave them the great example. He told them and it extends to us, that when we pray, we address our Father who is in heaven. Now we know that God’s presence is every where. The Omnipresence of God is an attribute we will look at in itself in a following study of God’s Character, so we won’t explore the depth of it at this time. But we need to understand, that there is an immediate presence of the Lord, in what the Bible refers to as the throne room of God. Now this is the Most Holy Place. It is the ultimate reality of what the Holy of Holies, which is where the Lord’s presence dwelt with the people of Israel in the Jewish Temple, or the Tabernacle.
We also know that as God the Father sits on the throne as the Almighty God, at His right hand is His precious Son Jesus Christ, Who is there as God the Son Who is our great High priest, making intercession to the Father for us. (We will be covering God the Son in our next study, we’ll deal will many more aspects of Him.)
So God the Father is in a literal place called heaven right now. For more of a description of His throne rm. Look at Isaiah 6, for a broader description of heaven Rev. 21
Jesus also reveals to us, in His prayer, something of God’s worthiness: He is worthy to be glorified.

What makes the Father worthy to be Glorified?

He’s God, the creator of all things Heaven and earth. All His creatures are obligated to Worship and Glorify His greatness. He is Holy, He is God, the only one who deserves Glory. There is no one of greater value Greater worth, or more precious than He is. He planned our salvation.

He gives authority: It was the Father, Jesus said, Who gave Him the authority over all flesh. That is, God gave Jesus as a man, the Messiah, on this earth, Authority over all flesh. It is He who places the governing officials in every nation and city in the world. God puts people in power, whether wicked or godly, and God brings people, whether evil or godly, down from authority. God the Father is indeed the author of authority.

He is knowable: In which is the essence of eternal life: In fact eternal life is fellowship with God, “Who created us for Himself, so that our soul is restless unless it finds it’s rest in Him” (Augustine)
We are not deist’s (We don’t believe that God only created all things, set the standards made provisions and just sits back in His seat and lets every thing just go it’s course, without anymore involvement.) We believe that God the Father is indeed involved with the affairs of men. He loves us, cares for us, answers our prayers. He works in the church, the people around us. The Bible says He inhabits the praises of His people. Again, the purpose of our creation and our redemption is so we can know God the Father, and Jesus Christ His only Son.

Only true God: Jesus’ prayer reveals to us again, That His Father is the only True God, coequal with the Son and coequal with the Spirit. As we pounded in our thinking with the previous study, The Bible is clear through out the Old and New Testament, there is only One God. Jesus makes it clear, in His intimate relationship with His Father, here in His Prayer.

Eternal Father: The last thing we’ll look at in Jesus’ prayer is the eternality of the Father. Jesus asks to be glorified with His Father with the glory they shared prior to the creation of the world. The Word of God existed eternally with The Father and The Holy Spirit before anything was made. So this attribute of eternality can only be ascribed to God. Everything else came into being at some point in time. This we will also deal with on a separate deeper level in a future study of God’s Character.

So in this High priestly prayer of Jesus, He reveals to us some great things about His Father. Some important things that will help us grow in a loving relationship with our heavenly Father. He is in heaven, He is worthy to be glorified, He gives authority, He’s knowable, He’s the only true God, He’s Eternal Father.

There is really a great deal of scripture which reveal to us the Character, attributed and Personality of the Father. Look briefly at a few more.
*1Cor. 8:6 – Paul speaks of One God, the Father Creator.
*Gen. 1-2 God the Father in creation
*Ex. 20:11 Created heaven and earth and all that is in them in 6days and blessed the seventh
*Ps. 33:6 The Father, by His Word made the heavens.
*Is.44:24 God by Himself makes all things

B. Old Testament seldom refers to God as a Father
Why is that? Even though Israel was in a covenant relationship with God, and was their Father. There wasn’t much reference to a personal relationship, like as God’s children, we can have now because of the finished work of Jesus Christ.

God the Father of the nation Israel: Deut. 32:6 and Is. 63:16

The Father of individual people: 2 Sam. 7:14 God speaks to David regarding Solomon. Ps. 58:5 A father to the fatherless.

But the amount of times the term Father is used in the Old Testament is considerably fewer than the New Testament.

C. Jesus’ favorite way to address God

It makes perfect since, He is Jesus’ Father. Over and over, Jesus revealed to us that His purpose was to do the Father’s will. Jesus used this term over 165 times in the Gospels. The Aramaic word Jesus spoke when referring to His Father, was abba. That word revealed an intimacy between the Father and Son, like no other. This Father and Son relationship was unique. Because not only were they Persons working toward the same purpose, but there essence was exactly the same, God. While we can call God our Father, and even abba, because of our being adopted into the family of God. We can never say it with the depth and meaning the Son experiences with His Father.

D. Adopted by the Father

This is the great promise of the Gospel. Here more than any other area, it strikes a personal note with each of us. We can see the relationship Jesus has with His Father, and that is powerful, the Old Testament references as the Father of the nation Israel and the comments regarding Him as the Father of Old Testament saints. These are wonderful accounts to read about and consider. Christ’s intimacy with His Father is revealing. These examples are beneficial to us in our learning and our redemption to the Glory of God.
But here God the Father has received me, personally into His Family. He has received you, if you are in Christ, personally as His Child. He, by doing this, has expressed a special love, that not every person on this earth will experience. But you, He has pulled aside to tell you through Jesus His Son, “I Love You, so much that I gave My only begotten Son as a ransom, as a payment for your particular life, so you could be with Us Forever.”

There is an incredible passage in Romans that I’ll finish with.

Romans 8:12-17
So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh. [13] For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. [14] For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. [15] For you did not receive the spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” [16] The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, [17] and if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him.

Our Heavenly Father, oh how we can now love Him as His Children, we will be eternally grateful to Him for making us His.
Oh what a great salvation, to Him be the glory and the honor and praise, forever and ever. Amen!