God our Father

Introduction

Good morning. It’s wonderful to be here this morning, and it’s good to look out and see so many people here serving the Lord and glad to be here. There’s a lot of fathers in the audience. That’s good. I’m glad you’re here. We’re going to talk about God as our Father this morning. And earlier this week, uh, I was talking to one of my children, I won’t mention which one. They said, you know, you’re getting old. I said, Oh, how do you know? Is it these gray hairs that are coming up and all this white here? They said, No, you wear a watch.

It’s interesting when you recognize different generations what they they think of because most people today, when they check their time and they pull out their phone to check the time. That’s what they usually do rather than look at the risk watch. And I’ll try to keep the time fairly appropriate this morning, but I’m not really going to be overly concerned about it. I think when we gather together to serve the Lord, we respect that. We try to respect the time that we have to deliver lessons. But I think it’s also important that we realize we need to say those things that are in the Holy Word with power, with respect, and reverence. Amen.

One. Thus, each saint has one spiritual father. It is totally subjective and totally real subjective talk to talk about how great or maybe contra-wise, how lousy, or how wonderful or how mischievous our fathers happen to be on the globe. In fact, it is merely a spiritual general anesthetic to our hearts to compare our own fatherhood to those of ages past or present if we think we’re aiming for good fatherhood. So rather than a Father’s Day sermon about how to be a good dad or how to respect our dad if we are a child with a father, rather than that I choose a route today that is entrenched in the depth of Scripture. It is a four-part designation of God as Father to the Christian family. Let us now have our attention directed to Ephesians chapter 4 and verse 6, where we had our scripture reading from this morning.

Ephesians 4 and verse 6. There is one kingdom, there is one saving Lord, and there is one father of all.

1. God Is Father of All

Ephesians 6. God oversees all spiritual fatherhood. We want to look at these four attributes of God the Father, and first recognize the first attribute, God is Father of God.

So turn with me, if you will, to Ephesians 2, verses 14 through 19, and read a little bit of scripture. For he himself is our peace, who has made both one, that would be the Jew and the Gentile, and is broken down the middle wall of partition or separation between them, having abolished in his flesh the enmity, that would be strife or warfare, that is in the law of commandments contained in ordinances, that would be the Old Testament, so as to create in himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that he might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And he came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to those who are near.

For through him we both have access by one spirit to the Father. And then he says in verse 19 Now, therefore ye are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and members of the household of God, having been built on the foundation of the apostles and the prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone, in whom the whole building being fit together grows, that’s active tense, into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you also are being built together for a dwelling place on earth where God gives prejudice to people. No place on earth. Wherever a person is from, wherever a person is, God wants to be their spiritual father. And when it came time for his crucifixion, as was read in the scripture reading this morning, and that veil was torn in two.

When he was crucified on the cross, God ended a Jews only religion. Were the Jews important? Absolutely. Romans 1 16. For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For in it the prophets, we could see wrote so much information that would help the Gentile world understand how to be saved from faith to faith, as it is written, the just shall live by faith. And so we look at that and we see, yes, the Jews were important, but now we have available to us God the Father of all. We have a spiritual father who says, whether a person is Asian, whether a person is African, whether a person is an islander, whether a person is American, or wherever they’re from, God wants to be their father.

The term that is used in the Bible, Gentiles, is sometimes by many stated this way, more better translated nations, not simply saying Gentile, which is a more amp word with more ambiguity or a little bit more confusion. He’s the God of the nations, but he’s also the God of the selected nation of Israel that brought about the Christ. And so from that we see that God is Father of all. There is no person anywhere that God does not want to have part of his kingdom. We sometimes sing that song in the uh children’s Bible classes, red or yellow, black or white. They are precious in his sight. And it’s the same way for us as well. And so we need to recognize that we are all fellow citizens, verse 19, with the saints and members of the household of God.

2. God Is Father Above All

God is also Father above all.

Keep that in your mind and focus on that. God is above all. Ephesians 1, 19 through 21. What is the exceeding greatness of his power towards us who believe according to the working of his mighty power, in which he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in that which is to come. Jesus knew of our nation. Jesus knows of the nations that will rise after us, he knew of the nations that were before us. And here in this particular passage, you make so plain to us that Christ Jesus is sitting at the right hand of the glory of the Father, and he raised him up to his right hand to be in the heavenly places, far above this, far above what we are here.

And he says, He put all things under his feet and gave him to be head of all things over the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who filleth all in all. That’s powerful. That’s basically saying Jesus cares about the church, he died for the church, and he’s the king of it, and he’s seated in a throne room in heaven, listening and abiding and caring and being over us all. A good king in any kingdom looks out for his subjects in his kingdom. A good king in any kingdom looks out and cares for the people that are any station of his kingdom. They come before the king, they walk before the uh the royal throne room bearing gifts, bringing things to him, saying, Thank you for this.

I’d like you to consider my situation. And you know what Jesus says? Keep your gifts. I gave myself, I am your gift. I shed divine blood because I care for you, and I want you to be part of my kingdom. Not only do I want you to be part of my kingdom, I want you to be part of my royal family so that you can also be in heaven with me. He’s above us all. Does he care about us? Absolutely. Does he intervene for us? Absolutely. Does he look out for us? He looks over us. He looks beyond the struggles that we have here on this earth and says, at some point I will rescue you out of this earth, away from the devil, away from the evil one, so that you can go to heaven.

And always in the Bible, when we have recognition of God and we see God in locality, yes, he knows all things, can be all places. It’s so obvious he could, as some people say, uh that word omnipresent, the ability to be in all places. Sure, he could do that, but when you look at the Bible’s main message, God is above looking down so he can rescue us up out of this challenge and this struggle that we live in. God is Father above all, and he decided way long ago to take his son out of heaven to come here to dwell among men, to dwell among us, to rescue us and bring us back. And this little passage of scripture in Ephesians 1 gives some powerful words.

3. God Is Father Through All

It says, What is the exceeding greatness of his power, which he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead? Friends and brethren, we believe Christ Jesus was raised from the dead. Do you not know that that is a forerunner of our being raised from the dead one day? That is a forerunner of us being able to be with him eternally. When you wonder what is God doing, he seems so quiet, he seems so aloof to my predicament in life. Recognize he’s looking above, realizing that one day he wants to bring you to him. That is an ever-present, consistent point to the nature of God. Point 3. God is Father through all.

By grace you have been saved and raised us up together and made us sit together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace and his kindness towards us in Christ, for by grace ye have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works, lest anyone should boast, for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. If we are going to look at God the Father of all, that speaks to his totality.

If we were to look at the idea of God the Father above all, that speaks to his eternality, his eternal nature. If we look at God the Father through all, that clarifies to us all of our own mortality. Wasn’t exactly sure how I would word this in the development of this sermon. And at one point I put in my notes, He’s the Father through all of us through lethality. But it’s not really God that’s lethal towards us. God’s not the one that causes us to sin. More so he is the Father through us all, and because we are who we are, we face mortality or death. For the wages of sin is death. When we sin and we transgress God’s law, he is upset, yes, and the result of sin is death, yes.

Romans teaches us that in six and nine, those passages of scripture in chapter eight. You’re familiar with those. But when we look at the idea of this mortality that we face, the way we can be saved is through Jesus Christ. It says, God’s rich in mercy. He’s the Father through us. The cause here is so great, so so clarified in verse 4. He says, God is rich in mercy, Paul writes, because of his great love, which he loved us. If he wanted to smite us lethally, he could, but he lingers our life so that we might eventually die and face mortality. But the reality is he wants us to bring us up out of death and into a heavenly place. It says, when we were dead in our trespasses, when we had sinned, when we had transgressed God’s law, it said he made us alive together.

You ever catch those two words?

That’s what that through means. God is Father through us all or with Christ. This idea here that he’s making very evident to us with deep words is him saying, the effect is because of the cause. The effect of being raised up together with Christ to be able to sit in the heavenly places is because of his cause of grace. He had grace. He thought, you know, I want to save mankind. I don’t want them to be lost. I know they’ve done evil, but I want to save them. I have a deep abiding care for the people of creation, and I want to save them. So he says, I’m sending my only begotten Son, Jesus Christ to go to this earth to save them.

Not through faith. They’re saved by grace, then, not by works. Oh, quantaire, I’m going to say the word properly. He says, By grace you have been saved through faith, and not of yourselves. It is the gift of God, not of works alone, we could say, lest anyone should boast, because we are his workmanship. I heard an old story from an old book I read many years ago that some of you have probably read as well. In the book was a sermon written by a fellow that probably preached some 300, 400 years ago. That’s a joke. He probably preached a few hundred years ago. But in the book, he said, you know, I I get a little upset about people that say we’re saved by grace alone or saved by faith alone.

If I was inside a house, and my son was a lifeguard, and I said to someone drowning in a pool, son, go save that man. Well, that’s the grace of the father. I graciously want to send that lifeguard to save that individual, right? So the father sends the son as a lifeguard to save someone in the water. Well, that’s grace. That’s the favor of God. That’s something he wants to happen. But then in that activity, the person must have faith, must have belief that that lifeguard will save them when he sees him running to him, and he won’t just run around the pool in circles and let him drown. He’s not going to do that. He has faith that he will save them. But what do we have to do?

We got to grab the rope to get out of the water, don’t we? We have to have some sort of work to hold on to the rope to climb up out of the water that that person is being saved by. So, yes, we’re saved by grace. Yes, we’re saved by faith. Yes, we’re saved by works, but not grace alone, not faith alone, and not works alone. We’re saved by grace through faith. And it is not of yourself, but it is the gift of God. The illustration he’s using here when he talks of grace and faith and works here, it’s all important. We don’t leave one out thinking one is not as important as the other. Without grace, you’re not saved. Without faith, you don’t believe in God.

Without works, you’re not saved. We’re saved by grace and faith and works, but not either one of them alone. And so we look at this in verse 7. He says, in ages to come, God wishes to show his exceeding riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Who preaches a sermon to a man on a cross, who, as we just studied already this morning, who entrusts the mother that raised him to a spiritual man to be with, uh to take caretaker for all these things he says, he prays, he cries out, he does all these marvelous things on the cross. But you know what he does most that’s marvelous on that cross? He gives an example of love for the world. That in yet, while we were still sinners, Christ Jesus died for us. For a righteous one, one might dare to die. But for an unrighteous one, who would die? Jesus Christ died in that way. That in yes, while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. And so God is Father through all, and that shows and clarifies of our own mortality.

It shows that we will die because we sin. But Christ Jesus came so that we could be his workmanship. Go to verse 10. We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. He’s saying, if you know what Jesus did for you, now go do something. Make your impact on the world, respectively of what God the Father did through Jesus. If you know you need to be saved because of what God did, then recognize that. Look at verse 13. One other verse for this topic. It says, Now in Christ Jesus, you who once were afar off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. Divine blood purchased a way for us to be able to go to heaven.

4. God Is Father in All

Fourth point, and then the lesson will be yours. I told you it wouldn’t be too long this morning. Fourth point, Ephesians 3 9 through 19. Ephesians 3 9 through 19. The purpose of the mystery is to make all see what is the fellowship of the mystery, which from the beginning of the ages has been hidden in God, who created all things through Jesus Christ, to the intent that now the manifold wisdom of God might be made known by the church to the principalities and powers in the heavenly places, according to the eternal purpose, which he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and access with confidence through faith in him. Therefore I ask that you do not lose heart at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.

For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and in earth is named, that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you being rooted and grounded in love may.

Look at verse 18. He’s saying he wants you very much to be aware, to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

God is Father in all.

Eternality about the heavenly places. And he speaks through us the message that we will pass away because sin is in this world. But then he talks about the idea of how we can abide with the Lord together in the heavenly places, describing his transformation in our minds when we put on Christ, knowing that whether we die here or not, we have the ability to reign with him on high, living with him in spiritual places up in heaven, for he says, not only is there a place for Jesus, but there’s a place for all the saints. God oversees all spiritual blessings. Since he is in charge, we need to develop our comprehension of his spiritual loving fatherhood. Now a little couple four points of preaching. What does this mean to me?

Conclusion

You’ve told me a lot about God, his nature, who he is. What does this mean to me? Over there, those people. We can be prejudiced to them. No, God doesn’t do that. For God Himself shows no partiality.

And by the way, heart, mind, and soul have no color. The blood that goes through my veins is the same color as it goes through all of y’all’s veins. Sure, there’s different types. There’s different calibers of heart and soul, just in the way as there’s different blood types. There’s different types of people, there’s different types of compatibilities, there’s different types of life. There’s people that are holy and people that are wicked. There’s people that are semi-righteous that could be more righteous, and there’s people that are wicked that if they continue down the road they’re on could become wickeder still. But the point that we recognize is very clearly evident. God doesn’t show partiality. He loves everybody. And we likewise need to implement that in our life to not say, oh, they’re rich, oh, they’re poor, oh, you come sit up here and you go sit down there.

Oh, you come into my house because you’re well to do and you go away because you’re not. Or vice versa about Jews and Gentiles. We need to remember that. We need to remember that with great clarity because he spends a lot of time in it in the Bible. And in fact, when you look at the missionary journeys of Saul of Tarsus, who becomes Paul the Apostle, when you look at those journeys, some of them do get back to Jerusalem, but most of those stem from Antioch, where the disciples who were Gentiles were first called Christian. And then we move along to the second point, eternality. Do you think about eternity? I enjoy today. Today’s going to be a great day. I’m looking forward to today. I’m looking forward to next week.

And then what? Oh, okay. Well, then uh then it’ll be the end of the week, and it’ll be Friday. Paycheck time. No. Then what? Well, then I’ll plan for my vacation. Well, then what? What do you mean, then what? Have you thought about eternity? What do you mean? Heaven and hell? Because they’re both real. God doesn’t want you to go to hell. He wants you to go to heaven. But we need to be realizing God is above all, and he’s looking down on us in tender mercy, wanting us down here to be up, us to be up there with him. Hell’s real. Mark says it’s a place, I believe in chapter 9, where he says, the worm doth not die and the fire is not quenched.

Whoop, don’t want to go there. Matthew teaches that the hell place was prepared for the devil and his angels, that God did not prepare it for people. He knows people will go there, for white is the gate that leads to destruction, and many will go thereby. But he prepared it for the devil and his angels. Where he wants you to go, Thessalonian letter teaches us, is a place where we were prepared for, a place of comfort in heaven. So he’s above us, looking upon us to hopefully get into our minds that he wants us to be with him. Why? Isn’t that what every good father does? Wants their children to be with them. Isn’t that what we want? Don’t we want proximity? Don’t we want closeness?

Don’t we want, as some people call uh intimate in the in the familial sense, the that word love in that way, not in a carnal sense, but in a intimate kind way. God wants us to be with him, and we should want to be with God. The only way we can do that, though, is through Jesus Christ. By the cross, by the divine blood that was shed for us. So if you’re not a Christian, please hear this. You can’t get to God without Christ. John 14, 6, right? For I am a way, a possibility, a route amid many. No, I am the way, the truth and the life. And no man cometh to the Father except through me. Jesus says you’ve got to go through him to get there.

And how do you do that? Through contacting the blood of the Lord in baptism, to put on Christ in baptism, to become a child of God, being buried with him in baptism and raised to walk in newness of life. And if you do that, God will be with you in all things, with his word, transforming you. And hopefully, your mentality will be I will keep that foremost in my mind. There’s someone who’d like to be a Christian here this morning. Maybe you’ve not named the name of Christ and become a child of God. We’ll give you the opportunity in just a moment. You’ll need to hear the word of God and believe it. Romans 10 17 says, For faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the word of God.

You’ll need to believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of the living God. John 3 16, very familiar verse. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son. Whosoever might believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Acts 2.37 and 38 says, Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Spirit, for the promise is to you and to those who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call. If you’re willing to confess Christ, as Romans 10 10 mentions, and then be baptized, for baptism doth now save us, 1 Peter 3 21, then please live for Jesus, make that decision, come forward and sit on a front row, even now as we stand and sing the song to encourage you.