Word of Salvation – Vol.25 No.29 – April 1979
Lord’s Day 9 – (WVB)
Sermon by Rev. Wm. F. Van Brussel, B.D on Lord’s Day 9
Scripture Reading: John 14:1-17
Psalter Hymnal: 447:1,2; 328; 316; 327; 491
Many people have funny ideas about ‘being a Christian’. People call themselves Christians on a terribly shaky basis. They say for instance: ‘Don’t think that I am not a Christian; I really believe that there is SOMETHING!’
Thank God, that as a congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ, we are in a much better position. For in fellowship with the Church of all ages we profess to believe in God, the Father, Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth!
We are going to rejoice this time in this blessed faith in GOD, OUR FATHER.
Let us have a little story first. In ‘The Banner‘, the denominational Weekly Magazine of the Christian Reformed Church of North America, there were a number of essays written by 10 and 11 year old boys for a Father’s Day contest.
Here goes what one of the junior authors wrote:
Dear Banner,
I know I have the best Dad in the world, because there are six of us and I’ve never thought he loved any of us more than the other. He knows what each of us likes and he always remembers the little things each of us thinks are important. He is a truck-driver and is gone from home a lot, but when he gets back from his three trips a week he plays with us at night, talks to each of us, and draws funny pictures on our good and bad school papers.
He took over my paper-route so I could sleep in one cold winter morning. He remembers when he was a boy, especially when I would rather play ball and Mum would rather I cleaned my room.
He goes for walks with us in the woods and doesn’t care if we get all muddy trying to catch a frog in the creek, and sometimes he tries to push us in. He took us on a trip to Disneyland, and he took time out on the way down to go off the route, so we could see Abraham Lincoln’s boyhood home. We had passed the sign on the highway and so we turned around and went back.
Then, when my sister wanted to see something he stopped for her too. He knows God and He’s helping us to know Him too. He remembers it is hard for a ten year old to sit quiet in church and he sometimes slips me a piece of candy. I’d like you to know he’s the best Dad you could ever tell a secret to He’s the best dad in the world, our world anyway.
This boy was not talking about God in the first place, we realise that. But he knew what his father meant to him. He was proud of his father; he was grateful for his Dad.
And it is against this background that we would like you to see the wealth of this statement of faith: I BELIEVE IN GOD THE FATHER!
It has often been stated that when we confess in the Creed that God is our Father it won’t work to try and learn what this means by looking to HUMAN experience. People say, when we call God our Father, it is not a case of having seen here on earth what fatherhood, and father-care, and father-love means, and then applying that to God. It is exactly the other way around. It is only by knowing God as Father that we can begin to understand what HUMAN father-hood should be like.
Well, it is true, of course, that we can never teach God how He should act as a Father. Or that HE should do it as well as WE can do it. But still, there is also another side to this.
Did not our Lord Jesus encourage people on earth to become as the children? Truly, I say to you, UNLESS you turn and become LIKE children, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven!
I know that there are a lot of people who only have memories of a father, because of his early death. There are also children who might just as well NOT have a father, because their father is at home only seldom, and when he is, he is not much of a father anyway. Different people have different ideas of fatherhood depending on their own personal experiences with their own fathers. Yet, is it not true that in the fact that we believe that God is our Father we feel very close to that boy in his contest-essay?
I believe in God the Father. Is that not great? Compare it with that other statement: I really believe that there is SOMETHING!
O yes, there are plenty of people who believe that there is something…, that there are powers that can easily play around with them. But that does not make a man a Christian, does it? A Christian is not satisfied with a faith in something!! What does that mean? What power does that give? What security?
A Christian is not even satisfied by believing in SOMEBODY. Of course, we are coming a bit closer this way, but it is still so awfully vague. Even to believe in A god is not good enough for a Christian. For A god is NOT somebody that you can TRUST at all times. Not somebody you can surrender to, not somebody you can lean against.
No, whenever I speak about God I speak about my Father in heaven; or rather, my Father in Christ. And I do this because the Bible allows, even encourages me to do so as a Christian.
The eternal Father of our Lord Jesus Christ Who made this whole universe, and Who upholds and governs it according to His eternal Plan and in His Providence, HE is – for the sake of Christ, His Son – MY God and MY Father!
As a Christian believer I am thrilled about this Father. It would be my joy to write an essay about Him today, I am so proud of Him. I am so grateful for Him!
WHY PROUD?
Well, He is the One Who out of nothing made heaven and earth and all that is in them. The more we learn to know about the universe (and that is a tremendous lot today) the bigger grows our pride. Boy, was it MY FATHER Who made all this long before any of His creatures had any idea of what was hidden IN all this universe! Gradually we become more and more aware of the greatness of this universe. But HE, He planned it all from eternity, and HE made it Himself. And He still keeps it going, day by day, week by week, year by year, century by century, MY GOD AND MY FATHER, you see!
The words of Job 38 come to mind in that magnificent answer of the Lord after all the talking of Job: “Where were YOU when I laid the foundation of the earth? Tell me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measurements surely YOU know! Or who stretched the line up on it?” Can YOU do this…..? Can YOU do that…..?
God is so immeasurably great. He is the Almighty One. He thought up the whole universe, and all the means that are needed to keep it up. He made and organised it all. He is “with it” from beginning to end. The whole universe is in HIS hand. And this great God Who is always working non-stop has ample time – not just a few minutes a day, if He is around – to be and to act as, MY FATHER:
Someone has said: Never deal with God’s Almightiness apart from His Fatherhood. His Almightiness is no abstract idea that can be considered in separation from what God is for us in Christ. We can only know and consider His Almightiness in what He has done for us as the Father in Christ.
That is why we are so GRATEFUL for this God.
In the Lord Jesus, GOD came down to us without ceasing to be our Sovereign God, the Almighty, everywhere present God Who holds the whole world in His hands.
In the Lord Jesus, GOD bore the sins and miseries of every believer since the beginning of time. In the cross we can see God’s Almightiness, His almighty power of grace.
In the Lord Jesus, GOD won the victory over death and hell. In the resurrection we can see God’s Almightiness. Through Jesus, His Son, GOD is our Father.
PROUD and GRATEFUL, that is what we, Christians, should be, every day afresh.
This is the only way to know what you are up to in this life as a human being: that you believe in God as your Father. If God is NOT your Father, your life in this world is nothing but a wandering in a labyrinth. That is the way John Calvin put it. Without this faith in God our Father, we get entangled in a desperate state of bewilderment.
What a great privilege, that we may know God as He really IS. We know the Lord Jesus, don’t we? Well, that’s enough!
Remember that silly remark of Philip one day? Lord, show us the Father, and we shall be satisfied.
And Jesus’ reply: Have I been with you so long, and yet you do not know Me, Philip? HE WHO HAS SEEN ME HAS SEEN THE FATHER; how can you say, Show us the Father? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in Me…..?
Philip was keen to see God at last. He did not realise that God had been with him all along in flesh and blood in the Person of His Son for just about three years in a row.
We do not need more than Christ.
We need not less, either.
Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved. Also in this particular sense that you have a Father in heaven for ever and ever. And we receive a lifetime here in this world to find out what difference THAT makes!
Our Catechism stresses that we can put our trust in Him. He will provide.
Yet, He will also send evil on our way at times.
“Evil”, yes that’s what WE call the many things that do not appeal to us in life. We call it an “evil” when a young father is killed in an accident, when a mother of a large family dies young of cancer, when a young man loses his good job because someone gossiped about him.
There are more “evils” than we can mention in a few lines. “Evils”, we call them, but God, our Father in heaven, has a different name for them. These “evils” do not simply happen by accident. They do not simply fall out of God’s hand, so to speak. No, He SENDS them, because He has a plan with them. We may shed many tears because of them, but He will turn them to our good! He will use them so as to make them serve the purpose of our salvation
Not that we understand this, but this is how He works. How He works as our Father, the Almighty God of heaven and earth.
God is changing “evils” – things that we call, “evils” – into things that are to our benefit. And this not just in what we call, “the hereafter.” No, often here and now!
Somebody compared this with what the doctor does to a patient in great pain. He gives him a needle. The needle may hurt while it is being given, but after a while there is that big relief!
Our Father in heaven knows that we need needles, painful needles, in order to get better; in order to come closer to our ultimate destination to get ready for it.
O yes, we have to go through all kinds of hurtful experiences in this life, the one even more than the other. But how great, to be able to say: I know my heavenly Father’s hand is in it. I cannot understand why He is doing this, but He knows!
I believe in GOD, THE FATHER, ALMIGHTY…
GOD, MY God, MY Father, for Christ’s sake.
What a great and blessed reality!
All you who believe in Jesus Christ as your Saviour and Lord, take courage, and live the joyful, Christian life, to His glory.
AMEN.