Word of Salvation – Vol. 31 No. 42 – November 1987

 

You Shall Call Him Father

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Matt. 6:9A

Reading: Isaiah 63:7 – 64:1, Luke 11:1-13

Singing: 319, 32, 328, 431, 444.

 

Congregation of the Lord Jesus Christ,

You shall call him Father.  A sermon on Prayer.  Reformation Day?  How does that all fit together?  Should you, preacher, give a timely talk on “justification by faith alone?”  Well, that’s not entirely missing from today’s message.  And in addition we will see a few other matters that were vital – and ARE vital! – to the reformation of the church … then… and now!

To start at the end (Hebrew-fashion): where can a sinner – who is evil! – find God?  Where does the Holy one live… and can He be approached?  And then there is the question of the go-betweens – who should not be necessary at all for people who really learn to call God Father!  Would I like MY kids always to come to me via strangers or even brothers and sisters?  But then, finally – there is especially on Reformation Day – the bitter matter of the torn church: the ecumenical question.  Jesus commands us not to say “MY Father”, but: “OUR Father”.  Yes…Jesus commands!  You, then, pray as follows!  That commandment of His really is encouragement.  Like Mum’s command: “Come and get it!”  It is the command that is an invitation: the invitation to come home – where the many mansions are.  Where Father is.  The rediscovery of this priceless privilege WAS the deep joy of the Reformers and those that followed them even through torture, fire and sword.  And this ought to be still the joy of any Reformed church or theology or confession.  Jesus says: You shall call Him Father.

1.  Where can I find Him?

2.  How do I get to Him?  and

3.  Is it only I who goes this way?

You Shall Call Him Father

1.  Where Can I Find Him?

The Holy God – for the sake of Him who was to come – wanted to start living again among evil people.  So He appointed a country – Palestine, and in that country, a city – Jerusalem, and in that city a house built by Solomon, and in that house a special room called Holy of Holies – all very down-to-earth and very specific.  We can find that place now if we want to.  God said: Okay, there I will dwell.  There you can look me up.  So close He came to the children of men who – Jesus said were evil.  But when Solomon, the very builder of that house and that special room called “Holy of Holies” leads in prayer at the dedication of the temple, He says: Don’t you people think that you can catch the Lord God even in a temple!  Don’t think He is as small as that.  Even the heaven, yes the heaven of heavens – some holy of holies! – would be too small for that!  The heavens are creatures, too.  The wide expanse of universe is!  God is never identical with that creation, even when He is good enough to choose a place in it where we can praise His glory and where He can hold open court.  When God binds Himself to a place that is His choice, and we are neither to say that is impossible nor to invent other places of our own convenience.  He comes close and chooses Himself a place.  It is not our business to try and catch Him, to pull Him into some kind of net, some kind of system.  Israel was stupid enough to try and do that when – apart from the place God Himself had chosen they sacrificed in the “high places”.  The pre-Reformation church knew its “mystics”.  People who had their own private special way to God.

Never mind the Bible – never mind the Way opened by Christ – people like Theresa of Avila had their own soul-place for God.  God became identical with His creature.  Now after the Reformation when salvation was rediscovered as NOT dependent on what I do and what my soul achieves but only on what Jesus did there outside Jerusalem, you’d think the church ought to have learned better than that.  But no, also the Reformation churches were to know the false mystics, of praying to God apart from His revelation – apart from the heavens where is the throne both of GOD and the SON.  No, we too had the people who called the Bible: “Only the Bible”.  There are those who want a more direct, way to God, a little way apart from that cross, somehow AROUND that cross.  Yes, a little way they call it – but it is not the royal Way – it is an alleyway into nothing.  And now today there are the charismatics who seem to want the same kind of thing again.  Where can I find the Father?  Where my soul is ready?  Where I am going through a special ordeal of soul, or fight my way into some special merit, some above-average experience?  Do I find him there?  No, says Jesus: Our Father – you must say – who art in the heavens!  The place where Jesus went after having won for us the decisive battle, to which no battle or experience needs to be added.  Heaven – the place where he now shares the throne with the Father holding in His hand the scroll of history which, for the sake of his resurrection, He alone unfurls.  And it is He who made that heaven – where God is and where Jesus is – the accessible, open place that it is.  That is the place where He lives.  And outside yourself, your salvation lies safe there.  No, says Jesus: our Father – you must say – who are in the heavens!  The truth is outside yourself.  And even though from that heaven the spirit of the Son is poured out into your hearts even that spirit says to you: “sursum corda!”  Lift up the heart!  It has been done!  He who is in heaven, beyond the attacks of human doubt and Satan’s roaring, is your Father and his ear is open to your cry because the Son is with Him.  So much at one is the work of the Father with that of the Son, that in Isaiah 9 it is the Son who is called the mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of peace!  And this salvation which took place outside myself is taught in the scriptures.  You can trust that message.  Believe it and you, too, have the way open.  You too can know where to find the Father.  Say it after Jesus, and say it for his sake: “Our Father, who art in heaven…” where Jesus is, with the sufficient offering of His own blood!

You know, Israel never quite saw this.  They made the temple instead of the place where it pleased God to live and where He would – in the fullness of time – come in the true temple, the Son.  No, they made that temple the machine of magic, with which they could summon God down.  As if by some mumbo jumbo word of consecration, “The Lord’s temple, the Lord’s temple… is here!”, they could force God to live there.  But when God truly came to His temple they did not recognise Him, and when at last they killed Him God left that temple with contempt and tore the curtain in two!  What business does any church have to make a place that is holier than other places?  Where the God, who speaks so clearly in His word and in His Son, would again be caught?  As if having Him there would put Him under obligation?  Those in whom God wants to live, as in a living temple, are bidden by the Son to pray, “Our Father… who art… IN THE HEAVENS!”  It is in the Son alone we can see God – and see Him in His fullness-  full of grace and truth.  We cannot draw him towards us by methods, tricks, thought or effort.  God’s presence and fatherly nearness are given us by Christ as a miracle.  Only by Christ.  Therefore Isaiah called Him: “The mighty God, the everlasting Father!”

Now point two:

2.  How Do I Get To Him?

As we began to see, this is no superfluous question.  In the same chapter where Jesus commands us to call God “Our Father” He also says of us that we are evil.  “If then you who are evil know how to give good gifts to your children…!”  Clearly He does not say this here to clobber us or gloat over our misery.  He just says it as a matter of fact: You who are evil!  How can we ever accept the fact that we are yet children of God?  If we take seriously the truth that we are evil – and not even our reason or our thought or our good attempts escape that corruption – not even our WILL that is also a will in utter BONDAGE until the Son comes to set it free – if we take that sober truth seriously, then it becomes very clear that we have no right to just walk up and call God “Father”.  The truth that He IS our Father can neither be made, nor be found, by us.  No one – says Jesus – comes to the Father or to the discovery that God is Father, except by Me.  No world religion – however sincere in its attempts to set things right can do what Jesus alone can do.  Only Jesus can make evil people able to say “Father” to God – simply He did it all on the cross for them.

Solus Christus!  Christ alone can hand that precious privilege to us.  No other intermediary between God and man, no other go-between can fix this up for us.  No mother Mary, or other loving saint.  No battling array of martyrs or glorious company of apostles.  When we praise God for these it is because they, too, received from Jesus the right to be children of God as beggars – as Luther said on his death bed: “wir sind Bettler, das ist wahr!”  “Beggars are we, fair dinkum!  But then, which person who has learned the wonder of saying “Father” to the heavenly judge because Jesus bore all His punishment – will ever need go-betweens!  Who needs a go-between between Him and His Dad?  If you’re a Dad yourself, would YOU like it if your boy or girl never dares to come to you personally, but always sends messages – even through brothers or sisters?  Who needs any other go-between apart from Him who is so one with Him that Isaiah calls Him: the Mighty God, the everlasting Father, the prince of our peace?”

Now finally – “You shall call Him Father”.  We saw WHERE to find Him and HOW… now then:…

3.  Is It Only I Who Goes This Way?

You know, especially after the Reformation we have all got stuck with the repeating fraction of a church torn into bits and pieces.  Even the churches of the Reformation or must I say ESPECIALLY they present to the world the pitiful picture of firms competing hotly and hatefully.  Reformation Day is no day for reformation triumphalism – rather for humility and glory only in God’s grace which we need each day.

But Jesus says: you then, say OUR Father.  And Popes and Bishops and all kinds of strange birds are praying it too, and when God through Christ has gripped them in their hearts who shall deny them the right?  Von Staupitz who turned Luther’s confused face to the Christ, never left the Roman church and yet humanly speaking we owe the Reformation to him!  All kinds of strange birds say with us: OUR FATHER to God and in spite of the sins of their churches do we say it with them?  When Jesus says: Say OUR Father, does He not command us to think of them, all those who also trust in Him and have been set free by Him?  That does not mean that all is right what they do in their church just as we had better not assume or presume that all is so right in OUR churches!  What it does mean is, that as He builds His church out of all families of the earth also all faith-families with the unique price of the blood of His Son, we had better not think too small of His majesty.  Luther and Calvin – in that respect – were often a lot more ecumenical than we are, who have burrowed ourselves into our well-established church bodies.  Peter does not have the monopoly of those keys, neither has our synod, brother!  When Jesus entrusts the keys of the kingdom to His church even the keys of preaching and discipline – it is the same Jesus who taught us to pray: OUR Father…!  Those shoes – also the shoes of the fisherman – had better go off our feet.  The place under heaven where WE stand – is also Holy Ground.

Amen