Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / November 10, 2019 | The Names Of God - Abba

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November 10, 2019 | The Names Of God - Abba · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
• 0:02
  SPEAKER_00: Topeka Bible Church, Kubuller clan.
• 0:07
  SPEAKER_00: And visitors, if you're visiting, you've come to us at about number 10 in a fall series called The Names of God.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_00: This also happens to be Adoption Sunday, which is special for us every year.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I've got the perfect name of God for Adoption Sunday.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: So let me start by, well, let me start here by saying a few years ago they took a survey, took a survey of adult children, shall we say, adults, 20s, 30s, 40s, 50-year-old adults, asking them one question to ask if you um had a choice between one, but not both, one of your parents moving in with you, which one would you choose?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Uh-huh.
• 0:57
  SPEAKER_00: And which one do you think?
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: Somebody said, Dad, sorry, three out of four said mom.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, I think their answer was three out of four said mom, duh, you know.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: So we all love our moms, and but that doesn't mean you don't have deep feelings for our dads.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: Oftentimes we have mixed feelings about our dad.
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite hours of the week is the 6.15 to 7.30 hour.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, children, I know that's more than an hour.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Starts with a full breakfast.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's on Wednesday morning with about 40 guys, and it's called Men of Success.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And we're going through Rodney Kenner, who played here this morning.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Rodney Kenner and I go through uh books on success, famous bestsellers.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: We go through bestsellers.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_00: Like the one we're about to finish now.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: It's called 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership by John Maxwell.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a lot of fun and it's cool, but um when Men of Success started 15 years ago, it wasn't called Men of Success.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I called it Men's Fraternity.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: And the first three, four, five years were all about dad.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_00: They were all about our relationship with our dad.
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_00: Typical, uh I was looking back, and a typical session title for one of those was Facing Your Father Wound.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: And but the truth is that that was really hot stuff.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: We had over 80 guys that were coming out every week to talk about their dads.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: We have Tay at tables, still do, but we get together and we were sharing our relationship with our dad.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_00: Whether our dad was we felt close to him, what it was like growing up with him, and wow.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um I uh there's really, you you women, if you don't know this already, there's no relationship, perhaps, for a guy more fraught with complicated feelings than his relationship with his dad.
• 3:03
  SPEAKER_00: Daughters generally grow up adoring their fathers.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And so do sons, initially, you know, but then as you grow older, oftentimes that relationship gets, for a number of reasons, complicated.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: Though my father was a man of God, well known in the Pacific Northwest for being a man of God.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um in Christian circles, I had a uh complicated relationship with him.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And he's now in heaven, and I thought my case was unique until Mr.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Fraternity, and I found that 80 other guys had the same problems I did.
• 3:40
  SPEAKER_00: And you know what I'm talking about, that you know, dads who either who may have been fine but seemed distant or whatever.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, as I did a little survey of my own informally, I I found that about 20% of the guys in our group had a good relationship with their dad.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: They had no complaints really, and they were close to their dad.
• 4:06
  SPEAKER_00: The dad was wonderful.
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: About 40% of the guys had a bad relationship with their dad.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_00: Their dad was drunk, alcoholic, hit their mother sometimes, maybe beat them up or ran away, uh was a womanizer, and so forth.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_00: Bad relationship.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: And then there were 40% of us who had sort of a complicator, had sort of a mixed relationship.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: And in general, it went something like this.
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_00: We we thank God for our dads.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_00: He contributed a lot to the home and he was there and so forth.
• 4:32
  SPEAKER_00: But uh, and then it would go off.
• 4:35
  SPEAKER_00: It'd be something like, well, he had expectations that I could never meet, or he never really connected with me, or we never talked personally, something like that.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: What kind of a dad did you have?
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um so you know, here's another story.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: Some years ago, the executives at a greeting card company decided to do a favor, do something nice for a men's prison, and so they went in on Mother's Day and they said, free card, if you want to send your mother a greeting card, free card.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: And the line was so long they had to go back to the warehouse and get more cards.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_00: So successful, in fact, they decided to do the same thing on Father's Day.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Not one man at this federal prison.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: Not one.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_00: Came send there, send dad a card.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: But that's reflective of what Christian leaders who work in prisons tell us that it's difficult to find one man out of a hundred in prison who had a good relationship with his father.
• 5:40
  SPEAKER_00: So God's fully aware of that.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_00: God knew that would happen.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: God knew that relationships, especially between sons and fathers, be complicated.
• 5:47
  SPEAKER_00: This is, I guess this message is especially for you guys.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But I have had a number of uh women coming up this morning telling me it applied to them too.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_00: So the name that God has chosen to reveal to us to help us with this is the name Abba.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: Say that with me.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_00: Abba.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: You've heard that name before.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_00: I'm positive you heard that name before, although you may have heard it as uh a singing group that sang dancing queen or something.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Shut up.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_00: So some people are making fun of me, the musicians on stage, because I always thought, and for those of you that don't know, it was a very popular group, but uh before some of you were born, maybe.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: So, but I always thought that, hey, I grew up in a Christian home.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: Abba, I thought, how cool, they must be Jewish people maybe who who know of God.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: And it's just Abba, just the first four letters of their four names.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I'm learning, I'm learning.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, Abba is an Aramaic word.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Hebrew is the language of the Old Testament, primarily.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: There's some Aramaic in it in Ezra and Daniel.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_00: Aramaic was the more familiar home language, right?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: New Testament Greek is a very different language, okay?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: And yet this word is found only in the New Testament, only in the New Testament.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, this is the only name of God found only in the New Testament.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And it's an Aramaic word, which means that it uh was the language, it was a familiar word, a word used around the home.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: By the way, if you go over to Israel today, you've heard the name Avi.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: Avi today in Hebrew used constantly means my father.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_00: It's the Hebrew word.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This word is also used in Israel, but it's the Aramaic word, and it also means my father.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Uh something like that.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_00: So this is the word we're talking about.
• 7:34
  SPEAKER_00: This is the word God gives us.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: This is his name.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: It is a familiar name.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: And uh I think I mentioned maybe on the bulletin how really interesting it is that the name for daddy or the name for dad around the world always sounds kind of the same.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_00: Abba in Hebrew, but it's Tata in some places or Papa or Baba, and so it always really interesting how no matter what the language is, pretty much, the word sounds the same.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the English word that corresponds with Abba, the Hebrew word, is not, as you might have heard in sermons or might have read in a book, it's really not daddy.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: The problem with the word daddy is that it's only used by children, little children, and it's really not a word that conveys any respect.
• 8:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a word of familiarity.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: No, the best word is papa.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Papa is a name, and by the way, that's what my grandchildren call me, and I love it, but papa is a name that is used even today of grown-ups.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: Abba is used of grown-up children in Israel, Papa is used of grown-ups, and it's also has it has a flavor of respect, don't you think?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Papa, more than daddy does.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: Okay?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I like to go back and forth and I like to think of God as my papa.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: I would prefer that you think of God as your papa when you're thinking in English, not as daddy.
• 8:56
  SPEAKER_00: It's a little too familiar, lacks a little bit of respect.
• 9:00
  SPEAKER_00: All right?
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: But this is a new thing.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Can I just say this?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_00: It is a new thing for Jewish people in Jesus' day.
• 9:07
  SPEAKER_00: This this is a real surprise.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: In the Old Testament, God only calls himself father 15 times in the whole New Testament, Old Testament.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: God is named as Father in the first 15 times in the first five, six chapters of the New Testament.
• 9:21
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference is because Jesus, his son, has now come to earth.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And so that description of God as a father, which occurred only 15 times in the Old Testament, now occurs 245 times in the New Testament.
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: 165 times in the four Gospels alone.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus Himself, when he spoke to God, called called his father Abba 60 times in the Gospels.
• 9:54
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, as far as we know, the only time when Jesus was speaking to his father that he did not call him Abba was in that awful moment when he was separated from him psychologically on the cross because he was bearing our sins.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he cried out, My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And yet just a few minutes later, when he was dying, he said, Abba, into thy hands I commit my spirit.
• 10:25
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_00: So this becomes a very common name, but I've got to tell you, this is a very familiar name, and I picture a Jewish family in the New Testament.
• 10:33
  SPEAKER_00: If they overheard a 12 their 12-year-old son, let's say, praying to God and using the name Abba, I picture Daddy slapping his son's face and saying, inconceivable, irreverent, blasphemous, to call the Almighty Adonai, the Almighty, the great Yahweh, the King of the universe, to call him Abba, such a familiar name, a name you use around the house, way too familiar, not knowing that Jesus has now changed everything.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_00: And with his coming to earth, not only Jesus can call his father Abba, but all of those who know Jesus and come to the Father through him can call him Abba.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you very much.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_00: So let me just share with you the three texts there.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: There are only three texts in the New Testament that use this, that plant that translate this Aramaic word right out in the open.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: And the first is when Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, prayer cry, when he cries, Abba Father, everything's possible.
• 11:36
  SPEAKER_00: For you take this cup from me, please take this cup from me.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Yet not my will, but your will.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's the first time.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: Notice it is a prayer and it is a cry.
• 11:45
  SPEAKER_00: Second famous verse, Romans 8:15.
• 11:48
  SPEAKER_00: I think you saw it on the screen earlier today.
• 11:50
  SPEAKER_00: For you did not, says Paul, you did not receive the spirit of slavery, slavery to fall back into fear, but you've received the spirit of adoption.
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: So adoption Sunday, this whole thing that we're talking about, this fatherhood of God.
• 12:04
  SPEAKER_00: We're talking about being adopted children, adopted as sons, by whom we cry.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: The Spirit helps us cry out, Abba Father.
• 12:13
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a prayer.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a cry.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, the third time in Galatians, the Apostle Paul says, Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out Abba Father.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a prayer.
• 12:29
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it's a cry.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_00: Again, it is a cry germinated and created by the Holy Spirit, who is in the hearts and in the spirits of every child of God.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_00: So those are the three texts.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what I think I want to do is uh the rest of the time I want to share with you six lessons that I draw from these three verses, lessons about Abba Father, to help you with your father relationship both on earth and heaven.
• 12:59
  SPEAKER_00: And let me mention that some of you are probably familiar with this.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_00: There are a number of books about Abba and about our fatherhood and God's fatherhood.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: Thomas Smail has one of the most famous early ones, The Forgotten Father.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: Brennan Manning, whom a number of you have read books of, Abba's Child, The Father Heart of God, Abba's Heart.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Dr.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Peter Law has several books on this.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: Abba, my father, John Eldridge, some of you like him a lot, Fathered by God, God the Good Father, Abba, and so forth.
• 13:27
  SPEAKER_00: This sermon, however, will not go the direction any of those books go.
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just simply staying with the text of Scripture and drawing six lessons from this Abba theme in the Bible.
• 13:39
  SPEAKER_00: Alright?
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the first lesson you may not think of as significant.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_00: It goes like this: God thinks of himself as a father.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_00: We're not struck by that, much less awestruck.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_00: God thinks of himself as a father.
• 13:58
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if you'll consider for a minute, that it really is strange that not one of the other religions that have ever existed on the face of the earth has conjured up a God who thinks of himself as a father.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: Every other religion has a God who is a superpower, yes.
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_00: A super just God, yeah.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: A superlord and a supermaster, right, a just punisher of evil, a dread God of justice, but not a father.
• 14:27
  SPEAKER_00: And yet you find this idea actually throughout the Bible, though the Bible never told God's people to call him father in the Old Testament.
• 14:36
  SPEAKER_00: God rarely speaks of himself as a father.
• 14:38
  SPEAKER_00: There is a passage in the Old Testament that lets us know that God has always thought of himself as a father.
• 14:46
  SPEAKER_00: And it's the heart and the and really the key to one of the most interesting stories in the Bible, a story where you would least expect to find this idea, the story of the ten plagues.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_00: You know the story of the ten plagues, how Moses went down to Egypt, and as God had told him to do, said to Pharaoh, Let my people go.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: They've been in Egypt for 400 years, you've enslaved them, you've used them, they are my people, let them go.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: And some of you know that as a result of Pharaoh saying no, and the Egyptians keeping them as slaves, there were ten plagues.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And if you've seen the movie The Prince of Egypt, which God himself produced, you have seen it, yes.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_00: No, really good movie, at least far better.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: I always compare the movies that I recommend to the movie Noah, which is, well, I will carry an embarrassment to my grave.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_00: Movie Prince of Egypt is actually quite good, especially in the way it communicates that the plagues were funny.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: There were comic events in which God was poking fun at the gods of Egypt.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's just a funny picture to have these frogs croaking and jumping all over Egypt, especially when since the Egyptians worshiped the frog.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, everything.
• 16:03
  SPEAKER_00: Lice, you know, coming out of the, you know, lice everywhere, and uh Nile turning the blood, and they're all comic, and you know, all of them, you know, until you get to the tenth plague.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: The tenth plague isn't funny at all.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: Remember the tenth plague?
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right, it's killing the firstborn son of Pharaoh and of all the households of Egypt.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And you go, why would you be so mean?
• 16:35
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, that just seems a little over the top, God.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, yeah, I know they've, you know, they're not, you're refusing, you know, it's bad what they're doing, but killing the firstborn sons, why would you do that?
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_00: And God answers that question before the ten plagues ever begin, because as Moses is crossing into Egypt, this is a verse you may not know in Exodus chapter 4, 22, God speaks to Moses and he says, You shall say to Pharaoh, thus says the Lord, Israel is my firstborn son.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I say to you, let my son go, so that he may serve me.
• 17:14
  SPEAKER_00: If ye refuse to let him go, behold, I will kill your firstborn son.
• 17:23
  SPEAKER_00: So if you cry out to God and you say, God, why are you doing this?
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_00: Why are you killing all these firstborn sons?
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_00: God says, I gave him fair warning.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_00: He has stolen and kidnapped my firstborn son.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_00: He has trafficked him for 400 years and used him and killed him over and over again.
• 17:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I've told him again and again to let my son go, but both Pharaoh and the people treat it as a small thing to steal and to use my son.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_00: Therefore, I am giving tit for tat, eye for eye, son for son.
• 18:00
  SPEAKER_00: That's what's happening here.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_00: And people read the story and they see the movie and they never realize that the story of the Exodus is actually a story about the fatherhood of God, that God thinks of Israel not just as a nation of which he is their king, not just as a chosen people that he has selected among all the nations of the earth, not just as his servant to bring the Messiah and salvation to the whole world, but he actually thinks of Israel as his son, as his beloved child.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: And therefore, he thinks of himself not only as Elohim the creator, not only as Adonai, our Lord and Master, not only as Yahweh, the God who is here for us, just to go over the ten names we've looked at so far, not only as El Roe, the God who sees us, and El Shaddai the superpowerful, not only as Yahweh, and not only is Yahweh the provider, and El Olam, the everlasting God, not only is El Tzavot, the God of angel armies, and Emmanuel God with us, but God thinks of himself as a father.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: And he would say that to you today, that he wants so badly for you to join him in seeing him as a father, that he writes you and says, I'll be a father to you, and you'll be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.
• 19:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it gets even more amazing because the second of the six points is that God wants us to call him father.
• 19:42
  SPEAKER_00: He's not content with us theological understanding.
• 19:47
  SPEAKER_00: But again, in the whole Old Testament, he never told his people to call him Father.
• 19:52
  SPEAKER_00: But in the New Testament, he says, I want you to call me Father.
• 19:57
  SPEAKER_00: Disciples say to Jesus, how should we pray?
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: Jesus says, every single day, you should remind yourself that God is your father by beginning our Father in heaven.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Wow.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: J.I.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: Packer wrote a famous book, Knowing God.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: J.I.
• 20:20
  SPEAKER_00: Packer is the premier Christian theologian of the last 100 years in the world.
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_00: And he wrote a book called Knowing God 50 years ago.
• 20:29
  SPEAKER_00: And he says in that book, What is a Christian?
• 20:31
  SPEAKER_00: The richest answer I know is that a Christian is one who has God for his father.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_00: And if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and knowing God as his father.
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: It's really important to God that you know him as Father and call him Father, Abba, Papa.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_00: But it is a name that you can only use if you are a New Testament Christian.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: That is, if you come to the Father through his son, because the name Abba was reserved in heaven until Jesus came down, and now all of us who come through Jesus can, like Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, look up at him and call him Abba or Papa, but only those who come to God through Jesus his son.
• 21:38
  SPEAKER_00: For the fact is that we have all gone astray from God.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_00: He is our creator, but he is not the true father of all who live on earth.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And because we have sinned, God sent his son to earth to live and to die, carrying our sins on the cross.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_00: Cross and then rising to gain victory over sin and death from the grave on Easter morning, so that all who put their trust in him can like him address the Almighty God as dad, Abba, Papa.
• 22:22
  SPEAKER_00: How neat is that that we get to move beyond the El Shaddai's and prayer the Almighty God, holy and just one dread Lord of the universe, and that we can move on to running to him with our arms open, crying out, Papa! But this privilege, let me say it one last time, is reserved for those who come to God through Jesus Christ.
• 22:50
  SPEAKER_00: Point number three, after we ask ourselves, do you know God as Father?
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: And do you call him Abba Papa?
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: Point number three is Abba loves us and he delights in us.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: No matter what your own earthly father was like, the ideal father in heaven says, I love you.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_00: And he uses it even in the Old Testament, Proverbs 3, when he's talking about discipline, he says, for whom Yahweh loves, he corrects, just as a father corrects a child in whom he delights.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord God saying, You know what?
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I think of myself as a father, and I think of you, my true children, as those that I love and delight in.
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the reason I discipline you.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: I love that poster of a dad hugging his kids, and the poster reads, Dad, his son's first hero, his daughter's first love.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_00: Every child wants dad's love.
• 23:49
  SPEAKER_00: Every child needs dad's love.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_00: And oftentimes, children chase their dad's love.
• 24:01
  SPEAKER_00: And one of his books, Mitch Album, puts it this way: kids don't know better.
• 24:06
  SPEAKER_00: They usually chase the love that eludes them.
• 24:09
  SPEAKER_00: And often that's their father's love.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: He keeps it locked away, like papers in his briefcase.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: You keep trying to get in there.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_00: You pursue the love.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_00: You think you might lose.
• 24:23
  SPEAKER_00: Sadly, some fathers play hide and seek with their love.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: Fortunately, the Heavenly Father never does.
• 24:32
  SPEAKER_00: Nothing, says the Apostle, can ever separate us from the love of God, which is in Jesus Christ our Lord.
• 24:38
  SPEAKER_00: If you didn't have a father who loved you and delighted in you, if you missed out on that kind of a dad when you were young, you can have one in the person of Abba, your heavenly father, and God wants us to know that so often he just keeps repeating it in the New Testament in nearly every book.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_00: 1 John 3:1.
• 24:59
  SPEAKER_00: Behold, what manner of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called children of God.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_00: Ephesians 1, in love, God chose to adopt us through Jesus Christ on and on and on.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_00: You need to know that the ideal, the perfect Father in heaven, loves and delights in his children.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_00: The interesting thing is that along the way, we learn how to pray.
• 25:23
  SPEAKER_00: This is just a little quickie here.
• 25:25
  SPEAKER_00: I could talk a lot about this, but you know, until Abba came along, until we read about Jesus crying out, Abba, we thought that prayer needed to be distant and formal and stilted and all those other things, and using these high-pollutant names for God.
• 25:37
  SPEAKER_00: You know, the kind that they use in the president's inaugural prayer, stuff like that.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: And then all of a sudden, as we look at this name Abba and we find out what it means, we realize that God is teaching us how to pray, and He is teaching us that we should pray nice, N-I-C-E nice.
• 25:53
  SPEAKER_00: Remember that N-I-C.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_00: I just came up with that this morning.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: N standing for natural, I standing for intimate, C standing for confident, E standing for emotional.
• 26:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what Abba tells us, first of all, that prayer, the kind of prayer God likes to hear is natural prayer.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't have some deeper voice.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't sound like some stained glass window.
• 26:11
  SPEAKER_00: It does, it's not weird, it's not in a fake voice.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: It doesn't, it doesn't come, you know, always go on, yes, God, and yes, God.
• 26:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, it doesn't, it doesn't, it sounds like a normal conversation with your father.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: Right?
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's not weird and it's not faky.
• 26:28
  SPEAKER_00: And it's true, it'll never get you invited to give the inaugural prayer at the president's, you know, you know, whatever.
• 26:34
  SPEAKER_00: But it's the kind of prayer God wants to hear.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: It's natural.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_00: And not only is it natural NIC, but it's intimate and confident.
• 26:41
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, you know, uh, it's like most of you, if you come see me in my office, you'll call for an appointment, or some of you just come and you'll knock at the door, and that's fine.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: There are some people that never do that.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: They happen to be my grandchildren and my sons who live in town, three of them, and my daughters, that is their wives.
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_00: They just walk in in the same way that I'm sure that Trump's kids and grandkids walk into the Oval Office, but you and I never would.
• 27:06
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the kind of picture you need to get of what God's saying.
• 27:10
  SPEAKER_00: The veil is torn.
• 27:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, please talk to me naturally, come to me confidently, come to me intimately because you are my children.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: Pray to me naturally, intimately, confidently, and then emotionally because this is not a rational, this is not a professorial type of a prayer.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: This is not, you know, basically listing things for God or teaching him or entering into an intelligent.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: This is emotional, this is passionate prayer, fervent prayer, we read in the book of James, Jesus' brother.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_00: So Jesus teaches us to pray when he calls himself Abba.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, in prayer, you need to know that Papa will sometimes say no, just like your earthly Papa said no to you, didn't give you everything you wanted.
• 27:56
  SPEAKER_00: And so he does invite you to pray.
• 27:59
  SPEAKER_00: But he won't always say yes, and sometimes he will correct you.
• 28:05
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, that's the point of Hebrews 12.
• 28:07
  SPEAKER_00: My son, don't make light of the Lord's discipline and don't lose heart when he rebukes you, because the Lord disciplines the ones he loves, and here it comes.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_00: He chastens everyone he accepts as his son.
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_00: So I know it hurts to hear the word no, and it hurts to be rebuked, but that's what papas do.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_00: So, yes, come to him like a child, like a son.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_00: But remember that papas do tell their sons no at times.
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_00: Now we don't like that.
• 28:39
  SPEAKER_00: We are C.S.
• 28:40
  SPEAKER_00: Lewis had it exactly right when he said we want not so much a father, but a grandfather in heaven, a God who says of anything we happen to like doing, it doesn't matter so long as they're contented.
• 28:53
  SPEAKER_00: And that's embarrassing because I'm a grandfather now.
• 28:58
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of all the times I said no to my kids.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_00: And a couple nights ago, my daughter, my daughter-in-law, asked me to if I'd take the two kids, her two little kids, little kids.
• 29:13
  SPEAKER_00: They're just ankle biters, you know, three, four, two, five, whatever.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: Anyway.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_00: So, so where do you want to go?
• 29:25
  SPEAKER_00: Wherever they want to go.
• 29:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna take them wherever they want to go.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Thankfully, they don't eat steak yet.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: So they go, McDonald's Play Place.
• 29:31
  SPEAKER_00: So we go to McDonald's Play Place.
• 29:33
  SPEAKER_00: Because I'm a grandfather.
• 29:35
  SPEAKER_00: Grandfathers say yes.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_00: What do you want to eat?
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um happy meals.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I never bought my kids happy.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_00: Those things are exorbitantly priced.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's absolutely stupid.
• 29:48
  SPEAKER_00: I was just I'd never even got two happy meals.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_00: Happy meals.
• 29:55
  SPEAKER_00: But they're grandkids.
• 29:57
  SPEAKER_00: Campuses, yes.
• 30:00
  SPEAKER_00: So now what do you want?
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: You want dessert?
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, how about ice cream cones?
• 30:05
  SPEAKER_00: What else do they have?
• 30:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, they have ice cream sundaes.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_00: You little types, you can't eat all that.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, they have McFlurries.
• 30:16
  SPEAKER_00: What?
• 30:18
  SPEAKER_00: Those things cost like$74 a piece or something.
• 30:22
  SPEAKER_00: Or whatever.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_00: Five bucks.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: There they are.
• 30:25
  SPEAKER_00: Two little kids with big McFlurries.
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's our grandpa's do.
• 30:29
  SPEAKER_00: That's embarrassing.
• 30:30
  SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry to admit that.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: Especially since I've got a son who'll listen to that and go, what?
• 30:38
  SPEAKER_00: I was so deprived.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the kind of grandfather we wanted to have him.
• 30:42
  SPEAKER_00: But fathers sometimes say no.
• 30:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I know I need to learn how to say no to them.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: Although, didn't you see that?
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: I saw the cartoon on Twitter.
• 30:50
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, I was about, this is terrible.
• 30:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just trying to remember this right in front of you.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_00: It's like a month ago when I was a uh uh grandfather or whatever, he's going, I was asked to babysit my granddaughter and so forth.
• 31:03
  SPEAKER_00: I'm and and so I'm doing it, and she asked for ice cream, and it was lunch, and I said no.
• 31:07
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, uh, she said, You're the worst grandfather ever.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: So he said, now she's about done with her second scoop and she thinks I'm really cool.
• 31:16
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 31:17
  SPEAKER_00: So there's grandfather.
• 31:19
  SPEAKER_00: This is way too long uh uh a discussion here, but just want to say that Papa does say no, and Papa corrects us.
• 31:30
  SPEAKER_00: In fact, he even said no to his own son, didn't he?
• 31:34
  SPEAKER_00: His own son, please take this cup from me.
• 31:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yet not as I will, but your will.
• 31:41
  SPEAKER_00: But the flip side of this, the flip side of number five that he says no, is that our Papa says he'll never give us a stone.
• 31:52
  SPEAKER_00: Matthew 7, Jesus says, which of you, if his son asks for bread, we'll give him a stone?
• 31:57
  SPEAKER_00: Or if he asks for a fish, we'll give him a snake.
• 32:00
  SPEAKER_00: If you then, though you're 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?
• 32:07
  SPEAKER_00: You earthly fathers, you guys are sinners.
• 32:12
  SPEAKER_00: You're not ideal fathers.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: But even you don't give a stone when your child asks for a McDonald's hamburger.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, no, he's far beyond you.
• 32:25
  SPEAKER_00: He'll never give you a stone.
• 32:29
  SPEAKER_00: All of a sudden I'm going, really?
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_00: And then I look at the verse that goes along with it in the Old Testament that oftentimes gets quoted, no good thing, Psalm 84, 11, does he withhold from those who walk uprightly?
• 32:45
  SPEAKER_00: Really?
• 32:47
  SPEAKER_00: And you know how you usually think about this.
• 32:49
  SPEAKER_00: You think, well, he's withhold some good stuff from me, but probably nobody else.
• 32:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just inferior.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not walking uprightly.
• 32:58
  SPEAKER_00: I know, but listen, he doesn't say walk perfectly.
• 33:01
  SPEAKER_00: He just says, if you you love the Lord, you're a believer, right?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_00: You trusted him, you're trying to walk by faith, and he says no good thing he withholds from you.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, what's going on with that?
• 33:15
  SPEAKER_00: A single girl comes up and she says, Marriage is good, right?
• 33:20
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God says so.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_00: Why is God withholding marriage from me?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: And ten years and twenty years later, she's saying the same thing.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: A young couple comes up and they say, you know, children are a good thing, right?
• 33:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, God says so.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: Why is God withholding children from us when I want them so badly, and I cry out to him, and he says, He won't withhold good from us.
• 33:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then the girl, then the young wife gets finally gets pregnant, and she's so excited and puts Psalm 8411 up on the fridge, answered prayer, and then she has a miscarriage.
• 33:59
  SPEAKER_00: She makes it even worse than if she had never gotten pregnant.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Comes crying, you know, I thought God said he would never withhold good from those who walked upright.
• 34:10
  SPEAKER_00: I thought he said he would always give us good things.
• 34:17
  SPEAKER_00: And I say to them, I I I don't know what to tell you.
• 34:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I I don't I I can't answer that.
• 34:23
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe, maybe the beginning of the verse helps.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_00: For the Lord God is a sun and shield.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: The Lord will give grace and glory, and no good thing will he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I say a sun gives you stuff.
• 34:38
  SPEAKER_00: It beams down on you, gives you stuff.
• 34:40
  SPEAKER_00: A shield withholds keeps stuff away from you.
• 34:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now we normally think the sun is always beaming down, it's always good, forgetting the fact that it gets really hot sometimes.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we always think the shield means that God will keep all evil away from us, but it doesn't say that.
• 34:55
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes God may give us stuff that doesn't seem good, and sometimes he may withhold from us something that we would like to have, something that is good.
• 35:08
  SPEAKER_00: And I know the world will say if it looks like a stone and it feels like a stone, then it is a stone, but what maybe we need to take by faith is that some things that look like stones and feel like stones may not be stones at all, because God says, I'm your papa, and no good thing will I withhold from those who walk uprightly.
• 35:29
  SPEAKER_00: And maybe what we need most of all in life is not the sunbeams that we think we need, but sometimes we need something different.
• 35:38
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe we need a little rain in our life.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes those things which we are sure would be good for us.
• 35:46
  SPEAKER_00: And I think of a girl sobbing who thought that boy would be good to his promise to marry her, and then broke up and had to work through and did work through wonderfully how that could possibly be a good thing.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: And then I think of some of the people that you and I know.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think of uh I think of Johnny Erickson Tata and how she explains how it is a good thing that she suffers every day and has suffered being a paraplegic.
• 36:18
  SPEAKER_00: Or I think of, I think of how Corey Tin Boom writes how she and Betsy worked through that whole idea that this could somehow be a good thing that her sister Betsy be taken from her.
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: Or even more recently, I'm reading George Mueller, middle 1800s, famous orphanage Britain, remember, had this amazing relationship with his wife.
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: He said he would write about it just gussingly.
• 36:39
  SPEAKER_00: I never saw her, but what my heart wasn't filled with love and happiness.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_00: She was always so positive.
• 36:44
  SPEAKER_00: Her marriage was amazing, and then she gets struck down with this awful illness in the middle of life, and they're sick, and day after day, and they take Psalm 84, 11 as their verse, and they share it with each other, and then finally come to the place that she's sinking, where they say to each other, If the Lord takes me from you, George.
• 37:04
  SPEAKER_00: Since he never withholds good from those who walk uprightly, then it is good for me to be gone, and it is good for you for me to be gone.
• 37:14
  SPEAKER_00: And yet, if he lets me stay with you, then that's the good thing, for all things work together for good to those who love God.
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_00: Because God is our Papa, and He never withholds good from those who walk uprightly, who are His children who call Him Abba.
• 37:42
  SPEAKER_00: So there it is this morning.
• 37:44
  SPEAKER_00: God thinks of Himself as a Father, He wants us to call Him Papa.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: He loves us and delights in us, He teaches us how to pray.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: He says no and corrects us, but he never, ever gives us a stone.
• 37:54
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't know God as your Papa this morning, if you don't know Him as Abba, then you're you're missing out big time, honestly.
• 38:05
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know what your earthly father was like.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he held his love back from you or abandoned you, or somehow you never could connect with him or never meet his expectations, but I'm telling you that God is an absolutely ideal, perfect, loving father who will never, ever let you down and never give you a stone and begs you to call him father and come running to him every day with your arms open, crying, Abba, Father.
• 38:38
  SPEAKER_00: Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that we can call you Heavenly Father and come to you emotionally, naturally, confidently, intimately, and call you dad, call you Papa, call you Father, knowing that you'll love us unconditionally.
• 38:58
  SPEAKER_00: She may say no to us and not give us what we think we need and want, but she'll never give us evil.
• 39:07
  SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: And to whom, for whom and through whom we come to you as Father.
• 39:18
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.