Season: 10 Episode: 159
Listen to episode 159 in Spanish:
Summary:
There is a difference between the relationship with God that was possible in the Old Testament compared to the relationship possible through Jesus. No one called God father in the Old Testament. The reconciliation offered through Christ made God not only approachable, but made the adoption into His family possible. There is no other religion known to man where God came to His own. And, there is no other religion known to man where God puts Himself in the position as your Father once you accept Jesus Christ as your savior. Christmas is so much more than a manger scene. This episode will remind everyone of the love God has for His people and the desire to have an intimate relationship with each one of us
Quotables:
“You have the right to call God Father because Jesus reconciled God to man.”
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How should I understand the concept of God as Father?
Are only Christians children of God?
Hey Everyone! Merry Christmas! It is that time of year where we celebrate the sounds and smells of Christmas. It’s one of my favorite times of the year and it always makes me excited to bake, watch all the Christmas movies I’ve seen hundred of times, and just spend time with my family. I hope that each of you just enjoy the moments. Shut out the thought of evil in the world but don’t shut out those you pass by. Share cookies, spread good cheer, and tell someone at least one person the good news of the season.
Before we get into todays episode I want to remind you of the LGR course starting again on Feb 6th. This is a certificate course based on the IDHEF book written by Dr Turek and Dr Geisler. We teach kids the reasons to believe Christianity is true and give them the confidence to know what they believe and why they believe it.
I also have a newsletter coming out in January with healthy recipes and workout tips that will get you ready to face the new year.
And I will give you bible study tips and tricks to learn how to dig deeper into your studies for 2023. But you have to be a Patreon member to get all of that. Hit the link in the description to sign up for only $5/month.
Alright, so the first Christmas episode is going to be one about the fascinating concept of calling God our Father. Now, you might be like, how is this a Christmas topic. Well, anything we are allowed to do because of what Christ has done for us is basically a Christmas concept. But what this hinges on is that fact that Jesus is literally the bridge or the avenue that reconciled humanity to God. Without Jesus’ coming in the form of a baby and going to the cross, and rising on the third day, we would not be reconciled to God. But more than just being reconciled to Him, God literally became our Father. This is a concept unheard of to the Jews prior to Jesus coming. In fact, Jesus told us to call God Father and I am going to show you why this is a beautiful understanding of what Jesus did for us.
So today we are going to discuss:
- The relationship man had with God prior to Christ.
- The relationship man can have with God now that Christ came.
- What does that mean for you today?
The relationship with God before Christ
We get a good idea of what God is like from the OT, and a lot of people don’t like what they see. This is where you see PC’s talk about how immoral and unjust God is because He allowed the Israelites to take over the land of Canaan and destroy the surrounding nations. But again, to come to this conclusion is bad theology.
I’ll explain in a bit.
Also, atheists will make the claim that God is a moral monster and unjust and if that’s the kind of God that exists, they don’t want Him.
And it is true that God allowed His people to annihilate the Canaanites, and take over lands, and destroy men, women and children. But if we stop there and don’t understand the culture of that time or the culture of these nations, we won’t understand God – if any human can truly understand God.
First, we must remember the relationship God had with Adam and Eve in Genesis 1-2 so we understand how things are supposed to be. Not how things are now, but how God desires for them to be. Mankind had perfect fellowship with God in the garden. There was no barrier. There was nothing that hindered them from being in His presence. The Bible tell us He walked and talked with them in the garden.
So what happened?
Sin. Sin separates us from God. God is holy and no flesh will be in His presence. When Adam and Eve were cast out of the garden, their relationship with God was never the same. There was a barrier between them and God. It’s a sad reality. That’s why we need Christ.
Second, we have to remember that the Old Testament is about the old covenant. God gave His people the law to teach them how not to sin now. The people in the OT times were under the law, not under grace because Christ hadn’t come yet. Animal sacrifice was in now full swing to atone for sin.
We also must understand the difference between the ceremonial law, the judicial law, and the moral law. I don’t have time to go into that theology but a great understanding and learning of this is either Got Questions or expository Apologetics by Voddie Bauchaum.
People in the OT didn’t have access to God like we do.
They couldn’t just pray to Him. They had to go to the priest, and that sometimes required they hike it for miles to the nearest tent, priest or prophet to hear from God. The priest had to offer the sacrifice for their sins. They couldn’t get near the holy of holies. It was a tedious process. God was afar off. Not because He is mean. But because He is holy and the barrier between their sinful humanity and His holiness kept His relationship with them at a distance.
Living during these times was tedious. God, the Spirit, had not come because Jesus had not come. So there was no temple of the Holy Spirit among believers yet. Again, God was afar off. The prophet was the only one who spoke the words of God and if people wanted to hear from God, they had to go to the prophet. How would you like that? Would you want to have the Bible read to you so that you knew what God said? You have access to God now because of Christ, they didn’t.
God was unapproachable to many.
He is a judge. I love reading the OT because I see a strong God who does not tolerate wickedness. The Canaanites were a wicked people, They sacrificed their children to a false god named Molech. They were terrible people.
Now, did God just annihilate them all without any possibility for redemption? If you look at the genealogy of Jesus, you will see that the answer is no. Rahab is in Jesus’ lineage and she came from Jericho. Jericho was in the land of Canaan. Rahab and her whole household were saved after she put her trust in the God of the Hebrews. She recognized Him as the one true God and He accepted Her into the Israelite family.
We also have Ruth, a moabite woman from the descents of Lot.
Now, Lot was Abraham’s nephew and he hung out in Sodom until God destroyed it by fire. And lots daughters were pretty corrupt and slept with their dad and got pregnant by him. Can anyone said, “Ewwww”?
Well, Ruth came from their lineage and she is the great grandma of king David who is in Christ’s lineage.
What’s my point? A couple of things:
Yes, the OT was a different time. A time where people were under the law, not under grace.
Yes, people’s relationship with God was different – people didn’t have access to God like we do now because Jesus is the reason for our personal relationship with God.
God is holy and no flesh will stand in His presence.
He is a judge and will judge sin because He is righteous. This is theology every Christian must understand because if we don’t, we truly don’t understand the magnitude of Christmas. We don’t understand what Immanuel, God with us really means. We don’t understand the difference between the OT and the NT and why you and I are the truly blessed ones to have access, direct access to God without having to hike it to the nearest temple and ask a priest to offer a sacrifice for sin on our behalf.
So what’s the relationship that man can have with God now that Christ came?
This is the fun part. This is the best part and something I’ve been thinking about in preparation for this episode. Do you know that Jesus gave us permission to call God Father? Nowhere in the OT will you see anyone call God Father. Jesus changed everything for us. He changed our access to God.
We see this when the disciples asked Jesus how to pray. Jesus answered, when you pray, pray like this, ‘Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” You can read the entire prayer in Matthew 6. God wants us to have the same fellowship with Him we had in the garden before sin and Jesus made that possible. Only those who do not know or understand God will not find this fact that we get to call Him Father impressive.
I find it a wonder.
I am in aw that the God of creation, who spoke all things into existence and made the galaxies and the universe, and is all powerful calls me his child and I can call Him my Father. Who am I? Who are any of us? We are nothing compared to Him, yet His heart longs for a relationship with all He created.
1 John 3:1 says, “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know Him.” John is pretty excited about this relationship we have with the Father because of Christ.
Got Questions says it this way: “What is interesting to note here is that John does not say, “The Father loves us.”
In doing so, he would be describing a condition.
Instead, he tells us that the Father has “lavished” His love on us, and this, in turn, portrays an action and the extent of God’s love. It is also interesting to note that John has chosen the word “Father” purposely. That word implies the father-child relationship. However, God did not become Father when He adopted us as children. God’s fatherhood is eternal. He is eternally the Father of Jesus Christ, and through Jesus He is our Father. Through Jesus we receive the Father’s love and are called “children of God.”
And let me tell you something that is controversial – not all humans are children of God. Nope. Only those that have accepted His Son, Jesus Christ, and His sacrifice on the cross, have the right to call Him Father. In fact, Jesus calls some who choose to accept the lies and go their own ways, children of the devil and refers to Satan as their father.
Yeah, I’ll pass on that.
This is the reason Christ came – to restore humanity back to the right relationship with God and give us access to the Father without having to stand behind the veil (that’s why it was torn in two when Christ died). There is no longer a barrier between God and man because Jesus is the only way to the Father. He is the only one who makes that possible. Merry Christmas!
The Bible uses familial language when referring to God, Jesus and the church.
*family
*heirs
*brother and sister
*adoption
This is not a future promise to be in God’s family – it is a right now reality. It is something that is true for us at the moment we give our lives to God through Christ. Jesus is the way, the truth and the life. When He said He is the only way to the Father, He is saying He is the only way for God to become our Father and for us to become God’s children. That’s why not all belong to the Father. Again, that is why some belong to their father the devil. People who reject Christ, reject God and therefore reject becoming His child.
Jesus really did reconcile us to the Father and restored what we had with God in the garden.
We are so blessed to be living in the last days. God is no longer afar off. There is no barrier between God and man. Not only that, but the closeness we now have because of Christ is only made possible through Christ’s death and resurrection.
Christmas is part of the story, but it is not the entire story. When the angels declared, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, goodwill toward men” what they were declaring was peace only found in Christ because now there is a reconciling of God to man. In fact, there was silence from God for over 400 years prior to Christ’s arrival. Malachi was the last prophet and no one heard from God from about 430 BC to the time of John the Baptist as he was the forerunner of the coming of the Lord.
I told you that people who wanted to hear from God had to go to the prophet to get the word of God. But now that Christ had come, He was allowing each person to have a personal relationship with God and so personal, we call Him father.
What does that mean for you and me?
First, these can be deep theological concepts, so I highly recommend going to the show notes and reading some of the articles I posted there from Got Questions on this topic. But it first means that we need to understand what makes us a child of God and what is required of us.
We are only children of God if we are in Christ. That means we also must not tell anyone they are a child of God because it’s just bad theology. Can anyone become a child of God? Absolutely but they must go through Christ first.
When we are children of God, God disciplines us because He is our father.
Hebrews 12:6 says, “For the LORD disciplines those he loves, and he punishes each one he accepts as his child.” One of the ways we know we belong to God is when we feel the convicting power of the Holy Spirit. That means we grieve over our sin and know that we have disobeyed our Father, God. It calls us to go back and make things right with Him.
And we should be happy we feel convicted over our sin because that means God loves us and doesn’t want the barrier of sin to come between us and Him.
As a Father, God leads His children and directs their paths.
Proverbs 3:5-6 tells us to trust Him with all of our hearts and He will make our paths straight. One of the Aramaic words for Father in the Bible is Abba and it shows a close and personal, or rather intimate relationship we have with God as our Father. It’s like when you see those military videos of the kids whose dad’s come home from the military and surprise them. They make me cry every time. Once the child recognize their father, they run and jump into their dad’s arms and cry and hug for the longest time. That is the best picture I can imagine that describes who God see us and the relationship He offers to us through Christ. To say that everyone is God’s child diminishes the magnitude of this relationship only offered in Christ. And God won’t allow anyone to diminish it.
And a biblical picture of God as our Father is in the story of the prodigal son.
If you go back and read this story, you will see how the father ran to the son when he was on his way back home. Tim Keller has an amazing sermon on this and I will link it in the show notes for you and I hope you will listen because he breaks down why this is such a big deal for the father to run. In this culture, men didn’t run. They didn’t hold up their clothing and humble themselves in such a way to be seen running. But God runs to His children. And remember, if anyone wants God as their father and is willing to go through Christ, this is how God responds.
Close:
Immanuel, God with us means so much more than just a baby in a manger. It’s Christ, the Son of God, in the flesh who reconciled God to man. God, who was afar off became near. So near, that He became our Father and offers all He created a relationship like the one He had with Adam and Eve in the garden before the fall.
We are the blessed ones. We are the ones who have direct access, not just to a God who sits on His throne in heaven, because He does. But we have a direct line to our Father who loves us and gave His only Son so that you and I could be with Him forever. Our relationship with God as Father and child is not something that will be. It’s something that is right now.
I pray this is something we remember. Christ’s coming is truly a marvelous and magnificent thing. Without Him, we are lost. With Him, we belong to the family of God, a royal priesthood, and we are co-heirs with Christ to whom we owe our lives.
Thank God Jesus came. Born to die so that we might live.
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