Bible Teaching

Calvary Temple Teaching Library

Our Father

Amen! Let's turn to the book of Matthew and look at a new--not a new subject but a new teaching on the subject--that we're going to be spending a little bit of time on here in the next few weeks. For some of our religious roots we're going to have everybody do one "Our Father." Some of you are very familiar with confession and you got to do more than one "Our Father" over the years. It's interesting how as punishment or as a way of trying to appease God as we would come out of the confessional we would say "Our Fathers" or one of our "Hail Marys" and everything would be alright! We want to look at the one "Our Father" that will really be able to affect your life. We want to take a few weeks and take a glimpse at our Father. How good He is, praise God! How reliable our Father is. Incomprehensible that we can know Him! Isn't that cool! God cannot be comprehended but He can be known. We're able to just come in and embrace our Father. Just come in and be drawn into His bosom and cry, "Abba, Father!"

Are you at rest in your Father's love this evening? Are you at rest in your Father's arms? You know, what's sad is that none of us have perfect fathers that we can relate to on this earth. Some of us have had better fathers than others. Some of us in this room are becoming better fathers every day. Can you say amen to that? Can some of you wives say amen to that? How about you children? Is your dad becoming a better dad? I can see it. You might not be able to see it because you're too young, but I can see it. You might not see it because you didn't get the new pair of tennis shoes you wanted, but I can see it. Your dads are becoming better dads but they'll never be perfect. We don't have anything that we can relate to in the natural; but Father has chosen to reveal Himself to us in the person of Jesus and through the revelation of His Word. If we could see the Father it would suffice us.

Jesus said, "Have I been so long with you and yet you say 'Show us the Father.'? If you have seen Me," Jesus said [say it], "you have seen the Father." Now that doesn't just mean the way that Jesus behaved in His earthly ministry and in His earthly life, but we can draw from that. We can see the compassion; we can see the pursuit of man. But what we need to understand when Jesus said, "When you've seen Me you've seen the Father," what He's saying is when you've seen the free gift how God has loved you that He emptied heaven on your behalf, you've seen the heart of your Father. Amen? The fact that you've seen Me, you've seen God's love. God's seeking you even though you're not seeking Him. Praise God for that! Amen? Every one of us, while we were yet sinners Jesus died for us. We didn't seek Him He sought us. We're out partying, pursuing our own ambitions and our own goals, and God's just constantly setting up a love trap. He's letting us bounce all around thinking we've got our act together and we're going to be able to accomplish this and that. All of a sudden all of life's circumstances run us face to face with God. Like Jacob, He'll take your hip out of joint. Like Paul, He will absolutely overwhelm you with the glory of His presence on the road to Damascus. Like Peter, He may just walk up and say, "Follow Me." But He will encounter you. Those of us who have been encountered by Him and bowed our knee are beginning to learn the majesty of our God. The eternal creator of heaven and earth is Dad; pretty good family to be in, amen?

Some of us don't have the greatest pedigree in the natural. I told you that all those years Janet and I and the theme that we had. You could see it in our home in our curios thing. We'd go to Disney and the theme was we'd always go to Tony's and eat spaghetti dinner and all these things because it was Lady and the Tramp. Now it's Beauty and the Beast. You'd think a guy could catch a break somewhere along the line wouldn't you?

Our natural pedigree, we look and we're just mutts, but God's made us purebreds. Amen? We've been adopted into the family of God. There's no longer any shame, and there's no longer any identity crisis, and there's no longer any need to vie for affection and to prove ourselves that we might be some how accepted and embraced. While we were sinners He loved us! Praise God! How much more, the Scripture says, that we're the sons of God, you know, in all of that just like natural children. Kids, I want to tell you something. You don't know your parents. What I mean by that is not only that you don't know the inner resources of their heart; many of those things you'll never know. As children we don't know the thoughts of our parents. We don't always know why they're doing what they're doing. As they're thinking beyond your ability, and they're planning because of their experience, because of their desire to bless you, to instruct you in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, they're making decisions. They're not having to tell you all of that and you can't see what they're thinking. You don't know your parents; and we don't know our Father. He's infinite. We're finite.

The Scripture says that there's coming a time, praise God; aren't you looking forward to the time when we will know as we're known? Just get a glimpse of Him. You know, in this life if we can just catch the glimpse like Moses, "If I could just see you, Lord." He said, "You can't see Me, you'll die, but I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll let you see My hinder parts." As He covered him in the cleft of the rock and He passed by, God just gave him a slight glimpse of His glory. That glory illuminated his face so that when he came down from the mountain natural eyes couldn't even look upon him! They said, "Put a veil over your face, your face is shining!" Every once in a while we catch that glimpse, don't we? Don't you every once in while catch that glimpse through the Word or through a time in prayer? God's visitation in your life and you just catch that one glimpse and you're changed! You can go back and find the memorials just like the patriarchs of old. You can say, "God met me there. God met me there. I was changed there. This changed my life." Those glimpses of God; we haven't even seen a fragment of His majesty, of His ability. You haven't even begun to taste the infinite love that your Father has for you. You don't have a clue how much God loves you.

Do you ever feel alone? Do you ever feel rejected? Do you ever feel unworthy? Do you ever feel worthless? Do you ever feel like a failure? Do you ever feel of all of the disciples you were truly a wart on the body of Christ? Father loves you. Can I tell you something? In this family there are no favorites. God is no respecter of persons. Amen? Every person in this room is loved equally and that equal love is total love. God in His ability, as His attributes are made known to us; God being an infinite being means that there are no limitations. Think about that! God is infinite. There are no limitations, so His love is without limitation. His mercy is without limitation. His grace to you is without limitation. His ability to forgive you has no limits! You ought to say praise God for that one! When we become glorified at the end of this race that we're in, this race of life, when we lay this sinful body down and old things pass away and all things become new; when corruption takes on incorruption, mortality takes on immortality. When we see Him, praise God, we shall be like Him, John tells us. Now we stand in His presence glorified, redeemed, free from sin's power, able to gaze upon Him. Having cast our crowns at His feet, we cry with the creatures of Heaven, "Holy, holy, holy!" For eternity we say, "Holy, unique, distinct, like no other." Praise God! Every day for eternity God becomes more to you because there is no end to Him! It's not going to be like that movie Ground Hog Day. Every day is not going to be the same. Every day is going to be different and new, praise God! What's God got? You'll go, "WHOA!" He'll say, "You like that? Check this out!" There is no end to the greatness of our God!

Now how does all that fit into our daily behavior? We've got to take all of that awareness of the infinitude of our God, that there is no limit to His ability to: heal you, to deliver you, to bless you. Let's look at a couple of the "negatives." There's no place that you can hide that He can't chasten you. In His infinitude we begin to see other aspects of the revelation of who God is. We call them His attributes just for a way of trying to speak toward our limited knowledge and try to somehow fabricate in our consciousness Who this being is, but you can't--God can't be known. Everything you could imagine God is, He isn't that. He isn't that. Everything you could imagine God to be, He is not that, because your mind is finite and He is infinite. He is beyond what you can imagine. So our knowledge of Him is limited, but what we can know is pretty cool, isn't it? He's bigger than that! As we begin to think about this and we say attributes; God, as we've shared before, is a unitary being. He's not a bunch of parts. The attributes that convey the essence of God, what He really is, are just ways of explaining it to our finite minds. I just said all that to say this: as you begin to think about God, don't think about Him in sections; He's not fragmented. You'll get confused if you start letting these become entities to themselves. If you begin to think that 'God is love' is distinct from 'God is just' and that now we have a loving being and a just being and somehow now how do I reconcile love and justice in this situation? God never contends with that, because all of His love is just and all of His justice is loving. Don't try to think about Him that way. As we refer to a few of these things, remember He's unitary, He's one. Everything that God is works in perfect harmony, in oneness, in absolute unity. That's why God chastens those that He loves, and that's why God can send His creatures whom He died for to a devil's hell. So many people have trouble comprehending that, but when you understand who God is, you see that there is no conflict in that.

The reason I'm saying all of this is to say that if God is that available to all of us and yet all of us are not drawing near to Him and not partaking of His presence is it God or is it you? God has no favorites but God is not a communist. The fact that God chooses to sovereignly bless some and not others in no way contradicts the justice of God, the immutability of God, the mercy of God, the love of God. I'm going to say it again: God is no respecter of persons. There are too many of us sitting in this room thinking that we're getting a bum deal. You're loved just as any creature who has ever lived. Are you going to believe the love that God has to you? Are you going to accept the love that God has for you? Are you going to stop judging God in the way that He loves you and begin to let Him love you perfectly, infinitely? Are you going to begin to believe that God knows best? Do you remember the old movie Father Knows Best? (I hate it when eighty percent of you are going "No, I don't remember that.")

We realize, then, that as we prepare to go to the Lord's Prayer in Matthew and we pray, Matthew chapter 6, verse 9, "Our Father which art in Heaven." Who are you praying to? Jesus said, "You need to pray this way. What I want you to understand," Jesus says, "is that you have a Father who knows what you have need of. Your Father knows that you have need of these things, but I want to tell you something. Seek first the kingdom of God, His righteousness and all of these other things that the pagans are concerned with are going to be provided for you according to the love of your Father." Do you understand who your Father is? Are you seeking first your Father or are you seeking things? Are you seeking understanding? Are you wanting God to explain Himself to you and why you're in the fix you're in? Or are you going to begin to express a love, and a joy, and a thankfulness for whom God is, and that where you are is going to make you what you need to be for His glory?

The key to this whole thing is, beloved, we will never give God His proper glory until we can begin to free ourselves--and most of us doctrinally here in this room are free--but I'm talking about practically. There's a spirit that is so powerful in this day and this age that we're in that we are not without influence by it. We are vexed. Our minds are inundated constantly with the spirit of humanism. We were talking about this yesterday and there was in one of the satellite churches a parent who had asked a question. Our children are growing up, and raising them up we want to try to understand how to deal with them as it pertains to movies and different things. They brought up maybe when the child's smaller we're going to let them watch Disney and let them watch--and don't react to this because you could get into trouble if you react when I say it, because we all have our own ideas of what is right and wrong. You work out your salvation; you don't get involved in disputable matters. I'm just showing you the spirit of humanism. This person said, "Maybe when the child's really small I'll let them watch The Lion King and they can see the cute little lion and they can see the monkey and they won't know." Is it the monkey that's the witch doctor or something? All you Lion King fans don't be afraid to commit yourself; we're not opposed to it. Help me out here. I see it every year when I go down to Disney and we go and watch the show down there. It's got some great singers and acrobats and all of that kind of stuff. It's really a cool show but you're going to have to help me out because I'm not a great fan. (My favorite part is when the whole audience gets to sing "a-wimoweh" at the end; "In the jungle." That's my favorite part!) "The monkey is like the witch doctor and when he becomes old enough, my child, then, to realize that the monkey's a witch doctor, then I'm not going to let him watch it any more." That's one way to approach it. How long to you think it's going to take for that kid to figure out that that monkey's not just shaking a couple of nuts or whatever?. The odds are that your child will not become a witch doctor!. "There's witchcraft in that movie!" Witchcraft isn't the problem; it's humanism. The strongest spirit that you're going to face and that your children are going to face in our generation is humanism, the deification of man. It's always been the premier power. "The minute you eat your eyes will be open, and you will become as gods!" the devil told her. Man's eyes were opened and that knowledge entered in, and man became as god to himself.

When we pray "Our Father," what are we really praying? Is the god that you serve a god who's been created in your own mind to serve you? Who is God to you? What role does your Father play in your life? Is your heavenly Father no different than your earthly father was; someone who stood in your way from doing your will? As soon as you perceive an opportunity you're going to do it your way? Or is your Father someone to be honored, reverenced, and acknowledged, as knowing more? Acknowledged as someone who's not trying to hinder your life, but set a course for your good?

Our Father which art in Heaven, hallowed, holy, is Your name. We're going to talk a little bit about the name of God. We're going to talk about the attributes of God as we go on in this. Tonight I want to take this evening, as we introduce this subject, to just ask you the question, "Who is God to you?" Do you understand who He is? Do you understand His love? Do you understand the accessibility you have to your Father? So many of us have such lousy natural relationships with our parents; we're so performance oriented. We've come to the place where so few of us have known absolute, unconditional love. That's not to put anything off on our parents, that's just generation after generation. Perfect love is not ever going to come from the natural realm. You're never going to find it in a parent or in a spouse. You won't be satisfied there.

As we begin to pursue our Father and look at who He is, the thing that I want us to see as we start looking at our Father is that He reveals Himself in the Word in a number of ways; absolute statements, and we're going to look at those tonight and on Sunday. We're going to look at the fact that God is love. We're going to look at the statement that God is light. As we see God as light, we understand that term being used as, historically, it spoke to the spirit of Gnosticism in that day. We've explained what Gnosticism is to you in the past, so we won't go back into that. This phrase that 'God is light' is really speaking of the fact that God is pure, that God is knowledge, and that God is accessible. When we see that phrase that God is light, we're going to refer a little bit to His holiness, to His majesty, to His accessibility. He said, "Of those that come to Me [Aren't you thankful for that Scripture?] I will [What?] turn none away." "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "No man can pluck you from My hand." "Of those that the Father has given Me I have lost none." Praise God! Do you understand how secure you are here tonight in the love of your Father? That this plan of redemption has come to reach out and embrace us, and engulf us, and to secure us? We are inaccessible to eternal death as long as we abide in His love and believe the love that God has to us. Never believe the lie that God's given up on you! Don't believe the lie that there are some that are just predestined to Hell. We've had people right in this congregation say, "I just believe that I'm one of those vessels that God created for destruction." He did not create any man to destroy them. That's not what that is speaking of as you look at Pharaoh in the ninth chapter of Romans. God in His omniscience, God in His foreknowledge, is able to move beyond time and space. Don't try to figure it out, just believe it. Without any injustice to justice, lawfully having foreknown, predestined, but man's free will was always the determining factor. Always available to you is this statement: "Choose this day who you're going to serve." (Joshua 24:15)

As we look at Father, we want to begin to see Him as who He is. We stand in awe, we stand and look and are overwhelmed by His majesty. In the natural, unapproachable, in the spiritual, bold access into the Holy of Holies by the blood of Jesus. He says, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." Matthew 11:28. "I'm going to let you rest from the spirit that opposes My Word, this doctrine of humanism, this philosophy of existentialism." Isn't it tragic as we look at our society today? We see the root cause, don't we, of all of the frustration and the confusion and the anarchy. It's really sad as you look and people have no truth that provides an anchor for their souls, their minds. Being gods to themselves and moving in existential thought that there is nothing absolute. Everything, all justice depends upon my determination of what's valuable at this moment. We have no absolutes, we have no truth, so we have no course for our lives. But those of us that are walking in the truth that the Scripture reveals through His Word must have peace and rest. As we look at this passage of Scripture, "Our Father which art in heaven," do those words bring peace to your heart? Do they bring a solace? Do they bring a rest, a confidence? They will if you don't approach them with an agenda. It's really uncomfortable having to go and confront Dad and try to convince him of something He doesn't want to do.

Turn over to James and let's look at this point for this evening, and we'll just finish with that as a little bit of an introduction. I just want you to see who your Father is, how loving He is, and how approachable He is. How confident we should be in His purposing to bless you beyond your worth, to establish you beyond your ability, to proclaim your victory in an obvious incapability to perform. That's the rest that God's called us to.

James, chapter 1, we're going to finish with this for this evening. We'll take a look, a little bit, at Father. We talked about, as we glimpse Him, we need to understand the infinitude of God, and that He is absolute. There is no limitation to His love; there is no limitation to His mercy; there is no limitation to His justice. As we understand that, the thing that most of us have a lot of trouble with as we pray to our Father, is that He is also immutable. You're going to find God the same every time you approach Him. His Word is ever the same. His Word and His promises are yea and amen. They never change. They are sure to a thousand generations. Amen? Heaven and earth will pass away; God's Word will not pass away. We rest in that and we understand these great truths and James says this, "Every good gift [verse 17] and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures." Of His own will He begat us. That's an immutable statement. That doesn't change. Nothing can change the fact that God purposed your birth--I'm talking about spiritually. Everything in your life, nothing happened by chance. Nothing can thwart the will of God, His sovereign purpose, His determinate counsel, as the Scripture uses that phrase. God has put you where you are today. Of His own will He has begotten you. He has called you out that He might call you in. He's placed you here today. He put you in the family that you were born into. You know that's something we look at and we look around sometimes at our parents and think surely we're adopted. "How could a genius like me be put into a family of all these idiots?" I'd put it from your parents' perspective, but I don't want to give you a complex. Here we are, and the fact is you've been begotten. God chose you. That blows my mind! Here in the natural we have kids and we get what we get. We're all like, "Yeah." Yes, that's what your parents said, "You get what you get."

We're reading in one of the magazines that it looks now like you can kind of build a child. Any of you seen the new magazines? Greer and I have been talking about possibly having a child; Greer's talking more than I am. We're looking at the different things that are available. I was reading the 'build a child' article, and right now they're just primarily talking about gender, but you know they're not far away from probably being able to deal with intellect. You know, the physiology? Greer thought she'd like to have a little girl and I think a little girl that'll look like Schwarzenegger would be cool, man! So, if you could build one, right? But in reality you get what you get, don't you?

God knew what He was getting and He chose you! Can you say praise God? He loves you! That's the whole point of tonight. God loves you! God chose you as you are! God made you what you are! God is going to make you what He wants you to be! He's not through with your husband yet. As we look at the love of our Father for us tonight, and we understand that it wasn't a shot in the dark, man! God saw you where you are today and He said, "That's my child. I love him, I'm proud of him!" Did you do anything today that embarrassed your Father? Did you do anything today that you just say, "Man, I'm ashamed! Dear Lord!" Dad loves you. I'm going to go way back with this one. Only Neal will remember this one. That's my Boy! Jim Backus. I bet you haven't heard that name in a long time. I hadn't thought of it either. Don't ask me where this comes from. All those repressed--and God says, "That's my boy!" You're saying, "I'm a dog. What a failure. Dear Lord!" God sees you just like He saw Abraham, just like He saw David, and just like He saw Peter. He sees the finished product and God says, "It's good!" Praise God! Amen? His creation is good! We are His creation in Christ Jesus. As we get to know Father we can come to Him, He loves us, He knows what we are. The problem is we don't know who He is. We're judging Him by our own hearts. We're judging Him by our own frailness. We're judging Him by our own finite mind and understanding. We say, "How could God...?" Because He is I AM that's how. Every good and perfect gift comes from your Father. It's coming to you daily. It comes to you momentarily. His presence is the unspeakable gift. That presence of Jesus' work of redemption is ever present, it is unspeakable, and it is the gift of God. It is always constantly being illuminated saying, "Here is free access to My presence, to My love, to My power, to your peace, to your forgiveness, and only your ignorance is keeping you from stepping through." Only your pride is keeping you from entering in and only your willful choice to irrationally judge God and say He doesn't care, He doesn't love me any more, He can't forgive this, and I'll never be free from this. I want you to know, bless God, that He has made available to you all things that pertain to life and godliness in Christ Jesus and He doesn't change. His pursuit of you hasn't changed and His proclamation of who you are in Jesus has not changed. The benefits of faith have not changed. The unspeakable promises have not changed. The giver of every good and perfect gift, He with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

Psalm 102:27 says, "But thou [art] the same, and thy years shall have no end." We talk of the immutability of God in this passage, and not only the immutability of God but we talk about the eternal state of God. See, God is not only infinite in that there is not limitation to Him, but He is eternal; there's no beginning or end. I AM that I AM. I am the Alpha and the Omega. God lives in the eternal. That's why He's able to make these statements about you and me. That's why we can't see beyond the horizon of time and space. Into that that we step when this veil of flesh drops. You could give up and quit tonight and be lost forever, and what a tragedy because tomorrow you could step into eternity as a victor. Only time and space will end. The eternal purpose of God abides forever. He will never cast out anyone who comes to Him. I don't know why I keep going back to that, but I guess there's just something. I'm sensing that there's somebody who's about to quit. Don't do it! Now I don't have time to go into all of the ramifications of this but I want to tell you something: God in His sovereignty has chosen to give you free will. Your course is ultimately embraced by your will and your decision. Don't ask me how sovereign foreknowledge allows free will to not conflict with His sovereign eternal purposes. I don't understand it, but I know that God has not determined for you to be lost; you must determine that. You can choose it tonight, but God didn't choose it, you chose it. God knew it, God put you here at this moment, but He's not made that decision. Choose this day whom you're going to serve. Father loves you! He will never leave you nor forsake you. You will not be comfortless. Every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variableness neither shadow of turning. Nothing changes God; repentance changes you.

Father, we thank You tonight for Your presence. We thank You for the Word of God that is truth, and we ask that somehow in this study we could have a better understanding of You and Your involvement in our life and our pursuit of You. Right now, Father, I pray for those who are in the valley of decision. Those who would judge You guilty of being unfaithful, of failing. Let them put their hands over their mouths and fall to their knees, as the creatures say, "Who am I to judge the eternal, infinite, holy God? I am, and always will be the man, and You are good and right and holy and just and immutable. You will always be truth. I don't understand but I believe; help my unbelief!" Let that be your cry tonight and receive that free gift of grace that's going to sustain you in these days that are ahead. Father will make Himself more real to you. Job cried out in all of his confusion, "God, I don't understand!" You are so unsearchable and marvelous in all things without number. He had a glimpse of how great God was, and yet at the very end of the book he said, "I've always known the greatness of God but I've never dealt with the corruptness of my own heart. I'm the one. I justified myself rather than God. I choose to put my hands over my mouth and say one thing, God is good. Though He slay me I will serve Him." Make it real, Father, we ask in Jesus' name. Amen. Let's stand before the Lord.

I don't know who you are, but let God deliver you tonight and understand that He's here for your good. Choice has put you where you are, and choice will put you back into the path of righteousness as you repent. When you say, "This is the fruit of my willfulness, my lust, my pride; I choose to fulfill the whole duty of man. Here is why I exist: to love God and keep His commandments." Make it real we ask, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen.

As Gary plays for us we'll take just a moment and allow the Holy Spirit to speak to your heart. Our Father which art in Heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom come thy will be done in me as it is in Heaven. Give us this day sufficient to sustain us. Lord, don't allow us to be overcome by the tempter. Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. Deliver us from secular humanism. Deliver us from the sin that's in our members. Deliver us. Cast us not away from Thy presence. Take not thy Holy Spirit from us. For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. We seek Your kingdom first and all is added to us that would glorify You. Our Father which art in Heaven, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless Thy will be done in Earth as it is in Heaven. Not my will but Thy will be done.

Let's sing this together and worship Him. (Singing) How lovely are Thy dwelling places...

Hallelujah! Our King and our God! We bow before You, Lord! We acknowledge Your majesty. We come to serve in Your kingdom. We live for Your glory and for Your purposes and not our own. Make us ambassadors. Make us sons and heirs that would be stewards of Your kingdom. Let our treasure be the power of this gospel in our mouths. Let our beauty be feet that herald this good news. Let our strength be the joy of the Lord. Let our wisdom be Your Word. Let the glory be Yours we ask, Father, in Jesus' name. Amen, amen.

Before you go, turn to somebody next to you and say, "You know, you look like your Dad!" Amen! Go in peace, God's love go with you.

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