11 April 2024

We have been considering the TRINITY and how believers should have a trinitarian approach and understanding in our worship, adoration and service of the ‘Three in One’.
We have covered to some extent our appreciation of the Lord Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit. However, when we come to our heavenly Father, there is much that we need to meditate upon and to relate them to our walk with the Triune God.

Consider how the Bible reveals how believers should address the heavenly Father – “ABBA”. The Lord Jesus shared how we begin our prayer with the address “Our Father”. The term ‘Abba’ was the domestic and confident form of the name used by all Jewish children at home for their earthly fathers, and one which was used thereafter by Jesus’ earliest followers for their Father in heaven. The term conveys a sense of intimacy and familiarity which introduces an entirely new factor into man’s approach to God. It is, in one sense, a term of endearment, which describes the warm and deep loving relationship of true children of God with their heavenly Father.
When we pray, “Our Father”, how does it describe our relationship with the heavenly Father?
God has many names in Scripture in his relationship with his people, but ‘Father’ goes beyond them all and is the most profound of them all, indicating our ultimate identity and our supreme privilege; our dignity and our duty. How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God (1John 3:1).
God is our Father; we belong to him. This one truth tells us who we are and why we are. It tells us how we must live and how we may die. It challenges us and it comforts us. It is now the first and most important truth about our relationship with God, We may not understand his essential being but we can understand his character and his relationship to us with its commitment, authority and love. In Jesus Christ his Son he has become our Father-God (John 1:12).

(B)

THE GLORY OF OUR FATHER

The Bible is full of God’s glory and majesty, his transcendence and his sovereignty, and so should be our awareness of him in prayer and praise. When we pray to our heavenly Father, is there a deep consciousness of this or do we forget that we are addressing the almighty everlasting holy Creator?
The heavenliness of God: his power and his majesty, his greatness and his glory were early lessons in the history of Israel, and they are never lost or left behind in the ongoing revelation concerning God. In the beginning he is there without beginning, the self-existent God (Gen. 1:1; Exod 3:14), the creator of the heavens and the earth. He is also distinct from his creation: in it, yet above it, sustaining it, yet transcending it; his creation cannot contain him.

Even Moses, Daniel, Isaiah and Ezekiel found the appearance of God indescribable, fearful and glorious, awesome, and overwhelming. Isaiah was brought to his knees in terror and self-revulsion; Moses was only permitted to see God’s back but not his face; Ezekiel described the appearance of the likeness of his glory and it was beautiful and fearful at the same time. Daniel felt faint and was drained of strength even to speak.

God’s majesty is as moral as it is mighty; he is perfect in power, in love and purity; the righteous God who is the ‘judge of all the earth’. The glory of God shining from the face of the risen Christ, who is the image of the invisible God, blinded Saul of Tarsus, and when John saw it he recorded in Revelation: “I fell at his feet as though dead (Rev. 1:17).

It is right that we should approach with confidence our Father in heaven when we pray (Heb.10:19). But it is also right that we should marvel at our privilege and even our safety in doing so! For the ancient Hebrew the Holy of Holies was a frightening place, and for the current Christian it is only because Jesus has gone there as our redeemer and mediator that it has become our eternal home.
The high priest was only allowed to enter the Holy of Holies on the day of atonement, and not without sacrificial offerings, and even then, there was the possibility of him being slain if he entered capriciously and without ensuring that he had been cleansed.
Pause and consider: At the foot of Mount Sinai, the people said to Moses, “Speak to us yourself and we will listen. But do not have God speak to us or we will die” (Exod. 20:19). At the near approach of God to his people, there is a sense of awe which overcomes the very best of them.
Do we approach our heavenly Father in prayer rather carelessly and frivolously without reverence and holy fear?
Do we come in worship of him in an indifferent manner, ignoring his presence and also the instructions from his lips? Do we realise how privileged we are to enter into his very presence without being slain or damaged?
Let us not ignore the glory of our heavenly Father and the call to live ‘worthy of our high calling’ and not put his name to shame and tarnish his heavenly glory.

(C)
This God is God and there is no other besides him: “I am the Lord, and there is no other” (Isa. 45:6). He is eternal, the aeons of creation are but passing moments to him: “from everlasting to everlasting you are God” (Ps 90:2). He is omniscient, seeing and knowing all that is, all that has been, and all that ever will be, planning and bringing to perfection all he has purposed (Is. 46:8-10). As human beings, we often do not realise that God is above and beyond time and space as we know it; God is never caught off-guard, he knows what is going to happen next, for he sees and knows all things from everlasting to everlasting and he would accomplish his promise and purpose, come what may. Surely, we can be at rest and at peace if God is our God, whatever happens. How comforting and reassuring this is; especially in this current context in a world that is ‘chaotic’ and ‘out of control’.

Nothing can ultimately defeat God’s plans, for he is omnipotent, the Almighty God, who promises his people great and glorious things (Jer. 29:11) – which sometimes see unlikely or lost in a world of disappointments – but who says when faith is low, “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” (Gen. 18:14)

The doctrine of God’s sovereignty is given not to crush us but to comfort us. If God were only sovereign in heaven, what would be the point of praying on earth? If he were only sovereign in the Church, who would help us in the world? But in fact he is “the sovereign Lord” the most High of whom we can say, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress, my God whom I trust.’ (Ps. 91:2)
Others may have their contacts in high places but we have a Father in the highest place of all: big enough for all our problems, concerned enough for all our cares, close enough to guide, protect and reassure.

As we walk through life, problems meet us which dwarf us and we are tempted to feel hopeless and helpless. Yet when we kneel to pray in full recognition of God’s greatness we see our problems themselves dwarfed before the God of all the earth, the sovereign and transcendent God – our Father (ABBA).