Truth For Life

Bob Lepine: None of my children or grandchildren call me Mr. Lepine. In our house, I'm either Dad or I'm G-Dad. Now, that's an entitlement extended only to those who are a part of our family. Well, in the same way, only God's children can call him Father. Today on Truth For Life, Alistair Begg takes a closer look at what an immense privilege and blessing it is to be one who can address God so intimately. Let's turn in our Bibles again to Ephesians, chapter four.

Alistair Begg: From the second half of the 20th century on, if not from before—in fact, from before, but at least from then—what we have witnessed is a vast increased secularization of our culture. But in the context of that, at the same time and parallel to it, we discover an increased interest in spirituality. So we construct spiritualities that fit us, tailor-made to our own hopes and aspirations, according to our own intuition about the meaning of life.

Part of the framework of that, at least as I encounter it, is that in the embracing of the idea of the multi and the many, there is a wholesale rejection of the idea of the one. So the idea of there is one God and Father of all, people say, well, that cannot be the case. Why not? Well, because we know that there are so many different possibilities and so on.

The role of the psalmist and the role of the prophet is to say to them, "Come on now, you know better than that. You know that there is only one true and living God. Why would you chase after all of these substitute gods? Why would you try and bow down before them? Choose this day whom you will serve. Do you want to serve the gods of our fathers on the other side, or do you want to serve the living and the true God?"

Fast forward into the New Testament, and what is Paul doing? He's doing the exact same thing. He's calling the people of his day to the one true and living God. Now, to declare with Paul that there is one true and living God—face up to this we must—is to reject the cultural spirituality of our time.

When we declare with Paul here that there is one God and Father of all, that he is upholding the universe that he created, that he is omnipresent, that he is everywhere, that he pervades every corner of life, and that he is at the same time tri-personal, then we realize that when people want to talk about God and knowing God and who God is, there's a great need for us to be willing to take a stand.

It happens all the time. I was in conversation this past week with a group of people around a table from different religious backgrounds. You know the temptation to just go with the flow, just sort of go with the vague spirituality? Because you know what happens if you don't. They may remove you from the restaurant; they may remove you from the circle of friendship. They may simply say the fellow's a clown—I always knew he was, and now we know we've got firsthand evidence.

But you see, I'm sitting with my Jewish friends, and I say to them, "You say that Jesus is not the Messiah. I say he is. We can't both be right. You left at halftime in a two-act play, and that's why you don't know who your Messiah is. If you would wait for the second half, you would understand all the lines that were pointing forward."

Wait, well, we all know God in our own way. After all, there's only one God; he's the God. Now, what are you going to do at that point? Are you going to go, "No, he's not, I just told you," or you're just going to have to say, "Father, you're the only one that opens blind eyes and softens hard hearts."

The illustrations abound in the attempts of those even from that context who are struggling with this very question. My favorite lyricist of the 20th century is Paul Simon. Thank you. I just wanted to make sure that people say I learned something at Parkside; his favorite lyricist is Paul Simon.

I managed to finish this book this week, a book, and I'm studying this passage and I'm reading this book. I'm not looking for illustrations—I don't look for illustrations, illustrations come and find me. This is 1980. To give you context, *Bridge Over Troubled Water* was at its zenith in 1970. So it's 10 years after *Bridge Over Troubled Water*.

Paul Simon is in a funky—he can't write anything. He's convinced himself that he can't do it anymore. He's done; he's finished. So he gets on a plane, he flies to Los Angeles, he gets a rental car, and he drives to UCLA to the office of a psychiatrist who's been recommended to him called Dr. Gurney, described here as a lanky, gentle-natured man in his mid-fifties.

He sits down with the doctor, and the doctor gives him the first question: "Why had he come to see him? Why'd you come to see me?" It didn't take Paul long to answer. It was all he'd been able to think about for weeks. His problem was that his spirit was severely detached from his circumstances. He was young, healthy, talented, rich, and famous. He was free to do whatever he wanted nearly all the time. So why was he still so very unhappy? And why couldn't he do the one thing that gave him the most pleasure?

That's 1980. Did he help him? Momentarily. Fast forward another nine years. He and Carrie Fisher are hanging by a thread in their marriage for all kinds of reasons we don't need to go into. They decide perhaps a trip down the Amazon will help them. Off they go down the Amazon, and as he's talking to the people on the boat, some of the workers on the boat explain to him that they're going through a village that is close to a spiritual healer who, apparently in Portuguese, is known as a Brujo.

Since Simon realizes that they're going to be within the proximity of this Brujo's house, he wants off the boat to go there. He wants to go find this spiritual healer. So he and Carrie set out in the late afternoon and arrive to find the doctor tending to other clients with his tribal cures, applying herbs, speaking incantations, praying to the gods in the air and in the bush.

After dark, the Brujo began an ayahuasca ceremony, a spiritual cleansing ritual that begins with a long Icaros, a song-like incantation meant to enhance the visionary effect of the thick brown tea he was brewing from a combination of Caapi vine and the leaves of psychotropic plants known only to the Brujo.

Once they'd consumed the tea, the doctor, speaking through an interpreter, prepared his patients for the visionary experience they would encounter that evening. Quotes: "The anaconda snake will appear to you in a vision," he said. "But don't be alarmed; it's a vision. The appearance of the snake would herald hours of seeing into their deepest spiritual selves and communing with a higher power, a divine all-knowing presence that would reveal the essence of their souls and uncover where they had been broken, and perhaps if they were lucky, how they might dispel the bad energy that had fixed itself to their spirits."

And the Jewish carpenter walks into the community and he says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest. And take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and I am lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Oh, no, I couldn't possibly do that. But you'll trudge through the Amazon jungle to drink a really bad cup of tea and look to a snake to reveal your deepest spiritual longings?

Hopefully, before he dies, I finally get to talk to this dear little guy that I love so much. It broke my heart to read this. I don't use it as an illustration to look at Paul Simon. He's just representative of so many in our culture.

This one God and Father is also, says Paul, tri-personal. Because if we've been reading this, and even as we've been singing, we've sung about, "Oh Father who sustained them, oh Spirit who inspired, Savior whose love constrained them." That sounds a bit like three gods, doesn't it? But of course, it isn't.

And so what Paul is doing here is he's actually underscoring what we find elsewhere in the Bible, namely that this God, this one God, is three in one. He is, as we've sung in our opening hymn, holy and thrice fold. We read from the Nicene Creed. It doesn't quite close the gap on what is a profound mystery, but it is also a profound truth.

So we have to wait until the 5th century for the Athanasian Creed, where those fellows sit down and they say, "We've got to make sure that we've got this Trinity thing completely defined and declared." And so they write it in creedal form. Let me give you just a bit of it: "We worship one God in Trinity and Trinity in unity, neither confusing the persons nor dividing the substance. For there is one person of the Father, another of the Son, and another of the Holy Spirit. But the Godhead of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit is all one. So the Father is God, the Son is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. And yet there are not three gods, but one."

How are you doing with that? I read it about four times, and I said, "Okay, that was nice work." It is at best a formulation; it's not an explanation. How do you explain it? So I went looking for other people to explain it to me, and I go to my friends, you know, the people who've died that I still respect, like Martin Lloyd-Jones. I go to Martin Lloyd-Jones, and what does he say? "Do not try to understand this. No one can understand this. It is ultimately a mystery." I said, "Good, so I'll just leave it there."

And so may you. Listen, the Gospel is simple enough for a child to understand and embrace, but the Gospel is not simplistic. The truth of the Gospel is profound. You can search for your whole life, and you will be standing, as it were, on the shoreline watching the waves come and go, but you will never see beyond the horizon.

Now we see through a glass darkly; one day we will see face-to-face. Anyone who comes to God must believe that he is, that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him. Therefore, we will not play around with vague spiritualities. We will have to say what the Bible says at the risk of offense, at the possibility of the loss of friendship.

Jesus himself, when confronted by his fellow Jews in John chapter 8, who came to him to say to him, "We have one Father, namely God." Remember what Jesus said to them? He said, "If God were your Father, you would love me, for I came out from God," speaking to the fact that he has come from God from eternity. And they then, of course, reviled him for this. And Jesus said to them, "Well, let me tell you just as clearly as I can: you do have a father, and your father is the devil."

Well, that was very nice, wasn't it? Why did Jesus say that? To condemn? No, to confront the reality that when we say there is one God and Father of all, he is the Father of all who are in Christ.

That brings me to my final question; I'll just give you the outline for it. What do we actually mean to call God Father, to call God Father? I've already alluded to the fact that the average person does not call God Father. You can meet people who will talk about God in an intellectual way; they will speak of him and so on. It is distinctly Christian to call God Father.

In fact, Jim Packer in his book *Knowing God* says that it distinguishes, if you like, the Jew from the Christian. "Father," he says, "is the Christian name for God." It's the Christian name for God. He's begun by saying, "In love he predestined us for adoption as his sons." This is where he started from.

So when he gets to "there is one God and Father of all," he hasn't gone off on a tangent. He says, "Let me remind you of what I said at the beginning of my letter, that in love the Father predestined you to be adopted as his sons, and this is what you actually are." It's not that he's like a father; he is our Father.

In Thessalonians, Paul says God was gentle with you like a mother with her children. That's a metaphor. This is not a metaphor; this is a reality. John says, "What kind of love is this the Father has given us, that we should be called his children? And so we are."

In Galatians, Paul puts it wonderfully. He says, "When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem"—here we are, redemption again—"those who were under a law, the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba, Father.' So you are no longer a slave"—which is what you once were—"but a son, and if a son, then an heir of God."

It's fantastic. God sends his Son as a Savior, he sends his Spirit to indwell our hearts, creating within us a whole different understanding of who God is. Think of this "Abba," translated "dearest Father." Where do we find it on the lips of Jesus? In Gethsemane. "Dearest Father, if you are willing, could you take this cup from me?"

Now he says God has sent his Son in order to adopt you, in order to put his Spirit within you, enabling you not just to go out into the street and say, "I know there is a God," or "I know that God is this," but on your knees in your bedroom to say, "Dearest Father." That's how you know, you see.

It does not some great expression when the band is playing and everybody's marching and "Abba, Father." No, I don't think it's that at all. I think it's often in the same place Jesus was: in the prospect of this, in my fear, in my failure, in my disappointment, I kneel down on the floor and I say, "Dearest Father."

What is that? It's surely an indication of the truth of what he's saying here, that he has sent his Son to save you and he has sent his Spirit to indwell you in order that you might know that this is what is true of you.

You see, some of us have had fathers who let us down. Some of us, when we think about fathers, we only think disappointment, we think pain, we think all kinds of things. We need to disavow that when we view God, because God is not an approximation of our earthly fathers. We have a Heavenly Father.

He'll never renege on his love. He'll never leave us in the dark. He'll never forget our birthdays. He will never ditch us, even when everyone else has turned their backs on us. He's promised this. He's promised it. And some of us have tested his patience to limits beyond extreme, and yet still he comes again and again, calling out, "My son, my son, I predestined to adopt you into my family. I made you, I lost you, I sought you, I bought you."

Oh, you see, this is the thing that is the great thing. The great thing about all of our lives is not the things we think is great. There is nothing greater, nothing greater that can be known, nothing greater that can be said than this: that God is my Father and I am his child. That I can say I belong to him, I am loved by him, I can come to him, I can run to him, I can unburden myself to him.

Jim Packer says make it a plan in your life, every morning and every night and when you're waiting for the bus, to say: I am a child of God, God is my Father, heaven is my home, every day is one day nearer, my Savior is my brother, every Christian is my brother and sister too. And this one God and Father of all is over all and he's through all and he's in all. But we don't have time for that; that's for this evening.

There's a lovely picture in Hebrews chapter 2, where the writer of Hebrews, taking the words of the Old Testament and ascribing them to Jesus in whom they are fulfilled, pictures Jesus coming to the Father and saying, "Behold, I and the children you have given me." Behold I and the children—there's an amazing picture of the Lord Jesus Christ entering, as it were, into the presence of the Father and saying, "Come on kids, come on, we're all together here."

You see, to be included in that day is to bow before him now. To refuse to bow before him now is to face the prospect of being excluded on that day. That's why Jesus is so warm and gracious in his entreaties.

Bob Lepine: You're listening to Alistair Begg on Truth For Life. Alistair returns in just a moment to close today's program. As we're learning in our study in the book of Ephesians, it is a remarkable blessing to be included in God's family. But it's not always easy to live as a Christian in a culture that rejects Christian beliefs. That's the subject of Alistair's book, *Brave by Faith: God-Sized Confidence in a Post-Christian World*. Alistair uses the Old Testament story of Daniel as a backdrop to remind us that we are not left on our own to live faithfully. God enabled Daniel to persist bravely in his faith despite many trials as he lived as an exile in a culture that didn't like what he believed. We're reminded that God is just as trustworthy today, and he'll help us stand confidently and courageously in a culture that often rejects his word.

Right now, for a limited time, you can download the *Brave by Faith* audiobook for free at truthforlife.org/brave. The book is read by Alistair and has a corresponding chapter-by-chapter study guide that you can also download for free. The study guide includes brief reflections and thought-provoking questions that will help you apply what you learn to your life, or if you're doing the study with family or friends, the questions will spark engaging conversations. Feel free to share the link with your friends. In fact, if you're looking for your next Bible study topic, encourage everyone in your group to download the audiobook and the study guide now while they're free. Again, the link is truthforlife.org/brave. Now, here's Alistair to close with prayer.

Alistair Begg: Now Father, we thank you that your word is, as we've proclaimed it to be, alive. It's like a two-edged sword; it cuts to the heart of things. We're not interested in a man's ability to talk about it, but we are deeply concerned that we might hear your voice and not simply in a way that increases our understanding, but one that actually brings about a life-changing encounter with you. We pray, gracious God, that we might just exult in the truth of your word that you love the world so much that you gave your only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him would not perish but have eternal life.

And so may the grace of the Lord Jesus draw us to him. May the love of the Lord Jesus fill us with a renewed zeal to live for him. May the peace of the Lord Jesus guard and keep our hearts and minds, now and until Christ comes or calls us to himself, and then forevermore. Amen.

Bob Lepine: I'm Bob Lepine. It's often suggested that God just wants us to be happy, but that's not what Scripture teaches. Monday, we'll consider God's chief purpose for his creation. The Bible teaching of Alistair Begg is furnished by Truth For Life, where the learning is for living.