Often you hear people talking about the love that a mother has for her children, and for the most part, that love is incredibly special. But there’s also the love of a father. And even though we don’t talk all that much about it … a father’s love, a father’s heart … well, that’s pretty special too.

It’s funny how we relegate our discussion of the greatest act of love in all of human history – the death of Jesus the Son of God on that Cross – to a few days each year that we label “Easter”. And okay, I know it’s a bit out of season, but it seems to me that the whole Easter thing is the perfect starting point for the series of messages that we’re kicking off today, called – The Incredible Father Heart of God.

This whole Easter thing – God sending His Son to die on a cross – it makes you really ask the question – What sort of a Father is God. after all – that He would allow His one and only Son to become a man, to be reviled, rejected, beaten, spat upon and nailed to a cross?

What sort of a dad would sovereignly choose a destiny like that for His Son?

Jesus did something incredibly radical. He called God – His Father.  And by doing that, He claimed, directly to be His Son.

It was radical because up until then, the Jews so revered God that they rarely if ever even uttered His name on their lips

And Jesus comes along and starts calling this God – His Dad.  And then – then this Dad allows his Son to be nailed to a cross.  Seems to me – if were going to talk about the incredible Father heart of God over these coming few weeks, we had better sort this mess out. Because unless we do, you have to ask yourself: Is this really the sort of Father that we want to be involved with?

Well – is it?

Imagine if some writer wrote a movie script about a 21^st century father who conspired to create a set of circumstances that would have his son nailed to a cross.  Do you see any of the studios in Hollywood going for it and investing the millions of dollars you have to spend these days to make a movie. I don’t think so. And if some father here and now, today – did this in real life, well he’d go to jail for conspiracy or murder … or both.

And yet the reason they celebrate this grizzly event they tell us – is that this Jesus, who claimed to be the Son of God – came to die for their sin.  Funny word “sin”.  Almost a four-letter word these days.  But, the thinking goes in the Christian Camp – that each of us fall a long way short of the glory of God – and so, our rebellion, our rejection of Him deserves punishment.

We deserve an eternal death, an eternal separation from God.  But because God loves us so much, His sense of justice is satisfied, because He sent His Son, to die in our place – so that when we believe in this Jesus – we’re forgiven.

Sounds –  well, on the surface of it, when you just step through the logic of it dispassionately like that – it sounds kind of weird doesn’t it?  It does … and if we just keep it there as a theoretical bit of logic, I guess it stays kind of weird.

But put a human face on it – put the reality of Jesus into it – and it becomes a compelling story.  Jesus upset the religious leaders something fierce.  He cut through their hypocrisy, He loved the outcasts, He healed the blind and the sick … He powerfully brought the love of God to a people oppressed.  Oppressed not only by a brutal Roman occupation, but by a form of religion that God never intended.

So – He threatened the religious status quo.  What did the religious leaders of the day do?  They trumped up some charges against Him, manipulated the judicial system, such as it was – and had Him crucified.

Have a listen though to what happens when Jesus is arrested in the garden of Gethsemane (Matthew 26:47-53):

While he was still speaking, Judas, one of the twelve, arrived; with him was a large crowd with swords and clubs, from the chief priests and the elders of the people.Now the betrayer had given them a sign, saying, “The one I will kiss is the man; arrest him.” At once he came up to Jesus and said, “Greetings, Rabbi!” and kissed him. 50 Jesus said to him, “Friend, do what you are here to do.” Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him.

Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. 52 Then Jesus said to him, “Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?

But how then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?”

So – there it is.  This is not something that Jesus is being forced by His Father God to do. It’s something that He’s doing willingly.

Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? (v 53)

And He says it elsewhere too (John 10:17):

For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.

That’s an incredible statement – imagine being called to be nailed to a cross – to die his agonising, excruciating death.  Can you imagine if that was you or me?  I think I’d want to run a million miles.

So it’s not the Father forcing the Son into something against His will. It’s the Father and the Son – God Himself – deciding that this is so important. Your sin and my sin, which we so often just sweep under the carpet, is such a big deal, that Someone has to pay.  And that Someone is Jesus (John 3:16):

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.

Heard that so many times that it almost washes on by.  So familiar that we don’t take any notice of it.  But there – right there in that oh so familiar passage – beats the father heart of God.  For God so loved the World  so loved us … so loved you … so loved me … took our eternal destiny apart from Him so seriously … that He sent us His Son.

And do this Jesus died to pay for our sin … yours … mine.  And if the story ended there, it would be awesome enough.  But it doesn’t end there.  It ends with a risen Jesus.  It ends with an empty tomb.  It ends with a hope a hope of life eternal.

We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. (Rom 6:9-11)

What all this tells me is this – God has an incredible heart after you and me.  Because He wants us to have a life – an abundant life – a super abundant life.

The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.

And His heart – the ache of His great and mighty Father heart for you and me – is to give us a new life, an abundant life, and eternal life.  His plan?  For God Himself to suffer and pay the price?  His plan? For Jesus to rise up out of that tomb and ascend into heaven?

His plan… is for you and for me to spend eternity – a glorious eternity, an eternity that we can’t begin to even imagine – with Him, despite our sin, despite our rebellion, despite the punishment we deserve – by heaping that punishment on Jesus His Son.  Don’t know about you – but that tells me a lot – it tells me everything about the Father heart of God for me.

He loves me so much – He loves you so much – that He would go to this great length, to bring us home to Him.

Question is: how do we respond to that?  How do I respond to that.  How do you … respond to that?

This week on the program, we’re talking about The Incredible Father Heart of God. Not just in theory, in practice. This God who has the most amazing father heart for us. For you and for me. But of course, this is nothing new. God’s heart has been beating for His people since before time began.

Amidst the clamour and the clanging of this world we don’t take the time to stop and listen to the gentle, strong heartbeat of God – a heart that beats for us. And this goes on so long that we actually forget that we can experience a deep personal, intimate relationship with Him.

But that’s not the way it’s meant to be. An intimate, real, personal relationship with God is open to each one of us no matter how old or how young we are. No matter where we live, what the colour of our skin is, whether we’re rich or poor, whether in the world’s eyes or by the world’s standards we’re successful or a nobody.

God is here for each one of us and He has this amazing Father’s heart for each one of us. Now it’s one thing for me to tell you that, it’s one thing for you to hear it on radio or online or via a podcast but when you hear that and you look at your own life, kind of easy to imagine that all this talk about God’s incredible Father’s heart is just that, it’s talk. “Not in my life, I’ve never experienced that. What’s this joker on about?” Good question, good question.

I remember years ago, people talking about God and His love and all that stuff and thinking to myself, “Yeah, well, you know, what’s that based on?” Because all I ever saw of Christians were the grumpy old men they put on TV in the short eight second grabs on the evening news.

Men who told us we shouldn’t be doing this and we shouldn’t be doing that. In fact my overwhelming impression was that here were a bunch of party-poopers. People who seemed to be intent on telling us all the things we shouldn’t be doing and yet, when I looked at them, they didn’t seem to be enjoying their life, and they never actually, any of them, brought any joy into my life.

Now you might find that a little offensive and maybe that perception wasn’t entirely accurate but that was my perception. And that perception is, in fact, what many people still have looking from the outside in. And so it kind of jarred with me, all this talk of God’s love.

I remember when I was a teenager, it was all the rage to have these brightly coloured psychedelic ‘Jesus Loves You’ stickers on everything. It seemed to me that all this talk about Gods love was a recent fabrication. I knew that being a Christian, well it was about religion and boring and interminably long Church services. It was about following rules, about being austere and not having any fun. I knew exactly what this Christianity thing was all about.

But it turns out that God, God isn’t some recent invention and His love isn’t just the fabrication of some recent PR campaign. It turns out that the Father heart of God has been around for a long, long time, for eons in human history.

Jesus popularised the term ‘My Father’. In fact, most often He actually said, “My Dad” in referring to God. That was radical. That was considered sacrilegious at the time. Back in the Old Testament days people didn’t even utter Gods name, they so revered Him.

But interestingly the words God and Father appear in the same sentence over and over and over again in the Old Testament. Just not in the same intimate way that Jesus used them. Instead, back in the Old Testament, it was God saying about Himself, “I am the God of your father.”

There was a time when Isaac, Abraham’s son, was going through a bit of a rough trot. Genesis chapter 26:

That very night the Lord appeared to him and said, ‘I am the God of your father Abraham. Do not be afraid for I am with you and will bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake. I am the God of your father.

Now, why did God say that? Why did He make that claim of being the God of Isaac’s father, Abraham? Why is God pointing backwards in history? Here’s what I think. Because so often it’s hard to believe in this mighty, amazing Father heart of God in the midst of the maelstrom of our lives.

So often, with all the stuff that’s going on, with all that life’s throwing at us, with business or loneliness or frustration or fear, whatever it is, it is so hard to believe that God is in this place with us. It is so hard to believe that Gods great and mighty Father heart beats for us.

Ever felt that way? You know the theory. You know that God’s supposed to be a Father. You know what He’s supposed to be like. You know what He’s supposed to do and that He’s supposed to show up. That’s the theory but the theory is such an incredibly long way away from the practical reality that we live out day by day, when stuff’s happening in our lives.

And that’s what was happening for Isaac around this time when God appeared. There was a great famine in the land. That meant that people were starving to death. Isaac wanted to flee down to Egypt yet God called him to stay and planted a crop in the ground despite the famine.

And he went and he had to re-dig the wells that his father had dug years before because people had come along and filled them in. And so he slaved away at re-digging those wells but masses of people came from all around to claim the water. So he’d dig another well and that would cause arguments and contention. So he went and dug yet another well and he was exhausted and dejected and frustrated.

My hunch is each one of us, in our own way, finds this story more than just a bit familiar. We know what it’s like to live life like that. It’s tough. It’s demoralising. And God comes along and says to this man in the middle of all this stuff. Can you imagine re-digging wells over and over again? In the middle of his pain and frustration and exhaustion God says:

I am the God of your father Abraham. Don’t be afraid. I am with you, I’ll bless you and make your offspring numerous for my servant Abraham’s sake.

Now, why does God say that? Because Abraham made it through. Abraham had a tough life and he made it. No doubt Abraham had sat around the camp fires at night with young Isaac and told him the stories of God’s faithfulness.

Like when he’d been on his long journey that lasted a quarter of a century – the promise of land, impossible promises of a son even when he and his wife were old and barren. About that night when he cried out to God in frustration, isolation and fear, the night when God showed up. Genesis chapter 15:

The word of the Lord came to Abraham in a vision. ‘Don’t be afraid Abraham, I am your shield, your reward shall be very great’. But Abraham said, ‘O Lord God, what will you give me for I continue childless and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?’ And Abraham said, ‘You have given me no offspring and so a slave born in my house is to be my heir.

But the word of the Lord came to him. ‘This man shall not be your heir. No one but your very own issue shall be your heir.’ God brought Abraham outside and said, ‘Look toward the heaven and count the stars if you’re able to count them.’ Then He said to him, ‘So shall your descendants be.

How beautiful and tender and wondrous was God’s love and God’s faithfulness to Abraham. And that’s what Isaac needed to know that night in his restless sleep. He needed to know deep in his heart that this God isn’t some Johnny-come-lately, the love of God is real. It was real for his father and it was real for him and it’s real for you and me, here and now.

And when we’re in that place, when you’re in the place that Isaac was in, I want to encourage you to pick up the Bible and read about the God of your father’s – the God who’s been faithful and loving, down through the centuries, in ways that completely blow us away.

And when we read those stories, in them we’ll hear the strong gentle heart beat, the sound of the mighty Father heart of God.

What does God look like? I mean if He really is our Father in Heaven, if He really does love us, if His great and mighty heart beats for you and me – what does He actually look like? Have you ever wondered?

We’re chatting this week on the program about The Incredible Father Heart of God. Jesus talked about God as being His Father. That was a new and radical thing to say. In fact the religious leaders thought it was sacrilegious. And not only did He refer to God as Father but He taught us to call Him that too.

He was praying at a certain place and after He had finished one of His disciples said, ‘Lord, teach us to pray as John taught his disciples’, and Jesus said to them, ‘When you pray say “Father, hallowed be your name”.’

And here’s the thing, the word Jesus most commonly used for Father was Abba which means Dad. There’s a familiarity, a warmth, a closeness. I don’t know about you but when I was growing up I never called my father, “father”. That would have been kind of weird.

Neither did I call him by his first name that would have been disrespectful. No, I called him “Papa” since I grew up in a German-speaking household or “Dad”. It’s what a child calls their father. It’s respectful but it reflects the closeness of the bond between father and child and so Jesus is going around referring to the God of heaven as “Abba”, “Dad”.

Can you imagine what people thought? Who is this guy? What’s He on about? How dare he refer to God as Dad. But my hunch, my hunch is that Jesus wasn’t out there just to offend people, he was out there to teach them something. That God, God is their Dad.

What was your Dad like when you were growing up? See here’s the problem we have when trying to understand God as our Father, our Dad. I had a good Dad. He wasn’t perfect, no Dad is. My Dad immigrated to Australia after World War II. He’d fought in the Wehrmacht in the German Army both on the Russian fronts and against the partisans in Yugoslavia.

He didn’t talk so much about that but it was a tough, brutal time. His sister, my aunty tells of the times when they didn’t have enough food to eat during the war and the bombs falling and all the horrible things of war. He came to Australia with his immigrant family at a time when Australians were still licking their wounds over a war against Japan and Germany in the main.

Japanese and Germans weren’t the flavour of the month in this country during the post war era. He came to a place which was a million miles away from the Europe he had grown up in. Not a 24 hour plane trip like it is today. A month and a bit on a ship back then.

He landed with a few shillings in his pocket. Barely able to speak the language and despite the fact that he was a qualified engineer, this country didn’t accept his qualifications. So he headed off into hot, humid outback Queensland to work on a road gang.

So, when my sister and I were born in the late 50’s both he and my mother wanted a much better world for us than the world in which they’d grown up in. They worked incredibly hard and taught us to do the same. To achieve better than a war-torn Europe had to offer all those years before.

Was my dad perfect? Well you don’t know that when you’re growing up. You haven’t got any experience against which to measure your parents. Your family is what it is. There are ups and there are downs. There are conflicts as you grow up. Being part of a family invariably is a mixed bag, isn’t it?

It’s not until we grow up ourselves that we can really look back and assess how well our parents did. Was my dad perfect, looking back on it? No, of course he wasn’t but he did his best. There were times when there was conflict. There were times when there was fun.

Some people though, they look back on a harsh father or an unfair father or an abusive father or an alcoholic father or a father who beat their mother or a father who beat them. Some people are really going to struggle with this notion of fatherhood and God. God the Father can send a shudder down some people’s spines because of what they remember of their fathers.

The flip side of that coin, I remember a class that I taught at a Bible college. We were talking about this very thing, the Father heart of God and one of the young men in the class stood up and said, “I had the most amazing dad, just amazing. He’s my best friend and when I hear you and other people talking about God the Father it just makes my heart sing because I know exactly what He’s like.”

My hunch is that the people who can say that are by far in the minority, by far. Most people look back and see their dad’s as imperfect men who try their best. Some, sadly, look back on years of terrible abuse. And so to understand God as their Father kind of, well it loses a bit of its impact.

And we try to imagine, “Man, what’s this Father like? Is he like my dad? My dad was just an ordinary man, imperfect. What’s the big deal about Jesus calling God, Dad?” Have a listen though to what Jesus said about His Father in heaven, John, chapter 14, beginning at verse 7. Jesus said:

If you know me you will know my Father also. From now on you do know Him and you’ve seen Him.

In other words, you want to know what my Dad’s like? You want to know what God the Father is like? Jesus said, “Look at me, He is exactly like me.” And so it’s in the love and the tenderness and the strength and the wisdom and the commitment and the power and the passion that we see in this Jesus that we discover what our Father in heaven is really like.

What do you want your Father to be like? Who is the perfect Father to you? Someone who’s strong, someone who’ll protect you and guide you and set boundaries for you, and within all that, love you. Someone who’s slow to anger, someone who’ll stand by you no matter what. Someone who’s honest and decent.

That’s what we want our Father to be isn’t it? And that’s exactly what we discover in Jesus. A God who loves us so much He’s not afraid to set us straight and deal with the issues and confront our wrong doing but at the same time, a God, a Father who loves us and gives us space and room to make mistakes. And then He’ll take us back and teach us all with the end game in mind, all with the heart, the desire to give us a fantastic life, an eternal life.

I’m a dad too and like my father before me I’m not perfect either but if there’s one thing I want for my children, as they’ve grown up, it’s a fantastic life. I want them to grow up strong and mature and loving and kind and equipped to live out the life that God has planned for them. 1 John chapter 3, verse 1 says this:

See what love the Father has given us that we should be called children of God and that is what we are.

My friend, whatever your father was to you, whatever he wasn’t to you, God the Father is the perfect father. He is everything we would ever want in a dad and He looks on us with love. A love that words simply can’t describe and when we put our trust in Jesus, His Son, we become His children. We get to call Him Dad. And here’s a plan, an inheritance, an amazing wondrous future planned for you and me. Romans chapter 8:

For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear but you have received a spirit of adoption when we cry ‘Abba’, Father. It is that very spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are the children of God and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ if in fact we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.

God is our Dad, the perfect Dad. He’s our Dad, He’s your Dad, He’s my Dad and His great and mighty Father’s heart beats for you and it beats for me.

One of the things that makes a father’s love difference from a mother’s, in just about every culture on the planet, is that somehow a dad carries a weight of authority that mothers don’t. I know my dad certainly did.

Back in my day when I was growing up I remember getting more than one belting from my dad. The strap a couple of times, the odd slap across the backside. Not often mind you, pretty rare actually. But not surprisingly those times stick in my memory.

I don’t feel in any way traumatised by those things, I don’t feel angry towards him, I don’t feel as though he shouldn’t have done those things. Of course, in disciplining a child some people do go overboard and that has horrible consequences. I mean children are abused, sometimes even killed through beatings. That’s a terrible thing. But that never happened to me.

My parents disciplined us, my sister and me, sometimes it was belting, other times it was being sent to our room or banned from watching TV – black and white back in those days of course, the one and only TV set that we had in our lounge room. Or we weren’t allowed to go out and play with our friends or whatever it was.

And at the time it was never fun. I mean who enjoys being disciplined? And perhaps sometimes my parents didn’t always get it right, I’ve got to tell you, especially when it was my sister’s fault and I copped it instead. Of course it never happened round the other way, did it?

But I think of the alternative, a child that grows up without discipline. Pretty scary thought, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter what part of life it is there are boundaries. There are rules and there are consequences if we step over the boundaries and break the rules. Whether it’s driving a car. Whether it’s in business. Whether it’s simply walking down the street. Whether it’s drinking alcohol. It doesn’t matter what it is there are laws and breaking them has consequences.

If I walked down the street and just punched someone in the face, well chances are that I’ll end up in front of a magistrate charged with assault. If I walk into a shop and just start taking something out without paying for it, well I can expect to be fined or locked up.

If I were to go out and get drunk on the street, right, and smash a window of a shop, I could expect that there will be consequences to that. And if the whole system of laws and justice is working well in the place where I live, we don’t sit there at home thinking about how oppressed we are by those laws, do we?

I don’t sit in my home thinking, “Man, how oppressive and restrictive is it and unfair is it that I can’t drive my car down the street at 150 miles an hour?” I mean those laws don’t oppress me. They keep me safe. They keep you safe from me. They set me free to enjoy the world and the country and the city in which I live.

Okay, people still break the laws. Someone was murdered recently less than a kilometre from where I live. Sure, people still break the speed limit or they drink and drive and they kill children. But the fact that the laws exist and that most of the people most of the time keep them, brings a level of safety and freedom that lets us enjoy our lives to the full.

That’s because laws are carefully designed to balance personal freedom with the need to restrict behaviour that’s dangerous and bad. Now that may over simplify things just a tad but that’s basically it isn’t it?

Some of the people listening to the program today live in a place where the rule of law has broken down. Where people can do whatever they like, that’s a dangerous place, very dangerous. Others live in a place where laws have been enacted that instead of protecting freedom, they restrict it.

Or they live in a place where authorities can abuse the rules and arrest people just because they feel like it. See in those places the laws don’t work well at all. In those places the laws oppress people instead of keeping them safe and setting them free.

Good laws, good rules, well enforced, basically only prevent us from doing what’s wrong. That’s the basic principle and it’s a good one and none of us, none of us would argue with that. It’s obvious, it’s plain common sense.

It’s the same at home when we’re growing up. Our parents set boundaries for us: in our behaviour, in what we said, in when we had to come home at night. And perhaps, perhaps we might have set those boundaries slightly differently but hey, when we have kids we do exactly the same thing.

One of the things that really worried me about these Christians was that religion was just another bunch of rules. Don’t do this. Don’t do that. And if you break the rules then whammo, God sends a lightening bolt from the sky to zap us. One flash and you’re ash. And, I reason, that is absolutely no way to live your life.

Who want’s it? Who needs it? Give me a break! Funny the ideas we have. We accept boundaries and rules in every other part of our lives because, whilst we may not agree with the precise detail, we understand that there is a need. That they’re reasonable and that they’re good.

But then, when it comes to God, we imagine somehow that here’s this lunatic despot that heaps a whole bunch of impossible rules on our shoulders. But what if He’s not? What if God truly is our Father and because He’s God and because He’s our Dad He only wants to protect us from the stuff that’s wrong, the stuff that’s going to hurt us and other people.

What if the boundaries that He sets are much wider than we ever expected? What if the things He says, “don’t do” are actually much fewer than we expected? And what if it’s pretty obvious that the things to which He says ‘don’t’ are the really obvious things. Galatians chapter 5, verses 19 and 20:

Now the works of the flesh are obvious. Fornication (which means sleeping with someone that you’re not married to), impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, anger, quarrels, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing and things like these. I am warning you as I warned you before, those who do such things will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

Now, I don’t know about you but all of those things are pretty obvious to me, aren’t they? They’re the things that are going to hurt us; things that aren’t good for us; things that are going to rob us of a full and abundant life. And there’s actually not many of them there. I mean, sure we shouldn’t envy, drunkenness, carousing, dissensions, factions, arguing. They’re obvious.

God is our Father. Abba, Dad and He loves us, He loves us so much. He wants us to live this amazing abundant life just like any dad wants for his kids. Wherever they’re born, whatever their circumstances are, He wants them to overcome this world and be all they were made to be.

And sometimes, like any good dad, He’s going to discipline us to set us straight. To let us wear the consequences of our own stupidity so that we’re going to learn. And no, it won’t be fun. Hebrews chapter 12, beginning at verse 7:

Endure trials for the sake of discipline. God is treating you as children. For what child is there who a parent does not discipline? If you do not have that discipline in which all children share then you are illegitimate and not His children. Moreover we had human parents to discipline us and we respected them, should we not be even more willing to be subject to the Father of spirits and live?

Now discipline always seems painful rather than pleasant at the time but later it yields the peaceful fruit of righteousness to those who have been trained by it.

A father who fails to discipline his children isn’t doing his job because his job is to help them grow up and part of growing up is that we have to learn to control ourselves. And as a dad I can tell you sometimes the easiest thing in the world would have been to give up on the kids.

It’s hard work, who can be bothered? But a father who does love his children doesn’t give up and I thank God I had a dad who didn’t give up. That’s what our Father in heaven is like. It’s part of His Father’s heart for us.

These days faithfulness is a quality that we seem to find in fewer and fewer people. Sad, but true. That’s why the faithfulness of God is so incredibly important. He’s the one who will never, ever … ever fail us.

One of the things about being a dad is this. Your children don’t always honour you the way that they should. In fact that’s an absolute given. They don’t always grow up to be what you wanted them to be. Children go their own way in life eventually.

Sometimes we’re blessed to have children in whom we can delight and other times it’s not that easy. Other times they go and live a life that, to the father, is just plain wrong. Other times they reject their dad, other times they don’t show their dad the honour that’s due to him as their father.

That’s life, that’s the way it is and when our children turn their backs on us, as sometimes they do, or when our children forsake the values and the morals that we’ve brought them up with as a father that hurts. I can tell you it hurts terribly.

The question is, as a father how do you respond? What do you do? Sometimes it has to be tough love. Sometimes we have to tell things they way they are. And sometimes we have to stand our ground because it’s right and right is right and wrong is wrong however much we may love our children.

And when you look at it that way, through the eyes of a dad, then the way that God the Father behaves towards us starts to kind of make some sense, at least it does to me.

There was a time when Gods chosen people, Israel, rebelled against their God. In fact there were lots and lots of those times. It’s the whole story of the Old Testament. The very name ‘Israel’ means ‘he struggles with God’. The whole story of the Old Testament is how Israel struggles with God and God punishes them but then, then He always does the same thing.

Let me share one particular time when Gods chosen people had rejected their God. This comes from Jeremiah chapter 32. I’m beginning at verse 34 here:

They set up their abominations in the house that bears my name and they defiled it. They built their high places of Baal in the valley of the son Hinnom to offer up their sons and daughters to Molech though I did not command them nor did it enter my mind that they should do this abomination causing Judah to sin.

Now therefore thus’, says the Lord, the God of Israel, concerning this city of which you say, “It’s been given into the hand of the King of Babylon by the sword by famine and by pestilence.

In other words, Gods people rebelled against God by worshipping idols and other gods. And so God punished them, He sent them into exile, He had Jerusalem destroyed, the Temple was destroyed. This was a terrible time for Gods people. They went to Babylon into slavery.

Now God didn’t do this on a whim. In fact it took Him several centuries of His people’s unfaithfulness for this judgement to fall. But even in their punishment, in slavery, God had a good plan for them. I’ll read on. He said:

See I’m going to gather them from all the lands to which I drove them in my anger and my wrath and my great indignation. I’ll bring them back to this place, I will settle them in safety. They shall be my people and I will be their God. I will give them one heart and one way and they may fear me for all time for their own good and the good of their children after them.

I will make for them an everlasting covenant, never to draw back from doing good to them again and I will put the fear of me into their hearts so that they may not turn from me. I will rejoice in doing good to them. I will plant them in this land in faithfulness with all my heart and all my soul.

For thus, says the Lord, just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise.

And there’s a reason for that, a very important reason. It’s about the Father heart of God. Even when His children had dishonoured Him, even when He’s taken them to the point of punishing them, there is a purpose in His punishment. And that is to bring them back to Him and there, right there, we discover the incredible faithfulness of God.

Fathers are always faithful to their children or at least they should be. Even when their children rebel, even when they have to discipline their children, father’s discipline in love with a purpose not of destroying their children but of bringing them up, helping them to grow up and bringing them back.

The heart of a father should be filled with incredible faithfulness – the sort of faithfulness that lasts a lifetime. And that’s precisely who God is – Faithful. That’s what King David wrote in Psalm 86, verse 15:

But you O Lord are a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

At times in my life as a dad I’ve been quick to anger. It’s my personality type and the Father heart of God has had to work towards me to heal me of that. There’s an enormous wisdom in being slow to anger. It’s something that every father needs to learn.

I might add here that some fathers have had to learn that sometimes they do have to show anger, sometimes they do have to discipline their children. That’s an investment that costs us emotionally but it’s a necessary investment.

What I love about God though is that He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger. Even though He does anger if we continue to provoke Him, make no mistake, He will discipline us. But you know what mercy and grace are? They’re things that by definition we don’t deserve.

When God shows us mercy He’s holding off punishing us – the punishment that I deserve, the punishment that you deserve – giving us time and space to get it right, to sort it out. And that’s what a father does. Kids are born into what should be a loving family because they have to grow from immaturity to maturity.

And the idea is that they have a safe and loving environment to make mistakes, to rebel. To learn how to grow up and even though that sometimes involves a father’s discipline and anger, the point of a father being strong and disciplining his children is to bring them back to the right path.

Right through the Old Testament when we read of God and how He was slow to anger, those words are almost followed by these, “…and abounding in steadfast love.” That’s who God the Father is. That’s who God, our Dad, is. And His grace and His mercy are poured out on the cross when He allowed His Son to take my punishment, the punishment I deserve, the punishment you deserve as Jesus was nailed to that cross.

So many people are wandering around imagining that God is this God of rage; this cruel despot who will punish them if they set a foot wrong; this God who is sitting there just waiting for them to step out of line so He can whack them over the head. But that just isn’t true. That’s just not who He is.

He is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and that, that changes everything. It puts us in a place where, all of a sudden, we can rely on God’s mercy and His grace. We can rely on the fact that God is slow to anger. We can rely on the fact that He is abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

I don’t know about you but I make mistakes every day of my life. I get up, I plan on doing my best, I try to do my best but I make mistakes – and now, instead of walking on egg shells, instead of spending my life worrying about a God who’s going to whack me over the head.

I can go to Him relying on the grace and the mercy that He showed me by letting Jesus take my punishment for me. I can go to this God and say, “God, I’m sorry and I know that I’m forgiven. I know that I can move on.”

The Father heart of God is truly amazing. His heart is full of steadfast love and faithfulness. Even when we fail Him, even when we rebel against Him, His every move is designed to bring us back. Back into a close, warm, intimate relationship with Him. That’s who He is. That’s God.