I Believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth

  Almighty Father and Creator

Seventeenth after Trinity

Collect: Lord, we pray thee that thy grace may always both precede and follow us, and make us continually to be given to all good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Amen.

Text: I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.

The two most important questions we need to ask are: (1) Who is God? (2) Who am I?*

The article of the Creed we consider today begins to answer those questions: “I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth.” This article tells us three things about God: (1) He is Father. (2) He is Almighty. (3) He is Creator. They tell us about ourselves.

1. God is the Father.

1.1 God’s only-begotten Son. I have five sons. God has one Son. But God’s Fatherhood of his Son is different from my fatherhood of my sons. God is the “Father of our Lord Jesus Christ,” and Christ is the only-begotten and eternal Son of the Father. When we say that the Father is the Father of his Son, we do not mean that there is a beginning to the Son’s existence.

When we say the Son is begotten by the Father, we mean that, as a son has the nature of his father, so God’s Son has the nature of his Father. When we say he is the eternally begotten Son, we mean he was Son with the Father’s nature in eternity. When we say he is the only begotten Son, we mean the Father has only one Son who is just like him because the Son shares his Deity.

In eternity the Father and Son exist is the closest possible unity, fellowship, and love. We might say that they “enjoy each other’s company” as a Father and Son who are one in nature, who fully understand each other, and who live in perfect harmony.

Not only did the Father and Son love each other in eternity. They also loved one another when the Son came to earth as the Messiah. The Son’s joy as the Messiah was to please the Father. The Father delighted fully in the Son, the Messiah, saying, “This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased.” The Son addressed the Father as “Abba.” Abba is close in meaning to “Dad” or “Daddy.” It expressed the intimacy and love between the Father in heaven and the Son on earth.

God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1.2. God’s adopted sons. God the Father has other children, too. We are sons and daughters of God.

We need to note two things about God’s children:

1.2.1.There is a difference between God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and God’s other children. Christ is God’s unique Son, because he shares the Divine nature. He is God’s “natural Son.” God’s other children are adopted children. We are not like the eternal Son, but are adopted into God’s family. God is our adoptive Father.

1.2.2. Then not all human beings are God’s children. It used to be popular to talk about “the universal fatherhood of God and brotherhood of man.” But God is not the Father of all except in the sense that he is the Creator of all human life. But the Bible means more by God’s Fatherhood than that the God made us; Fatherhood means the love, intimacy, delight of God the Father in his children. Only those who trust in Christ as Savior are adopted by God as his children.

1.2.3. God takes us into his family. We have a Father in heaven who is not embarrassed to have us as children. He loves us, watches over us, cares for us, provides for us. Our Father wants us to address him as Jesus did - to call “Abba.” He is our “Dad in heaven.” We treat him with respect as our holy Father, but with the confidence that comes from knowing he accepts and loves us.

Not everyone has a good relationship with or memories of their earthly father. Some fathers abandon their children. Some are cold and distant. Some are harsh and condemning. Some are mean and abusive. Bad experiences can create psychological barriers to getting the comfort from knowing God as our Father. But those who have had bad experiences with earthly fathers need to remember that God is not like them. God is the perfect Father, everything a father should be. He is the Father you can trust, confide in, and count on.

In Jesus Christ, God is your wise and loving heavenly Father.

2. God is Almighty.

2.1. Kids used to brag, “My dad’s stronger than your dad.” The Christian can say, “My Father is Almighty.” “Almighty” is the combination of two words -  “all” and “mighty.” God has all might, all power, all strength. The God of the Bible, our Father, is “all-mighty” over all things.

2.2. What can God do? As a boy I learned a Catechism. It asked the question, Can God do all things? God can do all his holy will.

Is there anything God cannot do? In one sense, yes, in another, no. Is there anything that God lacks the power to do, if he wills to do it? No. He is almighty. But is there anything God cannot will to do? The answer is, Yes. God has a perfect moral nature, and he cannot will anything contrary to his perfect nature. The Bible tells us specifically that God cannot lie. He is the God of truth. The God of truth cannot cannot lie.

There is great comfort in knowing that. God is not like an immoral dictator who does whatever he wants because he can. He is not guided by a moral character or ethical code. He has a murderous spirit, so he murders people. He has a thieving spirit, so he robs his people. He makes promises and breaks them, because he is a liar. He treats people like toys he plays with for fun.

But God the Father is not at all like that. He is good, holy, righteous, just, truthful, loving, faithful, kind, and merciful. He cannot act contrary to who he is. Be assured that whatever you are going through it is not because your Father is mean or torturing you. Because of God’s character, you, as Christian believer, can count on him and rely on his promises.

But can God do what he wills to do? Absolutely yes. Can the devil keep God from doing his will? No. Can man keep God from doing his will? No. “Whatever the Lord pleases, he does, in heaven and on earth…” (Ps. 135:6, ESV). Our heavenly Father can do whatever he will because he is Almighty. Nothing outside himself can restrain and control him. He wills only what is consistent with his nature and character. But he has the power to do all that he wills. In God perfect character and unlimited power are joined.

Your Father the Almighty. Rejoice and take comfort in that reality.

3. God is the Creator.

3.1 Creator of all things.

I learned two other things from that Child’s Catechism: “Who made you? God. What else did God make? God made all things.” The first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” which means, “God created everything” or, as the Nicene Creed puts it, “of all things visible and invisible.”

If you came over to the Rectory, I might point out some projects - mulched flower beds, a driveway no one knew existed now dug down to the hard surface, landscape timbers on either side of the driveway, the newly painted porch. You might ask, “Who did did all these things?” and I would answer, “Susan did it all.”

In Genesis 1 Moses takes us on our tour of the world - light and darkness, the sun, moon, and stars, the seas and land, the fish and birds, all the land animals, and then the greatest and most complex thing God made - human beings. Pagans had various gods who made different things. But the Bible says, “The Lord God made them all.”

God began with nothing. Then he created the stuff of creation. Then he shaped it all to be just what he wanted it to be. Then he pronounced it all good.

You cannot begin to understand the universe or yourself till you know that God created everything.

3.2. Creator of man. God made man in his own image - both male and female.

You are the greatest thing God made. Of all the things created you are most like God. You are the pinnacle of his creation. The rest of creation is like a painting that reflects the artist. Human beings are like a child that looks and acts like the parent. We are the greatest thing God made, but we are not God. We cannot forget that God made us. We owe our existence to us. He is King over us. He is infinitely greater than we. He is Uncreated and our Creator.

God gave us the creation to rule over, to manage for him. Sometimes people reverse that and act as though humans are supposed to be subject to creation - that nature is good, and man is bad for nature, that man should submit to the creation. That reverses God’s plan. Man is in charge of creation.

But we are not the owners of creation. We must not forget that God is the ultimate Owner and Ruler. We are God’s stewards or managers who answer to him. The creation is not man’s lord. Man uses the creation and imposes his will on it. Nature is not lord. But God made us not to destroy the natural world, but to be good stewards and keepers of it.  This is our Father’s world.

God is Father, Almighty, the Creator of everything. He is your Father. You are under his Almighty care. You live in a world God made.

* “Nearly all the wisdom we possess, that is, to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves” (John Calvin, Institutes, vol. I, p. 35, Battles translation).



















































































































































































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The Lord Gave; the Lord Took Away

Blessed Be the Name of the Lord

I was asked to conduct a memorial service for a woman to whom years ago I had ministered in Huntsville, Alabama. Her death was tragic and perplexing.

A Memorial Service Homily

Text: Job 1:20,21 (ESV)

Then Job arose and tore his robe and shaved his head and fell on the ground and worshiped.  And he said, “Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return. The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

1. Job was a blessed man.

• He was a great man. There was no one greater in the time and place he lived.
• He was a wealthy man. Wealth in the ancient world was measured in livestock and servants. Job had a great number of sheep, oxen, camels, and donkeys as well as a large number of servants.
• He had a large family which was considered a great blessing. He had 10 children, 7 sons and 3 daughters.
• He lived an honorable life. He did not worship his status or wealth or children. He feared the Lord. He was a man of faith who lived a righteous life.

2. Job suffered great loss.

• He lost his wealth and children in a single day.
• Raiders took his oxen and donkeys and killed his servants.
• Lighting struck the field where his servants tended his sheep, the pasture was set in fire, and his sheep and servants were consumed.
• Another group of raiders stole his camels and killed the servants who cared for them.
• Worst of all, his children were together in a house having a party and feasting. A tornado struck the house, and all his children were killed.
• This was loss. Job know only that it happened. He did not have any idea why - if there was a why. Job experienced devastating, inexplicable tragedy.

3. What mourned and worshiped.

• Job mourned. He acknowledged the loss, pain, perplexity, confusion, and darkness of his experience.  He tore his robe and shaved his head, both signs in his day of pain, distress, and grief. Mourning is part of life in his present fallen world. Far from forbidding us to mourn, God expects us to mourn. When our Lord went to the grave of his friend Lazarus and saw the grief of Lazarus’ sisters, Martha and Mary, he was deeply moved and troubled in his spirit, and he wept.
• Job worshiped. Job fell to the earth with his face to the ground, and he worshiped the Lord. He mourned in the presence of God. In his grief he acknowledged the Lord. In faith he submitted himself to the Lord.
• There are two possibilities when we are faced with gut wrenching hurt, when we do not understand the Lord or his ways, when life collapses and makes no sense. (1) We can turn away from the Lord, reject him, and even curse him. (2) We cling to the Lord and worship him. We come to him with all our perplexity, our unanswered questions, our brokenness and lay it all before him. Funerals and memorial services are occasions for believers when they take all their grief and sorrow and bafflement, worship the Lord, and say to him, “Lord, we don’t understand. We have never known such pain, but we have nowhere to go but to you. We hold onto you by faith, and we acknowledge that you are God, the God of the Bible, the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

4. Job confessed his faith.

• “Naked I came from my mother’s womb and naked I shall return.” All things are loseable. All things are temporary. We had nothing when we came into the world. We will take nothing with us when we die. A question we ought to ask ourselves, and surely it is appropriate in a funeral or memorial service, is, “Why do we hold so tightly to these things we cannot keep? Why do we not seek something that cannot be lost, something that cannot fail us at death? The things of this world are fading away, but the things that are ours in Jesus Christ are substantial and eternal.
• “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” “The Lord gave me my wealth and my children. Now the Lord, for reasons I cannot understand, has taken them all away.” It was not the raiders, the fire, or the tornado that took these things away. It was the Lord. It was not chance, not blind luck, not the impersonal forces of the universe, but the Lord who took them. That creates a problem, doesn’t it. Why would God do such things? But, despite the unanswerable questions it raised, it points us to the only possible comfort. We are in God’s hands. And God we know from his revelation in the Bible and in his Son Jesus.
• So, “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” May the Lord be praised. He is God. He is our God. We come before him with reverence and awe - and with trust.

Jesus understands all that we are going through. The night of his betrayal he confessed to his closest friends that his soul was troubled unto death. Later that night of his disciples forsook him. He had to face what lay before him all alone. The next day, he hung on the cross in the darkness and cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” He entered into all the darkness of our pain, suffering, and our perplexity with God. And in the darkness by dying for our sins he delivered us from everlasting darkness and brought us into the kingdom of light.

We are not alone. Jesus is with us. He sees. He hears. He knows. He understands. He cares. He helps. And he will bring us at last into his everlasting kingdom where there will be no more crying, no more pain, and no more death.

If the Lord Had Not Been on Our Side

If the Lord Had Not Been on Our Side

Twelfth after Trinity

Collect: Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve; Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy; forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ, thy Son, our Lord. Amen.

Psalter: 124 (BCP, p.433)

1. If the LORD himself had not been on our side, now may Israel say; if the LORD himself had not been on our side, when men rose up against us;

2 They had swallowed us up alive; when they were so wrathfully displeased at us.

3 Yea, the waters had drowned us, and the stream had gone over our soul.

4 The deep waters of the proud had gone even over our soul.

5 But praised be the LORD, who hath not given us over for a prey unto their teeth.

6 Our soul is escaped even as a bird out of the snare of the fowler; the snare is broken, and we are delivered.

7 Our help standeth in the Name of the LORD, who hath made heaven and earth.

We were driving back to seminary from Arkansas. It was getting toward dusk; I was driving too fast; and suddenly we came upon a tractor towing a farm trailer. There was a car approaching in the other lane, so I could not go around the tractor. I did the only thing I could which was to hit the brakes fast and hard. We went into a spin, and when we finally came out of it, we were safe. What was the explanation?  The only explanation, given by us or others, was that the Lord was with us and spared us.

In Psalm 134 David gives thanks for a remarkable deliverance. Eventually the Psalm was incorporated into a group of 15 that were sung by pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to celebrate the festivals. We, too, can sing it, as we make our way to the Lord’s Table.

1. Pictures of Desperation

What was David’s situation? He was faced with evil men full of hate and wrath who wanted to destroy him, his people, and his kingdom. They were too much for David. He could not see any way out, any way to be delivered.

He describes the situation with pictures.

• His enemies were like a vicious animal that would swallow him and his defenders alive. There is a video on YouTube from India. It shows a python lying in the road in obvious distress. What had happened was that he had swallowed not one but two goats. A man took mercy on him and shook the goats out. David felt that his enemies were about to swallow him alive.
• His enemies were like deep and raging waters that would drown him. On December 26, 2004, a Tsunami struck along the coasts of the Indian Ocean, killing 230,000. It’s hard to imagine the panic people must have felt as they saw the giant waves approaching and were helpless to escape. David felt his enemies were waters threatening to drown him.
• His enemies were like a wild animal who would tear and chew its prey, leading to a slow but violent death, the kind of death inflicted by a lion or alligator. David felt he and his people were at the mercy of enemies who would tear them apart and devour them.
• His enemies were like fowlers and he like a bird trapped in their snare. When a bird is caught in the fowler’s snare there is no escape, only the certainty that the fowler will come, take the the bird and kill it. David felt that he was trapped by his enemy with no escape possible.
• What was this historical circumstance that lies behind these pictures of desperation. They are recorded in 2 Samuel 517-25. After the Philistines defeated Saul’s army and Saul died at his own hand the kingdom was weak. There was civil war, and David’s reign was limited to Judah for 7 ½ years. But eventually David took Jerusalem, made it his capital, and consolidated his rule over all of Israel. The kingdom God stronger. This threatened the Philistines. They invaded Judah, and David went out to meet them, occupying a fortress. But his military position was very bad, and defeat seemed certain.
• What are circumstances that have threatened to overwhelm and overcome you? Perhaps it was a physical condition. You felt for sure that your symptoms indicated a fatal disease. You didn’t see how there was any other possibility. But the condition proved benign. Or it was a life reversal. You were betrayed by friends and abandoned by family. You didn’t think you could survive it. But you came through. Critical events when we are not in control makes us desperate.
• It is surely appropriate that we feel some desperation when we think about our country and culture which seems to be becoming hostile to Christian faith and practice. Recently, VP Biden, a Roman Catholic officiated at the wedding of two White House male staffers. It was a though he intentionally thumbed his nose not only at his own church but at all of historic Christianity. Not long ago Christian colleges in California when a bill introduced by a homosexual legislator was withdrawn that would have greatly restricted their religious freedom. We as Christians have cause to feel as though we are in David’s fortress under attack by the Philistines who threaten to overwhelm.

2. Divine Deliverance

But David was not destroyed.

• Why? The Lord was with him and on his side. David asked the Lord if he should attack, and the Lord said yes. So David attacked and the Philistines were routed. They are so panicked that they left behind the images of their gods. David’s men burned them. It was a total reversal of fortunes. There is no explanation for what happened but that the Lord was with David and gave him the victory.
• Is the Lord with us? Is he on our side? That phrase has often been used in politics. The religious right in its heyday came came close to claiming, “The Lord is on our side and the side of our political views and initiatives. Even nations have claimed God for their side. Both Germany and Great Britain went to war in WW I believing the Lord was on their side, and they they were fighting for God’s cause. But it is a mistake to identify our political or national cause with God. This is a misunderstanding of what it means for the Lord to be on our side.
• But the Lord is with his people.

What then shall we say of these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Who shall lay anything to the charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifieth. Who is he that condemneth? It is Christ who died, yea rather, who is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written: “For Thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter.”Nay, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us.” (Romans 8:31-37)

• God is with you. He will never leave nor forsake you. He will fight for you and bring you to victory either now in this life, or a last by delivering you through death and bringing you to his eternal kingdom. Jesus will reign till all his enemies are defeated. And he promises that all his people will share in his eternal victory over sin, Satan, suffering, death, and hell.

3. David’s Confession

When it was all over, David confessed his confidence.

• “Our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth.”  The place of David’s confidence is where our must be as well. Our confidence is not in politicians. Nor in the power of organizations. Nor in the influence of Christian leaders. It is in name of the Lord.
• The name of the Lord stands for the Lord and all that he is - all that he has declared and revealed himself to be. He is the Lord who made the heavens and earth. By the word of his power he brought into existence all things that exist. In Genesis 1 Moses points to and describes the creation of first one thing and then of another. The pagans claimed that their gods had created this or that. But Moses says, “Look at whatever you want in all of creation, and it is Israel’s God, the Lord, who made all things. There is no other Creator.
• The writer of Hebrews assures us:

For He (the Lord) hath said, “I will never leave thee, nor forsake thee”;  so that we may boldly say, “The Lord is my helper, and I will not fear what man shall do unto me” Hebrew 13:5,6).

When we come to the Lord’s Table, we confess, “If the Lord had not been on our side...Our help is in the name of the Lord.

• Our sins would have condemned us. We could not atone for our sins. We could not remove their guilt. We could not by willpower free ourselves from their power.
• But God intervened in Christ. At what seemed the hour of his total defeat, God was at work in all his power to deliver us from the condemning power of sin.
• We take the bread into our hands; we take the cup to our lips, and we confess, “If the Lord had not been on our side, we would have been destroyed. But he was with us, and saved us. Our help is in the Lord, the Creator of all things, and his power, now and always.