God Our Father
Download MP3Invite you to open your bibles to Psalm 103, Psalm 103. It's also printed in your worship guide, both in our responsive reading and in the back. And we're gonna pick up reading where our responsive reading let off or pick up at that last verse in verse 13. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame.
Joel Brooks:He remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass. He flourishes like a flower of the field for the wind passes over it and is gone, and this place knows it no more. But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him, and his righteousness to children's children, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. The Lord has established his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom rules over all.
Joel Brooks:Bless the Lord, oh you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of his word. Bless the Lord, all his hosts, his ministers who do his will. Bless the Lord, all his works and all the places of his dominion. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Pray with me.
Joel Brooks:Our father, we ask that you would come and you would bless us with your presence. Spirit, you're welcome in this place to bring all honor and glory to Jesus. I pray you would open up our hearts and our minds to receive what you have for us. And I pray in this moment, our hope would be fixed firmly on you. Your word says that those who hope in you will not be disappointed.
Joel Brooks:God, in this moment, I pray that my words would fall to the ground and blow away and not be remembered anymore, but lord, may your words remain and may they change us. We pray this in the strong name of Jesus. Amen. I start this message with just a little bit of a warning. My my brain's not firing on all cylinders right now.
Joel Brooks:We've had sick children this week for the last few days, which means we haven't really slept. And so I'm having a hard time even forming thoughts. I actually woke up this morning just laying down on the floor in our living room. No blanket, anything. Just woke up on the floor, drool on the hardwood right there.
Joel Brooks:Wednesday night was especially brutal. It kind of felt like a dream. Right after home group left our house, Georgia started coughing and she would not stop. She kept coughing and coughing and coughing and the poor girl could not go to sleep. So of course we gave her medicine.
Joel Brooks:Medicine didn't work. I crunched up cough drops and I gave them to her. That didn't work. We, we tried sleeping her with her, you know, sitting up holding her in a chair. That would not work.
Joel Brooks:We gave her ice cream at about midnight. That would not work. Ice cream with honey did not work. We thought we'd put on a movie. Maybe if we could just distract her, she would fall asleep.
Joel Brooks:It just made her angry because she wanted to be in her bed. So around 1 o'clock, we didn't know what to do. We'd now gone about 4 or 5 hours of straight coughing. So, I just picked her up. I got her in the car.
Joel Brooks:I was like, We're driving. Maybe if we drive, she'll fall asleep. And we're driving around, and it worked in putting me to sleep. I was getting really tired, so I went to Taco Bell. I got me a couple of, steak, tacos and a Coke, figuring that would keep me awake, in multiple ways.
Joel Brooks:And so I kept driving, and she would not go to sleep. She kept coughing. I drove all the way to the Galleria from my house. It's about 3 in the morning now at the Galleria parking lot, and I'm completely exhausted, and like, I've got to get back home. I get back home, and she is finally we're about a mile from our house and she falls asleep.
Joel Brooks:I was like, thank you Lord. And I go over the train tracks and it wakes her up and she starts coughing. And so I pull into our back parking pad and she's still coughing. I was like, I just maybe she'll go back to sleep. And so we sat there for about 15 minutes with the car cranked just in the back parking pad, just saying, please go to sleep, and she would not.
Joel Brooks:And so we went inside and, you know, finally, I just put her in bed and Lauren, of course, is up now and, we she just kept coughing. I'll always or Natalie said at this moment, Natalie sleeps in a bed right above her. Typical Natalie. Sure sounds like there's a lot of coughing going on down there. And then finally, I I could no longer distinguish between dream and reality, and I just lost consciousness.
Joel Brooks:Took her to the doctor the next morning. They gave her lots of drugs. Said it would make her grumpy, but would make her go to sleep and we're like, we'll take it. And it succeeded on one of those option, one of those. She became very grumpy, so grumpy Lauren just told me she got some of Caroline's figurines and just started breaking off the heads of them.
Joel Brooks:And so it's it's been this tiring, miserable past few days, which has helped me understand this psalm a lot. It's actually given me some glasses in which I I I've read this Psalm in ways I've never read this Psalm before. Possible hallucinations or possible insight. This Psalm is one of the most glorious Psalms in the Bible. It seems like every verse in there is either a song or a memory verse, you know, that you had at VBS.
Joel Brooks:I can still remember the, the macaroni dried noodles on colored paper. The Bible verse that I made on verse 8, The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. The song Psalm is it's about the lovingkindness, and compassion, and mercy, and forgiveness of the Lord, but it's not a theological discourse. King David, as he wrote this, is not interested in helping you just understand the theology or the mechanics of forgiveness. He wants you to feel it.
Joel Brooks:He wants you to exalt in your forgiveness and in the lovingkindness of the Lord. And so over and over again, he says, bless the Lord. Bless the Lord. The psalm begins with, bless the Lord, oh my soul. The psalm ends with, bless the Lord, oh my soul, and all of the Psalm in between is about that, reasons we should be blessing the Lord.
Joel Brooks:Verse 2 says, the bless the Lord, oh my soul, forget not all his benefits, and then it lists all of these benefits. Possibly the greatest benefit is in verse 13. As a father shows compassion to his children, So the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. Just let that sink in. As a father shows, so the Lord shows.
Joel Brooks:We relate to the Lord like a child to his father. Jesus, of course, taught this when he taught his disciples to pray. They said, Lord, teach us to pray. And he said, Okay. When when you pray, pray this, our father.
Joel Brooks:That that's how you start your prayer is you call God your father. And Jesus didn't tell them, alright. This is how you pray. Address God as Lord of the universe or almighty God or creator. He said, no no.
Joel Brooks:Address him as your father. Now when Jesus said this and when King David writes this, they're not saying that Jesus is not those other things that that God is not almighty God. He's not creator. He's not Lord of the universe. He's not saying that they are not those things.
Joel Brooks:He is not those things. But what he's saying is that you need to see Him as that through the lens of He is your father. He's your father who is Lord of the universe. He is your father who is your creator, And this drastically changes how we relate to Him. And remember, God's not, God's not in heaven, you know, kind of looking down at fathers going, woah.
Joel Brooks:Man, that's
Connor Coskery:I I should use
Joel Brooks:that as a metaphor. You know, now that I'm seeing how the whole father son thing plays, I should really use that to describe my love. That's not how God works. God created the family. God created fathers in order to teach something about Himself to us.
Joel Brooks:Remember, God has always existed as Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit, and so He is He was Father way before He was ever creator. And so, when He did create, He said, how can I create something to show who I am? I will create the family. I will create fathers to point to me. And so he created Adam to become a father in order to teach Adam about himself.
Joel Brooks:You see, a child has access and privileges to his father that are hard to fathom. I would not have gone through all that I went through the last few nights, if it was anyone else other than my child. If Jeff, Dwight were to call me up midnight for 1, I wouldn't answer. 2, if they kept calling and I answered and they said, Hey, I got a great plan. Let's go to Taco Bell.
Joel Brooks:They're still open. There, there is, there's no way I I would have gotten out of bed to go to Taco Bell with them, no matter how much I like them. Even if Warren, my wife who, we we would celebrate 16 years this past week, celebrated by by not sleeping. But my wife, if she got into a coughing fit, I would probably just leave the room. Sweetly just say, you know, darling, I really I need some sleep, and so I'm not mad.
Joel Brooks:I'm just going to to leave the room. I would not go to Taco Bell for her. Confession. But a father has compassion on his children. Does things for them.
Joel Brooks:He would do to no other person gives them access in which no other person would have that access. And that's why we relate to God as our father. He he didn't say, you know, say, pray our boss, you know, our neighbor, or our judge. Now for one for one reason is, he is those things. He's our boss and he's close to us and and he is he is our judge, but all of those relationships are based on performance.
Joel Brooks:You fail your boss, you get fired. You break the law, you get thrown in prison. But Jesus or God wanted to communicate a relationship here that is not based on any performance. He loves us, and he has compassion on us like a father does to their child. There's a famous photo.
Joel Brooks:Most people here probably seen it. 1963 of John F. Kennedy Jr. Playing underneath his father's desk. It's, you could Google it.
Joel Brooks:It's a really cool image of that. He's he's just kind of poking out this little trap door side door that comes out of the desk as a little kid. And you think this is the Oval Office. This is the most powerful office in all of the world, and there is a child playing underneath the desk. I can't just knock on the White House door and go in there and, you know, go into the Oval Office.
Joel Brooks:You can't either. Even the most powerful and most privileged privileged have the most rare access. And even if they come in there, they have to follow a certain protocol. They probably have to sit down. They probably have to be searched for weapons, whatever it is.
Joel Brooks:But there's a child who can just run by the security guards and just run up to their father, even though he's the most powerful person. And it's not that it's a little JFK Junior. His dad isn't the president. He is the president. He is the most powerful person in the world, but he sees that through the lens of, he's my father, and I have access where others do not.
Joel Brooks:And so he freely goes. This is how we relate to god. He's all of those other things, creator, lord, judge of all the earth, but we see him as those things through the lens of father. Let me tell you, no other religion says this. There are other religions who might talk about a God and a father in a general sense, like He's just our general creator, but not like this.
Joel Brooks:Not a dad child relationship, And when we view God as this, this affects everything, and we see this as we go through the Psalm. Look at verse 8 through 14 again. Says, the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities.
Joel Brooks:For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love towards those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him, for he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Parents get angry with their children.
Joel Brooks:I've heard, But the times that I've gotten angry with my children, I can't hold on to my anger. I can't keep it. As a matter of fact, some of the things that my children do that tick me off to make me angry are actually the very things that draw me into a deeper love for them. For instance, if one of my child says something really nasty to another child, I get angry. I get really angry that they would say that.
Joel Brooks:However, when I'm when I see this because I am her father, and I see the wickedness in my own child coming out, it makes me hurt. When I see that I hurt for her, I want her to change so desperately. Now this is this is different. You know, if if your child says something ugly to my child, it's a black and white issue. Your child is just evil, you know, and and I just I'm like, you're just evil, and I don't have any empathy.
Joel Brooks:I don't have like any, I got to change this person. I don't hurt for your child, but my child, when she does something nasty, I hurt for them. My heart goes out for them. I want them to so desperately to change. I want, like, don't you know there's no joy in that you're destroying your life like that?
Joel Brooks:And so actually, our sins, the very things that provoke God's anger also produces this love in Him towards us because He relates to us like a father to their child. Yesterday, Georgia said that I was mean to her. I was mean, I'm, like, mean to her. You know you know what the last 3 days, all the sacrifices that we've done, I wonder if you haven't seen me. That's what I wanted to say, and I was angry for a moment.
Joel Brooks:I couldn't hold on to it, because she was my child. And when my child does sin, I'm going to punish her, but not as a judge. I'm gonna punish my child as a father, and there is a huge difference. A father, and this is a good father here, a good father will never punish his child in order to get justice. That's not why you punish.
Joel Brooks:So if my child hits me, I don't hit her back and say, how does that feel? I don't do tit for tat. You hit me, I hit you. It's not retribution. It's not revenge.
Joel Brooks:It's not justice. You get what you deserve. I don't do that. A good father doesn't do that, because I'm not out for justice. I I'm out for correction.
Joel Brooks:And so, yes, I will punish. Yes, I will bring pain in, but its purpose is is not retribution, it's to change her. That's how a father deals with a child. A father will not repay his child according to her sins. Okay?
Joel Brooks:Doesn't say, you sinned against me this way and now I'm gonna repay you according to your iniquity. A father does not do that. David, King David knew this, of course, because I mean, he sinned big time. He killed a man, took his wife. And so God called him out on it.
Joel Brooks:God sent Nathan, the prophet, It's a great, great line that Nathan just goes up to him and says, you the man, you're the one who sinned. And David says, you're right. I did it. I I sinned. And it's just, it's so puzzling.
Joel Brooks:Right afterwards, Nathan goes, well, the Lord has removed your sin. Just like that, you're forgiven. But then he punishes David. But it's not retribution. He corrects David.
Joel Brooks:This this this punishment is a discipline to bring his child close back to him again. David got it. He understood that. That's why he's writing this. God wasn't trying to even the score and his punishment.
Joel Brooks:Verse 12, says that god throws our sins as far as the east is from the west. It's a great image of, just an immeasurable distance. There there's no measurable distance between the East and the West, and the psalmist is saying, that is how immeasurable God's love, His compassion, and His forgiveness is towards us. And then he goes to verse 13 and uses the image of a father and a child to show another immeasurable distance. This time it's immeasurable intimacy, immeasurable acceptance.
Joel Brooks:You can't measure it. You're that accepted and that loved, and every commentator is going to tell you that that word for compassion is somewhat of a shocking term when you come up because it is packed full of emotion. You could translate it as, so the Lord's heart goes out to those who fear Him. We we we're pulling at his heartstrings. Then we get the verse 14, for he knows our frame and he remembers that we are dust.
Joel Brooks:That word knows there is a very intimate term. Means that he is intimately acquainted with us, and then you have that word frame, and this verse likely means this, He knows our frailty. He knows that we're just human, but it also means a little bit more because King David uses an unusual word there that's that's used in Genesis 8. That's translated intention. In Genesis 8, God is telling Moses, is right or Noah's right after the flood.
Joel Brooks:And he says that the intention of man's heart is from on evil from his youth. The intention of man's heart is on evil from his youth. Man is totally depraved and full of sin. The same word there, for he knows our intentions. He knows our frames, and then God looks at it, and he knows our utter wickedness and sinfulness, which led us to death, which leads us to the dust.
Joel Brooks:Aren't you far ever glad that our sins are thrown so far from the east is from the west? As I read through these things, there's a temptation for me and thinking about fatherhood. There's a temptation for me to try to raise up my children or even relate to my wife this way and to try to be this rock. I'm going to be the rock. Alright?
Joel Brooks:Y'all can lean on me. You could trust on me. You could pile it on me and I will not let you down. I will carry you. But the reality is one day I won't and I will fail.
Joel Brooks:Just like the grass, just like the flower mentioned in verse 15. One day I will die, and I love it. I have, these minister manuals. I don't know if you knew such things existed. There's these manuals that were given as ministers, and, when you're doing funerals, there's a huge difference between old minister manuals and the newer minister manuals.
Joel Brooks:The newer minister manuals, kind of like our culture, doesn't like to use the word died or death. I mean, even at a funeral, you don't use, you kind of avoid those words when you can, and you focus on other things. Focus on the life of the person who died. You celebrate that. That's somewhat of a new kind of way we do funerals.
Joel Brooks:You look at the old funerals, the old ministers manuals, and not at all. It says, now minister look into the grave and point into it for everybody and remind everyone of their fate. How the grave awaits everyone. Remind people of their own mortality. Have people look back at their life and ask, is this what they want to be doing?
Joel Brooks:Is this a life pleasing to God? Ask them to think about all the vain things that they are pursuing, all the anxieties they have, and how it doesn't make a difference, because one day this awaits everyone. That's the old funerals. So they they've kind of changed those. But the psalmist is old school here.
Joel Brooks:He's old school. It's like, hey, flowers die. The grass dies, and the reality is my wife is either gonna bury me or I will bury her. And if I try to place my kids trust on me or my wife's trust on me, it will fail. And that's why we go to verse 17.
Joel Brooks:It's one of those great buts, But the steadfast love of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting. I need to point my children, my wife towards the Lord, because it's everlasting that relationship. Now, there's a question as we're going through this psalm that kind of keeps popping up. At least it popped up as I'm reading through it, and that's simply this. How is all of this possible?
Joel Brooks:As you I mean, forget not all of his benefits. There's a lot of benefits, but how are these benefits possible? How can he forgive all of our iniquity? How can he redeem our life from the pit? How can He remove our sins as far as the east is from the west?
Joel Brooks:How can God do all of these things? How is it that we can call Him father? And the answer of course, is the cross. It's the cross. It's the cut.
Joel Brooks:I mean, here it says, to those verse 18, to those who keep his covenant and remember to do his commandments. And of course, we remember the night when when Jesus was betrayed, when he took a cup and he said, this is a cup of the new covenant, which is my blood poured out for the forgiveness of sins. Sinners. I totally can't even concentrate. Poured out for the forgiveness of sins.
Joel Brooks:It's not based on your performance. You relate to God as a father and as his child. Why? Because it's based on my performance and my sacrifice, And we have talked about this so many times here at Redeemer, but when you look at the cross and Jesus cries out from Psalm 22, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? This is the only time we have that Jesus ever calls his father God and not father.
Joel Brooks:It's the only time, and it's there on the cross. And it's because in that moment, Jesus no longer felt the intimacy of a father and a child. He no longer felt his sonship. He never felt that immeasurable closeness anymore. All he felt was the distance, and he couldn't call God his father at this point.
Joel Brooks:Just, my God, my God. He felt utterly forsaken. So he he he knew this immeasurable forsakenness, so that we can have this immeasurable acceptance. He didn't feel like he could be called sons so that we could be called sons and daughters. This is why King David can have his sin removed.
Joel Brooks:When Nathan could go up to him after he commits murder and he commits adultery and Nathan just goes, the Lord has removed your sins. Just like that. The Lord has removed your sins. Like, does God just kinda like lift up some cosmic rug and, you know, sweep sins under it and like, it's all gone? No.
Joel Brooks:The sins had to go somewhere, and they went to the cross, and that's how David could be forgiven and restored. And I love how this Psalm ends. Verse 20, Bless the Lord, oh you his angels, you mighty ones who do his word, obeying the voice of the Lord. Bless the Lord, all His hosts, His ministers who do His will. Bless the Lord, all His works and all places of His dominion.
Joel Brooks:Bless the Lord, O my soul. You have kind of this escalation that the psalmist is saying, hey, in light of everything we've heard, look, everybody is blessing the Lord in light of who He is. All of the angels, everyone who does his biddings, all of creation, all of His dominion. What are you gonna do? Bless the Lord, oh my soul.
Joel Brooks:Join in with what the rest of all creation is doing in light of who the Lord is. Bless the Lord, oh my soul. Pray with me. Our father, God, I pray we would not so casually say those words anymore. Those words were purchased for us at a great price.
Joel Brooks:The blood of your son. And I pray that we would come to understand and realize just full, the full measure of what that means. Spirit, I pray in this moment, you would make that so. We pray this in the name of Jesus. Amen.
