Fathers help bring us into the world, protect us, nourish us, and train us up. They do these things out of duty, but usually because they love their children.
When Phillip pleaded with Jesus, "show us the Father," Jesus was made sad. He had been demonstrating the Father all His ministry. Whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father.
Phillip no doubt was asking for Jesus to demonstrate His bona fides, since He was not going to bring in the kingdom as they expected Messiah to do.
Phillip's question raises the problem: how can we know God the Father when we cannot see Him?
The incarnation was God's answer to this problem of our not being able to see the invisible God - for God was manifest in the flesh in the person of Jesus. Indeed, He is the express image of the Godhead and the brightness of God's Glory!
Christ warned that whoever rejected Him as the Son was rejecting the Father also!
But Christ intended more: His purpose was to introduce His people to God as THEIR Father as well as His own!
He did so in a series of teachings, including His command that we pray to the Father and call Him OUR Father!
Jesus introduces His people to filial kinship to the Father in Glory - revealing a new Royal Family of God in which He is the elder brother and the Saints are all sons of God. Indeed, we have inheritance rights with Jesus because God is our Father through Jesus' cross work.
As with earthly fathers, we fail to know the Father because we are ungrateful for His goodness to us. God shows us His glory by revealing His goodness to us, just as He announced to Moses.
His Goodness is shown in Jesus' sacrifice to save us. Truly, He loves His Sons so very much!
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John Pittman Hey was born in 1961 in Jackson, Mississippi, to Godly parents who from the beginning raised him in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. With child-like faith he came to Christ on his fourth birthday at his mother's knee. He received his education at church...
#5 - Top Played Sermon (48-Hours) on 6/17/2013
