Hello, welcome back to week 12 of our journey together with Jesus. I hope this has been helpful to you. As I think I've shared before, please do feel free to give feedback and talk with me, ask questions, interact over the material as you're going through it together. I hope it's beneficial and I'd love the feedback and make improvements for this course for next time around. Today we're going to get a little bit more into understanding the heart of the Father. Last week we took a hard look at forgiveness and I wanted to seed that in there because it is the number one issue that most all of us will face as we grow in love, learning how to forgive better and even learning how to become unoffendable.
But in order to do that, as I shared, we have to really get to know God as our Father. We have to really get comfortable with His forgiveness and how He works and His ways and how He operates. So today I want to talk to you a little bit about what a father is really like. And again, I recognize many of us had bad experiences with our fathers and so even bringing up the word father can be a painful experience for some. I understand that, but I hope that we could grow together and move through that and come to a place where we recognize that for one thing, if we're offended with our biological fathers, it's because something in us knows that there's something better, that I should have something better in a father.
And even though every father lets his children down in one way or another, our Heavenly Father never does. And so typically we think of God in the Old Testament as being different than the God of the New Testament, like He became a gentler, kinder God with Jesus. And we have this picture of Jesus as this being that God took out all of His wrath, all the thing that He wanted to pour out on all those disobedient, rebellious kids, and all of His anger and wrath was satisfied on that cross. And what I want to tell you is that God has been the same yesterday, today, and forever. The scripture shows us that.
And if we believe that God is that way, that wrathful, angry God who just couldn't wait to take it out on somebody and He found Jesus to be like a whipping boy for us, we've misunderstood God entirely. If you have your Bible ready, open it to Exodus 37. I just want to share this about why it is that it seems like the God of the Old Testament is different than the God of the New Testament. A, it's because there are two different covenants in effect. The Old Covenant was based on law and rules and regulations by Israel's request. Maybe we'll cover that one day sometime in the future. But that was what Israel wanted in their relationship with God.
They chose that path. They chose, in other words, to eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil instead of the tree of life that He was placing before them. And God showed them, well, this is what life will be like if that's how you'd like to relate with me. But it was never His desire or intention to live where there were all these hoops to jump through and things that you had to sacrifice in order to have fellowship with Him. He's never like that. But what I would describe it as kind of like I have six kids. Some of them are more naturally compliant and easygoing, easy to get along with.
Some of them gave us more of a, let's say, a run for our money. And as my kids have grown now, four of them have grown up and out of the house. A couple more still live in our roof. I'll always say to them, and I mean this with all my heart, I don't have any favorites. As a father, I don't have children that I like more than other kids. But some of my children have drawn out more of the fun side of Dad and the, let's go do something exciting together, Dad. And the other ones have drawn out a little bit more of the, hey, I've got to stop you in your tracks because the path you're heading over right now is destructive.
So let's say that's the disciplinarian side of Dad. So there were a couple of my kids who were just easy. They almost never needed correction. Not that they never did, but they almost never did. Some of them, it seemed like they were just looking for a fight from the moment they woke up to the moment they finally got wore out and laid down for the night. I'm the same dad. I was the same father to every one of them. I have the same beliefs. I have the same character, the same values, the same love for all of my kids.
But based on their response toward me, it drew out a different dynamic of who I am as a father. So yeah, a father is loving. He's a guardian, a protector. He's a provider. He's the covering for a family. But he's also the disciplined one. He's responsible to make sure that the kids grow up and that the kids are going to be all right. We're like that because God's like that. And in Exodus 34, we have this moment where Moses went back up on the mountain. This happens after Moses came down with the Ten Commandments and all the law from God, only to find that Israel had created a golden calf and were worshiping it at the foot of Mount Sinai with the Lord God Almighty who was actually physically manifesting on the top of the mountain.
So Moses got so angry, he broke those tablets on the ground and he shouted out and it was a horrible scene. God showed up in a really terrifying way. And so a few weeks later, God said, Moses, I want you to come back up on the mountain. I want to give you some new tablets of stone. And then God said, I'm going to go send an angel. When you go to the promised land, he'll go in front of you and he'll take care of you and protect you. Moses' heart cry because he knew God was, oh no, just because we blew it here and just because of that, there's no way.
If your presence does not go with us, then don't send us from this place. And then he had one request as he called on the Lord in this conversation he had with God. He said, show me your glory. I just want to see your glory. God's response to him, I will surely make all of my goodness pass before you. But now that's a revelation in itself, isn't it? Moses wanted to see God's glory. And it's like, man, if we're thinking of glory the way we typically do, Moses had already seen the 10 plagues of Egypt.
He'd already walked through the Red Sea on dry ground. He'd seen a pillar of fire to guide them and warm them at night and a cloud by day to guide them and cover them from the blazing sun in the desert. He saw a daily miracle of manna. He saw water come out from a rock. He'd seen all these tremendous miracles. And yet he's still saying, I want to see your glory, which really was to say, I want to know you. And so God's response was, okay, you want to know me that I'm going to show you all of my goodness.
God's glory is his goodness. That's the lesson. So up on the mountain, then God takes Moses into this place and he has him hidden in a cleft of a rock so that he won't be overwhelmed and overcome and maybe even drop dead. Because of the power of the glory of God about to pass by him. And so it says, the Lord descended in the cloud and stood there with Moses as he called upon the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed. Here's what he said.
The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in loving kindness and truth, who keeps loving kindness for thousands, who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Now, if you're reading the Bible for the first time, you know how sometimes when you read a book, it has an about the author part on the flap and it, you know, there's a picture of him and a little bit of a biography. This is the about the author of the Bible. This is Moses saying, I'm writing scripture. Moses was the first author of the Bible. First five books all written by Moses. And he's saying, tell me about yourself.
I want to see you. And this is what God said about himself. He's forgiven. He's compassionate. He's gracious, slow to anger, abounding in compassion and grace and truth. Then he goes on though, and he says this, yet he will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the grandchildren and the great grandchildren to the third and fourth generation. So now we have this full picture of who God is. First of all, he abounds in grace. And he forgives thousands of generations of those who are his.
That is his default setting. In other words, God's default setting. You know, when you have a new phone or computer, it comes with certain default settings and you can change them if you want. Only with God, he can't change. But he does have a default response to sin. Do you know what God's favorite response to our sin is? To show mercy. It's in his nature to show mercy. However, because he loves us, because he does not want to live us forever in sin. Remember, we looked at the reason why Adam and Eve had to leave the garden.
It wasn't God was punishing them. God was saving them from themselves. Because to live for thousands and thousands of years and become a master of sin. And oh, how horrible life is. So God wanted to make sure that we understood he's compassionate and he's gracious. However, he's not going to ignore sin because it harms us. The thing that harms the people that you love is something that you want to get rid of. If I have wasp nests out in my backyard, it's getting to be that time of year as I record this lesson right now, I'm going to go get rid of those things because I don't want one of my kids to be climbing up on the trampoline and get stung by a bunch of wasps.
I don't get rid of the wasps because I hate them. I get rid of the wasps because I love my children. And that's how God views sin and views all of the things that we carry. So first of all, just so that we're clear, this is a Hebrew writing. The original Bible is written in Hebrew. So the translation into English can be a little bit clunky when it says, I will by no means leave the guilty unpunished, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children. It doesn't mean God's going to punish.
Boy, if you mess up, God's going to punish your kids and their kids and then their kids. This is going to last four generations. In other words, one life sentence isn't enough to punish you for what you've done. And that's often how we've interpreted it. Like you need four life sentences to pay for your crimes. And that is not a good translation in the English. What it actually reads, if you take it right from the Hebrew in the original language, it says, I will see the iniquity. Iniquity means the sin that's on the inside looking for opportunity to become the manifest, to actually act upon.
And God says, I'm going to see it for three or four generations. It's a warning. It's God saying, if you sow sin in your life, I'm going to watch it to three and four generations down the road, take its effect. Now, depending on your view of God, you might be looking at that. If you think God's a wrathful, angry God, you're looking at that right now saying, yeah, he's going to make sure that our kids and our great God, they're going to hurt and they're going to feel the pain for what they did to wrong and cross God. And that, you can view it that way if that's how you think God is.
But with everything else we learn about God from the Bible, especially as we get to know Jesus, we find a God who actually weeps and grieves over the things that harm us. It's why he grieves over our sin. Not because we broke his heart. God's eternal. He's immortal. He knew we were going to sin before we knew we were going to sin. Before we acted on anything, God knew that that day was coming, that we did that big awful thing. And God's just not like that. He's not responsive to our sin like we are.
We earthly fathers, we earthly mothers, we earthly leaders and authorities, because we don't always have full handle on our emotions, we tend sometimes to be reactive and we act out of anger. I want to tell you that God's not like that. He doesn't react to our sin when it says that he looks upon the sins of the fathers, the iniquities of the fathers to the third and the fourth generation. He looks with tears through his eyes. He looks as one who's seeing the consequence of eating from that tree yet again and how it affects our children and grandchildren. That's what he's like. So how does God then?
He doesn't deliver us from the consequence. It's like the law of sowing and reaping. Whatsoever man sows, that he shall reap. If we don't like the seed, the fruit of our lives right now, we can start sowing different seed in this season of life. And that's how God's discipline works. God doesn't cause issues to happen in our life. I got to say this really clearly. God is the author of good. Every good and perfect gift comes from above. If it's bad, it comes from the one who came to steal, kill, and destroy.
So we do have an enemy. His name is Lucifer, the devil, Satan, whatever term you want to use to call him. He's the author of all evil. So what God does is his discipline is removing his restraining hand and allowing us to receive the natural consequence of our actions. The devil will claim rights to our lives if we open a door of access for him. So if we, you know, we treat somebody, if we murder somebody, for example, we have now opened the door of access for the evil one to come and take vengeance on us. God won't take vengeance on us, not in this life.
God does not punish us that way. When we hear the word discipline used in the scriptures, it's not a punishment like I'm going to get you for what you did, but God does discipline the one he loves. And what's his instrument of discipline? Satan himself. But the only way Satan has access to our lives is when we open the door by our sin. I hope that makes sense to you. Here's how God put it in the book of Hebrews describing the discipline of the Lord. It says this, You've forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons.
My son, do not regard lightly the discipline of the Lord, nor faint when you're reproved by him. For whom the Lord loves, he disciplines, and he scourges every son whom he receives. And it's for discipline, it is for discipline that you endure. God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there whom the Father does not discipline? When you're without discipline, of which you've all become partakers, we've all become partakers, then you are illegitimate children and not sons. Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us, and we respected them.
Shall we not much rather be subject to the Father of spirits and live? For they disciplined us for a short time, it seemed best to them, but he for our benefit, so that we might share in his holiness. Now all discipline, for the moment, seems not to be joyful but sorrowful. But afterward, for those who have been trained by it, it produces the peaceable fruit of righteousness. So let's talk about discipline for a minute. When we talk about discipline, we tend to think right away, well, I'm getting punished because I did something bad. And there is a punishment aspect to discipline, as I just shared with you.
God does not punish his children by sending disease their way, by sending sorrowful circumstance their way. He didn't kill your dog because you sinned last week. Your grandma didn't die because you didn't pray hard enough. He's just not like that. That's not how this works. With a God who is good, God cannot be the author of evil. He is good. And so when the enemy comes in, the one who comes to steal, kill, and destroy, and he exerts things, that's the punishment. But most of discipline, it's training. It's preparing us.
In this passage, I remember when I was a child, my mother was the disciplinarian in my house. All five foot and a half inch of her Scottish red-headed self, I feared my mom before I knew the fear of God. Let's just say it like that. And she was also the Kool-Aid mom, though, if you know, maybe you're old enough to remember that. The one who, the house where all the kids would gather. So I always had my friends over at my house because my mom would feed them, and mom would, you know, give them gifts and games. She loved to bless my friends when they came in.
And I remember one day we were playing Atari. Atari, that's how old I am. We were playing our Atari games. And my mother came in and said something, and I got really disrespectful with her. I think I cussed at her because I was tired of her nagging us. And you could hear all the oxygen got sucked out of the room, and my friends exited stage left. They were out that door right away. My mother said, it's time for all of you to go. Who was the only one left? Well, it was going to be me.
Now, my mother didn't treat my friends like that. If we were all messing around, we were all cutting up or something like that, my mother wasn't going to do what she was about to do to me because I'm her son because she loves me. That's the reason why I had to face the music. So it is with God. When God keeps the pressure on us, it's not so that we can hurt because we hurt his heart. It's so that we can be hurt so that we'll get rid of the thing hurting us. This thing that keeps dragging us down, the addictions, the anxieties, the things that we do that bring harm to us and those that we love and those that God loves.
All of those things, he's keeping the pressure on, allowing the enemy to continue to have access to hurt us because it's going to produce the peaceful fruit of righteousness afterward. We're going to be more holy on the other end of it. So the word discipline, you can kind of hear in it the word disciple. This is how we become disciples. This is how we grow from strength to strength. This is how we grow from not being tempted by certain things anymore and to not being tempted by other things anymore. And we grow where we're becoming more like him each and every day because we give ourselves over and allow the Lord to show us some things and to correct us in some things and even allow him to discipline us into some things.
Rather than resisting God, we eventually become compliant. Like my kids, the ones who had the best time with me in their growing up years, the ones who had more time for just plain old play and fun and outdoor games and things like that were the ones who weren't creating hassle time with me. And if it was all going to be hassle time and disrespect and rebellion and temper tantrums and all that kind of thing, they missed out on the fun that the other kids got to have because instead of fun, we were disciplining. And so God's like that. God intends for us to have a relationship with him that's filled with love and joy and peace and compassion and grace and mercy and truth. All of these things, God has a big wide world on the other side of the cross for us to explore.
And the more we give ourselves over and say, I'm respecting you as a father right now. And I want to know what am I learning right now? What is it that you're trying to bring my attention to? And how can I grow to be more like you, more Christ-like as a result of these things that are happening in my life? Knowing that God is not trying to hurt me. He's not trying to punish me as in get revenge on me for what I did. But he is trying to teach me some things.
What can I learn through this experience? That's the question to ask through no matter whatever the trial is, by the way. And whether it's a trial that came by the Lord's hand, the enemy's hand, it really doesn't matter in the end. What matters is how will the grace of God carry me through and how will he sharpen me? How will this circumstance I'm in that feels like a really intense fire, how is that going to burn off some things that I don't want in my life anyway? How is this going to produce a holiness in me that's going to make me after his image even more clearly than ever before?
So on the other side of that is joy. On the other side of that is peace. The other side of that is righteousness. I'm going to read this final thing because if we're to understand the Lord's discipline and we're really going to be those who receive it from the Lord as love and not as punishment, not as anger and wrath, but those who see God as a loving God who just wants us to be free of all the other things. You could view it like Michelangelo once said to somebody asking him about his sculpting. I believe it was about the angel that Michelangelo sculpted out of marble and somebody asked him how he does what he does.
And he says, he said, I just saw the angel inside the marble and I freed it from the marble. And how did he free it from the marble? Well, he took a chisel and a hammer and he's hacking away at all the things that are preventing that angel from manifesting itself in the middle of that block of rock. And that's what God does with us. And we can view discipline that way. He wants us to manifest all the glory of what's inside of us. But there's all this other stuff hunkering us down and getting in the way of that freedom we want to have.
And so the disciples are trying to come to grips with this. They saw Jesus in action for three and a half years. And at the Last Supper, here's what he said to them. If you had known me, you would have known my father also. From now on, you know him and have seen him. Philip was still a little bit confused about that. And he said to him, Lord, show us the father and that'll be enough for us. And Jesus said to him, have I been with you so long and you've not yet come to know me, Philip?
He who has seen me has seen the father. He has seen me, has seen the father. How can you say, show us the father? Or do you not believe that I am in the father and the father is in me? That the words that I say to you are not my own. I don't speak of my own initiative. But the father abiding in me, he does the works. Believe me that I'm in the father and the father is in me. And if you can't believe that by now, just believe the works that I've been doing.
In other words, if you've seen Jesus, you know exactly what God the father is like. What's he like? Well, look at what Jesus did. Believe the works that Jesus did. It's evidence of who God really is and what God's actually like. What was he doing? He was always healing the sick. He was raising the dead. He was opening blind eyes. He was making leopards clean. He was showing love to people. He was showing mercy to people who deserve punishment. He was always going around demonstrating those kind of things. The only people who ever really got the bad side of Jesus, again, same Jesus, were the religious people, the ones who wanted to keep the people of God bound and stuck under religious rules.
To keep them stuck inside that marble, if you will, and not allow God to set them free from all of that. They got the heavy hand of Jesus, and everybody else got the joyful, light-handed side of Jesus. If you've seen Jesus, you've seen the father. So how do you view Jesus? If you've read the Gospels, you know that he was always looking for an opportunity to show love. The greatest love he ever showed was on the cross, of course, and what he said on that cross, like we looked at. Father, forgive them.
They know not what they do. He forgave his crucifiers. I mean, that's how much love he showed during his lifetime. So the works that he did demonstrate what the father's actually like. So who's Jesus to you? You read through the Gospels, and you'll see mainly all the good things that he did. You'll also see, on the other side of that, how he responds when the devil wants to try to take what belongs to him, wants to keep captive those that have been set free, wants to keep us bound with our iniquity.
You see how Jesus treated them. And it's like a shepherd is gentle with the sheep, but you don't want to be a wolf and get around a shepherd, do you? A shepherd's got to rot on his staff for a reason. So when difficulty comes in our life and God's hand is ever in it, you can view it as this. If we want to partner with darkness and we want to willfully say, I know what's right and I know what's good, but I'm still going to practice evil. Then what we've done is we've joined forces together with Satan himself. And what brings harm in our lives is when God comes to set us free, well, it's a little bit like trying to rip off something that's become attached to our skin.
Some skin peels off when we take it off. And God removing sin from our lives, if we become attached to it, can be a painful process. But it's always because of love. It's always because he wants to take that cancer out of us before it destroys us and ruins the rest of our lives. So that's what God's like. He's a father who by default is merciful, loving, compassionate, gracious, forgiving to thousands who call upon his name. But he's also a God who loves us enough not to leave us like he found us.
And he will discipline us and he will allow whatever it takes into our lives to get us free from the things that keep us bound. I hope that helps you in your walk with Jesus this week. I pray for you as you go through your devotional this week, that you'll be set free from wrong concepts of what our God's like, because he really is more amazing than we even know.