Hello and welcome back. We're on week 13 together in our journey. I hope you're enjoying the restored study series. I really hope that God is in fact restoring everything to you back to his original intent for your life and I really hope he's making all things new and that you are having a blast in your new life in Christ. I don't know how long it's been since you came to him and what your reason is for joining us in this series but today I want to talk about something that's really near and dear to my own heart personally and an important part of my own journey and growing as a disciple of Jesus and that's really getting to know God as Father.
We introduced it last week and we looked at how Jesus reflected the Father. You remember Philip had a question for Jesus at the Last Supper. You know Jesus wants to show us the Father and Jesus was you know his response was a little shock. Have you been with me this long and you don't understand? If you've seen me you've seen the Father and I often ask new believers and this is a good question for you. You might have done it in your devotions last week but the question is when you think of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, which is the part of God that you typically would lean toward as being relatable, as the one you can really feel comfortable with, the one you would that you would go to first and most people upon getting to know the Father, Son, Holy Spirit would say the Son, Jesus. He's relatable.
He's easy to understand. He seems like a regular everyday guy like me. Of course he's a regular everyday guy who can walk on water and raise the dead and heal the sick and so on, but we are called in fact to be that, but we'll talk about that later on. But Jesus showed us something about the Father and a different dynamic about the Father and up until then the people who knew God, especially through the Law of Moses or our Old Covenant, Old Testament scriptures, would know God as the Lord God Almighty and that's a phrase. I want to be quick to add here before I move on that he is that. He is the Lord God Almighty. He is a consuming fire.
He is the God who shook the mountain when he sent Moses down with the Ten Commandments. And he is that. He is no one to be trifled with and he never loses that position. But him being the Lord God Almighty, he also has the desire to connect with us in a different way than a feared, often some distant place kind of God who just exists for the sake of judgment and righteousness. He's also a God who eagerly desires to have relationship with us. We're going to look at Romans 8 a little bit more detailed in a couple of weeks here. But in Romans 8, we're told that we have been given a spirit now, not a spirit of slavery again to fear, but a spirit of sonship.
And what that spirit bubbles up from the inside of us, it causes like a cry from our spirit, almost like a newborn baby. This spirit calls God Abba, Father. And Abba in the Hebrew language is what we would call Daddy in English. So I don't know, my wife and I used to do this when our kids were newborns and they were just learning to speak. We'd have this fun little competition of, are they going to say mama first or dada first? So I would lean over the baby in the crib or hold them in my arms and go dada, dada, waiting for them to imitate the sound. And the reason why dada is usually around the first thing that kids say or the first name is because it's easy to pronounce.
Well, Abba in the Hebrew language, if a baby grew up hearing Hebrew spoken, they would be making sounds like Abba, Abba, Abba. And Abba is simply like a baby saying Daddy. And when we say Father, it almost is a formal kind of title, isn't it? When my kids now jokingly call me Father, they're either being, you know, funny like we're in 18th century Victorian England or something like that, or they're just, you know, trying to be funny. But they call me Dad, they call me Daddy or Pops, maybe when I'm a grandfather. And that's a more intimate kind of expression. But the Spirit's revealed on the inside of us and what our spirit connected to the Spirit of God has revealed is that God never intended just to be the Lord God Almighty maker of heaven and earth, but he intended to be as a daddy to us, which is a really fun kind of relationship.
There's a catechism is a series of questions and answers designed to help a new believer come to know all the various things of faith. And the Westminster Catechism was developed in the 1600s by reformers. And they had a bunch of questions and a bunch of answers to help restore basic beliefs back to a church that had been starved for good Bible teaching for centuries. And the first question in the Westminster Catechism very famously is, what is the purpose and chief end of man? And the answer to that question in the catechism is, the chief end of man is to glorify God and enjoy Him forever. That's the sum total of all the purpose of God.
Why did He create us? Why did He make the world the way that He did was so that He could enjoy us and we enjoy Him for all eternity? That's the end goal of everything. That's the reason for which we were born again. It's the chief reason why Jesus died on the cross. It wasn't just to save us from our sins, and it wasn't just to give us eternal life, but also to give us life and that more abundantly. Life with a God who is an absolute blast. Life with a God who is the life of the party, who is the one everybody wants to be around, because in Him, there's all of the joy.
Every good and perfect thing that we love about life was God's idea. So I recall growing up, I went to a, it was an Episcopal church, and it was a, sometimes what we call a high church. So they used incense on certain days, and they'd spray the incense, and I was an acolyte, which meant I helped serve at the altar and do all sorts of things. And I just remember sitting in my seat up near the altar, waiting for the various things I had to do during the service. And there was a stained glass window up in front of me, as I recall. And the stained glass window had Jesus in it, and He had a whip in His hand and He looked really angry.
And it was depicting Him overturning the tables of the money changers that the Gospels record. And it was a moment where His indignation that the house of prayer, which the temple was supposed to be, was now a house of cheating people and a den of thieves, as He termed it. But all I knew as I looked up, and that was a depiction of God, and He looked really mad. And I used to sit there thinking, I think He knows what I was up to yesterday. And He's really mad at me about it. So my early pictures of God when I was 12, 14 years old was a God who was full of wrath, full of anger, a God that I just knew you just don't want to cross Him.
And that was the God I understood. Since coming to Christ and learning this, that Jesus is like the Father, I've come to realize He's a lot different, or there's a lot more to Him than the judge of all things. When we think of our natural fathers, and I recognize, like we talked about last week, some of us had a mixed feeling and a mixed experience with fathers. Some of us had really fun, awesome fathers who really don't have a whole lot of bad memories. Some of us grew up with an abusive, alcoholic father who was really terrifying to be around, and you never knew if you sneezed at the wrong time, that that might bring harm to your life.
And I recognize that. And I know our experiences with fathers is different. But generally speaking, when we look at healthy fathering, the father is the disciplinarian, father is the provider, father is the protector. But there's something else about dads that I've observed over the years, and I'm included in this category. Dads are usually the source of the goofiness that goes around in the household. And please, women, don't be offended at this. I know that there, I know many women who are the life of the party. They're doing these kinds of things with their kids too.
But generally speaking, dads are the ones. I mean, we use expressions like, you know, a mom will talk about their family and refer to the father as another child in the house. Why? Because he's usually the one getting the kids riled up at bedtime, running around, tickling them, playing hide and seek with them, throwing them up in the air when they're babies. He's the one who's out in the yard, the expectation. Anyways, you're out in the yard, you're playing, the father's playing catch with them. Dad's out there playing tag and, you know, all the things.
The dads are usually the fun loving of the parenting structure, that they're the ones providing that goofiness in a house. I want to tell you that God's a little bit like that. If Jesus is a reflection of God as the kind of father he is, then let's remember, Jesus' first miracle was not raising somebody from the dead or healing a leper, opening a blind eye. It was providing more wine so that the guests at a party could enjoy themselves. And so the host of the party wouldn't be embarrassed. He turned water into wine. That was his first miracle.
Jesus was accused of being a drunk and a glutton. Was he a drunk and a glutton? Of course not. He didn't sin in any way in any of those things. However, he certainly enjoyed being around people and being in their houses. And he wasn't afraid to enjoy the food and enjoy the drink that they were offering him and have fun. I can't imagine Jesus not being the life of the party wherever he went. He was always messing around with his disciples. My favorite moment is at the end of the day that Jesus has been healing the sick and ministering all day long.
The sun's starting to go down. Desk is approaching. And one of his disciples came to him and he says, Hey, Jesus, we're way out. Like we passed the middle of nowhere hours ago. And there's nothing around here for all these people. They're hungry. We should send them home. And Jesus is kind of, I imagine Jesus kind of side-eyeing them and going, well, feed them. You know, I mean, they don't have food for 5,000 people. Jesus knew full well what was about to happen and knew what capacity he had to provide for them.
But it just seems like a funny little moment with them. I mean, he called Simon Peter, the one who's always putting his foot in his mouth, always doing all these things. Although he renamed him Simon Peter, Peter Petrus, the rock upon which he'd build his church. I can almost see a little smirk on Jesus' face saying that and a wink in his eye. I know what's in you, Peter. And I know that right now you don't look anything like a rock that anybody would build even a shack on, much less the church of Jesus Christ. So Jesus was fun and and he's a reflection.
Psalm 16 verse 11 says this about God, you will make known to me the path of life in your presence as fullness of joy. And in your right hand are pleasures forevermore. That's what God's actually like. If you get into God's presence, it's not going to be like coming before the great and terrible Oz. Everybody shake at the knee and bow before the king of all kings. Is that the response people have when they see him? Oh yeah. Because to behold him and to be in his presence, there's nothing as majestic as that.
Stand in front of a hundred foot wave or stand in front of a wild hurricane or a tornado. It's a terrifying sight to behold when you get close to it. That pales in comparison to what it's like to behold the author and the perfecter, the creator of all those things. And to be sure, he's to be feared. But at the same time, it says, you know what happens when you get in his presence? This fullness of joy. There's laughter. There's loud boisterous joy going on in his presence. The praise that erupts from the angels isn't because if they don't praise him, they're going to be smitten by some lightning bolt or something like that.
It's because they're exuberant around the presence of God. There's joy in his presence. And it says, pleasures at his right hand forevermore. Now we're accustomed to thinking of the word pleasure as having a negative connotation to it. And Christians are guilty of this, that we've become like cosmic killjoys. And I believe that it's because that's our perspective on God, that we believe, like I may have told you, I believed early on before I really got to know it, that the Bible was a rule book, do this, don't do that. And that's pretty much all there was.
And mostly I kept away from God because I thought there were so many don'ts on things that I love doing. I don't want anything to do with this God because he's going to cut all the joy and all the fun out of my life. I've since learned he's anything but that, that everything he created was for the purpose of our pleasure. In fact, when God created the heavens and the earth, and when he determined it was time to create the man, the man and the woman, he put them in a place called Eden. Eden literally means pleasure. So Eden, he planted them in the place of pleasure. And it says that he planted a garden eastward in Eden.
So there's a garden of paradise in the place of pleasure. Now the reason why we think of pleasure in a negative tone is because we've corrupted everything, every good and perfect thing that God created for our pleasure, we found a way to satisfy it only in terms of how it satisfies our flesh. And we've neglected our spirit and we've neglected our soul in the process and destroyed so many good and perfect things that God created. In the garden of pleasure, the garden of paradise, there was nothing but pleasure all day long. God created us for joy and laughter. He didn't create us for tears and sorrow. He created us to be satisfied.
He satisfies all of our desires for good. And that's what renews our youth. And that was what life was supposed to be. So when God made the garden of Eden, that was a reflection of his heart and his desire. As we looked at last week, God's intention, like every father and mother's desire for the kids is, let's just have paradise in our house. Let's just have pleasure with one another. Let's not have rebellion and anger and hostility and resistance, but let's work together to create a place that everybody wants to live.
And that's what God intended when he created the garden of paradise. And everything we enjoy in life was his idea, every good and perfect thing. And so pick whatever clean pleasure it is that you enjoy. That was God's idea. And he put it there just for us. It's one of the things that I believe is evidence for the existence of God. We live in a world that not only gives us the ability to survive in it, but we live in a world that pleases us. I mean, whether sunsets are your thing or sunrises are your thing.
I've looked at some sunrises and tears streamed down my face when I see how beautiful it is, and that he created me with an understanding and a yearning to enjoy those kinds of things. You know, when I'm climbing a mountain or paddling down some white water, I'm going and doing the God created this for me, and this is a blast, and it doesn't leave any sorrow on the other side. And that's what happens when we corrupt things. Sin seems pleasurable for the moment, but afterward comes the sorrow. It brings with it a sorrow and a pain to it. Everyone who's struggled with alcohol knows. In the moment, drinking and getting drunk seems kind of fun, but the next morning you pay a price for it.
And so God created things for our pleasure. God, like a father, like a daddy, one of my greatest joys of being a daddy was to watch my kids grow and develop, to watch them learn to speak, and the cute way that they say things at first when they're learning language, the way that they look at the world and everything is, wow, look at that. I mean, if you've ever tried to take a walk with a three-year-old, you better not be in a hurry, because they'll stop and they'll look down and go, oh, it's a worm, you know, and they'll be there for 10 minutes excited about this worm that came up out of the ground because it was raining and everything's exciting. Everything's wonderful.
And there's a joy between a father and a child when we're experiencing those kinds of things together. One of my favorite moments in Genesis actually is after God planted the garden in Eden and he put Adam in it, it says that out of the ground he caused there to grow every beast of the field and every bird of the air. And then it says, and he brought them to Adam, and here's how it's worded, to see what he would name them. And whatever Adam named them, that became its name. So in other words, God didn't bring to Adam, and you know, here it's a zebra. This is called a zebra, Adam.
This is called a giraffe. That's a hippopotamus. He literally brought the animals to Adam, wondering what's Adam going to name it. Now, there's some theologians that would pounce all over me right now. Well, God knows everything, and God knows all things. I'm just telling you what it says in the revelation of scripture, that God brought the animals to him, and it was as if God took a pleasure in Adam now exerting authority, and Adam just enjoying the things that were made. That there's some things that he just enjoys about us and looks forward to seeing what we're going to do next.
In the Bible, there are 354 times that the word joy or joyful or rejoice shows up. It shows up in the darkest of times. It shows up in the brightest of days, but it's all over the scripture, and that's what God is like. So, this is just a lengthy exhortation, because from here on out, as you grow and learn about God, we're going to learn things in the box of relationship that we have. And if we've boxed God in to be this religious God who just, it's all about do the good thing and don't do the bad thing, that we're going to miss out on the real purpose of salvation, which was to restore us to paradise.
Remember, Jesus told the thief on the cross, truly I say to you today, you will be with me in paradise. That's the goal of it all. Not just to make it over the finish line and be more righteous than when we started, but to enjoy God and enjoy this life. That's the bigger meaning and purpose to it. The reason why it's so important to look at this now is because there are going to be moments in your journey with Jesus, in your process of growing as a disciple, getting to know him and allowing him to get to know you, where there is going to be confrontation. As we looked at last week, God disciplines the sons that he loves.
And when those moments come, if we don't have the foundation of relationship for enjoying God, in the middle of that, we can really have a misunderstanding. We can almost get offended with God in that process. And so I want to have you in a place where you've learned how to enjoy God. We've learned how to accept him as a God who's really, really in love with you, really, really enjoys you, and really longs to have that kind of a dynamic with you. Then when the day comes that God has to say, now we're going to work on something in you. And it's going to be a little painful as I remove this tumor from you, as it were.
We have a context of relationship where we know he's enjoying us. I love him. I trust him. I'll allow him to do that work. God bless you as you do your devotions this week. I pray that you'll experience the fullness of joy that comes at the right hand of Jesus. Amen.