As we celebrate this Father’s Day, I want to encourage you, encouraging fathers, talking about the relationship between a father and a son or a daughter. We read in the Scripture where it tells us,

“Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them” (Psalms 127:5).

I love that imagery, a man standing united with his children, fighting off the forces of evil. And we could say, blessed is that man who has a great relationship with his father, a great relationship with his children, that they are very blessed. But unfortunately, many of us did not experience that kind of relationship.

In fact, as you search the Scriptures, you can find all sorts of examples of tragic father/son relationships. One of the most heartbreaking stories is that of David and his son Absalom, but even before that you can read about Jacob and Esau fighting for the father’s blessing, or the classic example of favoritism as you read about Joseph and his brothers fighting for the father’s love and approval.

It’s in that context that the prophet Malachi prophesies about one who would come in the spirit and power of Elijah. He said,

“He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers…" (Malachi 4:6).

In other words, that together they would turn to God and receive Jesus as their Savior, but they didn’t turn to God, they didn’t repent at the preaching of John the Baptist, or even at the preaching of Jesus Christ, and they filled their cup with iniquity.

Now, today, many centuries later, we are still struggling, still trying to figure it out, and there are some of you who have grown up, but deep down inside there is this emptiness, a little boy or little girl still wondering why. You know, why did he drink all the time, work all the time, or treat mom like he did? And there are others of you, you didn’t grow up with a father, he wasn’t there, and it may not even have been his fault, but you still carry that pain with you today.

I want you to hear that, I want you to feel that this morning, because we can only reproduce what was modeled in front of us. We can only communicate what was communicated to us, which is why the words of Jesus are so powerful in John chapter fifteen, verse nine. Jesus tells us,

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).

In other words, Jesus said, “I just acted like him, I imitated my Father, and in the same way as the Father has loved me, totally, completely, and unashamedly, so have I loved you.”

And so, as the Bible tells us in Philippians chapter two, verse one,

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose” (Philippians 2:1-2).

In other words, Jesus is our model, he’s our example, and if you are united with him, having fellowship with the Spirit, he says be one in spirit and purpose so that you can experience the comfort and loving presence of the Father. And so, no matter whether your father was present or not, helpful or not, loving or not, God still has a plan and the purpose for your life.

You see, everything begins with fatherhood. The whole Bible begins with fatherhood, it started in the beginning telling us,

“God created…” (Genesis 1:1).

In the original Hebrew language, the word God is Elohim, which is specifically used in a plural sense. In other words, the God who spoke through the prophets at many times and in various ways said, “Let us.” Everybody say, “let us.” God said,

“Let us make man in our image, in our likeness..." (Genesis 1:26).

And so, there is a plurality within the Godhead that is revealed as God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. In that context, when I say God the Father, I’m talking about a position and not a gender, because God in his essence is complete within himself not lacking anything.

Now, I know this is deep, but God embodies or personifies the character and traits of both father and mother. And so, when God creates it is an expression of his character to build and to nourish, to raise up and establish, and in creation he didn’t need anything because he is complete in himself. In fact, we read in Romans chapter eight,

“That the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth” (Romans 8:22).

In other words, it all started with the Father, and in the beginning there was a seed planted and you could say that creation was the womb. And in the same way, the church is both the bride of Christ and the body of Christ. In fact, Jesus is the groom and yet he said,

“I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings” (Matthew 23:37).

And the Bible says that when the end comes, Jesus will take the kingdom and hand it over to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power (1 Corinthians 15:24).

In that moment, the Bible says,

“When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all” (1 Corinthians 15:28).

Now, what I just said in introduction, might have gone over your head because we just went from Genesis to Revelation, from the beginning to the end, but I wanted to illustrate for you how everything that came forth out of God the Father, will go back to God the Father, and God the Father shall be all in all, complete within himself, not lacking anything.

Now, God the Father gave us a pattern, a prototype, desiring that the church would be a type of family. In fact, all of creation is a type of family and it is the family principle and the model that he sets in place in his word. That is why when Jesus taught his disciples how to pray, he said pray in this manner,

“Our Father” (Matthew 6:9).

Because everything comes from him, everything came out of him, and in the end all things shall return to him so that he may be glorified.

I want to share a text with you from first Corinthians chapter four because the church in Corinth is much like us today. In other words, we have all of these voices coming at us from all of these places that are teaching us all kinds of mixed messages. And we get it at home, we get it on the job, we get it on social media, because no matter where you turn everybody has an opinion of what you ought to believe and who you ought to be. In fact, we have more people talking to us now than we ever have had in our lives and he gets kind of confusing if not just simply chaotic.

In first Corinthians Paul is writing to this church that has had a dramatic encounter with Jesus, they been filled with the Holy Spirit, they are growing up but they are struggling with the flesh. The apostle is discipling them because that is what church is all about, and so he’s not talking about a natural family, he is talking about a spiritual family. He says in verse fourteen,

“I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers” (1 Corinthians 4:14-15).

In other words, he is reminding them that there are many people that will add busyness to your life, distracting you, even misleading you, that are not your father. Because a father is a father in part because he has made a deposit, he is pouring into you, he is invested, and yet in the world today there are many people who will instruct you who are not invested in you. And so, the first thing the apostle does is that he separates himself from the other people who are coming in and out of their lives and he says,

“Even though you have ten thousand guardians (instructors, people teaching you) you do not have many fathers, but in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. Therefore, I urge you to imitate me” (1 Corinthians 4:15-16).

This is true today in the church and in the world, both spiritually and naturally, there are not many fathers among those that preach and teach. Not many fathers who have a fathering spirit in the church today, and so if we don’t experience fatherhood at home, and we don’t experience fatherhood in the church, we won’t experience it at all.

That’s why we must understand the idea of God as a Father, because when God says I am your Father, it is so much more than just the concept of this God who is way out there somewhere. But this is a personal relationship with a God who is our Father, as our creator, our sustainer, our protector, our provider, our Savior and Redeemer. Jesus said,

“Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Which means when we come to the Father in the name of Jesus, we are opening the door to a level of intimacy never known or experienced before. Because we have become kin, we are family, we’ve been born again, and like those dead bones in Ezekiel, he has caused us to live.

And so, if we fail to understand God as our Father, we are lacking that paternal element of our spiritual and emotional development that is so important to our identity as the children of God. That is why when Jesus teaches the disciples about prayer, the first thing he tells them, he starts out saying,

"This, then, is how you should pray: "'Our Father in heaven…” (Matthew 6:9).

Because our Father expresses the perfection of the Godhead, the intimacy of our relationship, that we are not just created things like a tree or a giraffe, but we come to him as sons and daughters and he is our Father.

And so, if you are here today, even if you are a confused son, a lost son, a prodigal son, you don’t get to choose your Father but you come to him understanding that he loves you, that you have access to him, and that you have privileges because you are a son or a daughter. Understanding the loving presence of the Father, understanding the depth of that relationship changes everything, because if you’re a believer the Bible says,

“You received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, "Abba, Father" (Romans 8:15).

The apostle uses both words, “Abba, Father,” because that’s the closest way that he could explain it and we don’t really have an English word that captures the meaning of Abba. Some people say that it is like Daddy, it’s a term of endearment, it’s a reflection of our intimacy with the loving presence of the Father, our El Shaddai, our all-sufficient God, our Father who is complete within himself.

Let’s go deeper, because I want you to understand this. When God created the first father Adam, we don’t know exactly what he looked like, but we do know that the Bible tells us in Genesis chapter 1, verse twenty-seven,

“God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

In other words, God created the first man Adam with Eve in him, because she was formed from him. And so, God didn’t go back to the drawing board, he didn’t even go back to the dirt and make a woman, because she was part of the image of God in Adam. The Bible says,

“The Lord God caused the man to fall into a deep sleep; and while he was sleeping, he took one of the man's ribs and closed up the place with flesh” (Genesis 2:21).

In other words, what Adam was looking for, the companionship he was desiring was already in him. And so, woman was not an afterthought, she was created in the image of God, and God wanted Adam to realize what a gift she was because he said,

“It is not good for the man to be alone…" (Genesis 2:18).

In other words, it’s not good for man to be all one. Did you get that? Adam is so much like God that he is one. And so, God separated the masculine from the feminine, determining the gender so that Adam could have the companionship he was longing for. That’s why Jesus said,

“They are no longer two, but one. Therefore, what God has joined together, let man not separate" (Matthew 19:6).

And when they come together like God, coming together as one, just like God they create life.

Now, it doesn’t take long in marriage to understand that even though your spouse is created in the image of God, they are still very different from you, they don’t think like you, and so they have different priorities, expectations, and things they want. And so, the apostle Paul writes to the church in Philippi and he says,

“If you have any encouragement from being united with Christ, if any comfort from his love, if any fellowship with the Spirit, if any tenderness and compassion, then make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and purpose” (Philippians 2:1-2).

And he’s talking about being one again, being united in loving presence. And honestly it took me about fifteen years, maybe longer, to begin to understand that myself because I didn’t understand the real value of being one in spirit and purpose. In other words, I was looking out for my own interests, satisfy my own desires, but the apostle Paul says it this way,

“Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:3-4).

Now I’ve come to understand that it is more about presence, fellowship, that my wife just wants me to be home.

You see, the loving presence of the Father is the presence that dwells among us and when we express that in our lives, in our homes, and with our loved ones that means that we are there not just physically, but emotionally and spiritually. So that they know you’re there, you are in the house, you are praying, you are available, you’re paying attention, and if there’s a noise at night you are there for comfort.

The loving presence of the Father is raising up your daughters to understand what it is like to live with a man so that they don’t have to go out and figure it out on their own. It’s about being there, giving of yourself, being available, because it’s your presence that will help prevent your son from looking for a father’s attention from another man.

And so, the Bible is talking about sacrifice, pouring into others, giving of yourself, having the same attitude as that of Jesus who said,

"As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you” (John 15:9).

Now, Jesus’ disciples didn’t have any context for that kind of love, they wouldn’t even begin to understand the context until they saw the blood. But the Bible says in Ephesians chapter 5,

“Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her” (Ephesians 5:25).

In other words, Jesus died for the church, and he told me to die for my wife, and he told you to die for your wife. He said to remain faithful, to stand there even if it hurts, even if you have to suffer, even if you are bleeding out.

And so, to all the men, every father, and every spiritual father who stood there and didn’t quit, who didn’t run away and try to hide, I want to thank you. To every father that remained, even though you are hurting on the inside, you were physically present and emotionally available, and I want to thank you on behalf of this generation. Because when you live among them, giving of yourself, pouring into them, you are looking an awful lot like the loving presence of Jesus;

“Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness” (Philippians 2:5-7).

Jesus, Immanuel, came in the flesh, made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant. And somewhere along the way Joseph disappeared from the scene, his earthly father let him down, but his Heavenly Father poured into him. And so, what Jesus couldn’t get from Joseph, he got from his Heavenly Father.

As we close today, I wonder who is pouring into you, where do you get your strength, your wisdom, and your provision? I know you’ve got to get it from somewhere because everybody wants something from you, it may be your children, it may be your spouse, it may be your boss, and this morning you might say like Paul did, “I don’t have anything left.”

“I am already being poured out like a drink offering” (2 Timothy 4:6).

There may be some of you here, some fathers in this room, and you are down to the last drop. You came to church this morning, but the truth of the matter is that you are empty, your cup is poured out, and so I want to pray for you. Because I want to transition you from looking to other people to fill you up, to seeking the Loving Presence of your Heavenly Father.

Graphics, notes, and commentary from LifeChurch, Ministry Pass, PC Study Bible, Preaching Library, and Sermon Central. Scripture from the New International Version unless otherwise noted.