Sunday 20 July 2025

Nollamara Church Of Christ Sermons.Raw transcript of meeting:

Date Of Sermon: 20 July 2025

Speaker: Jamie Boland

Sermon Title: Intimacy and awe: knowing God as Father and King

Scripture Reading: Romans 8:12-16

  📍 Therefore brothers and sisters, we have an obligation, but it is not to the flesh to live according to it. For if you live according to the flesh, you'll die. But if you live by the spirit you put to death, the misdeeds of the body and you will live for those who are led by the spirit of God are the children of God.

The spirit you received does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again. Rather, the spirit you received brought about your adoption to sonship and by himm we cry. Abba Father, the spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children. The.

Thank you, Denise, for that reading. So today we're gonna begin our look at the Lord's Prayer. As I shared last week, I want us to come into a time of corporate prayer. I really believe it's a time for us to come together. We need to pray into being the future of this church. Now our sermon series is gonna be called Planting Seeds.

Can anyone remember the vision statement I used last week? Can anyone remember testing quizzing? I want us to plant seeds for a tree and who shade we might never bask. Do you remember I said that I want us to plant seeds for a tree and whose shade we might never bask? So praying into being. The future that God has for this church.

Now, the title of our message today, I switched on. I'm switched on. I am switched on, but I'm not working. Do you wanna flick me to the next one? I hope this works. Hang on, I'll switch off and switch on. So the title of our message today is Intimacy and Awe, knowing God as both father and King, let's commit this time to Him.

Father, we thank you that you are a good, good God. As we've sung today, we're loved by you. You are perfect in all of your ways. Father, we thank you for this time to gather around your word. Holy Spirit, come and speak. Shape our hearts and our lives. Bring us the nourishment and sustenance that only the word of God can bring.

In Jesus' name we pray. Amen. Amen. Now, Donald Miller, he's a writer and his most famous book is Blue like Jazz. This is actually a still from the the movie. Now, this book is actually a story of his spiritual journey. It's his spiritual memoir. In one of the opening chapters, he writes at length about his father.

Let me read what he says. He says, I've been with my father only three times. Each visit happened in my childhood. He was a basketball coach, and I don't really know why he left my mother. I only know that he was tall and handsome and smelled like beer. His collar smelled like beer. His hands smelled like beer.

His coarse unshaven face smelled like beer. I do not drink much beer myself, but the depth of his scent has never left me. My father was a big man, bigger than most stocky and strong like a river at flood. When my sister and I would visit my father, we would eat from the grill every night. Something that we would never be able to do with my mother.

Later. He would take us to the grocery store and buy us a toy. Any toy we we wanted, we'd pace the long aisle of shiny prizes, the trucks, the Barbies, the pistols, and the games. And in the checkout line, I remember as a small boy I'd clinging to that slick shiny box in the stillness and the silence. On the drive home, we take turns sitting on his lap so we could drive and whoever wasn't steering would work the gear shift and whoever worked the steering wheel would drink from my father's can of beer.

What I know from the three visits I made to him is the blended composite of love and fear that exists only in a small boy's notion of his father. There were years between his calls about the time I entered middle school, he disappeared from my life completely. Today, and this is crucial today. I wonder why is it that God refers to himself as father at all considering the earthly representation of the role.

This, to me, seems to be a marketing mistake. Why would God want to call himself Father when so many fathers abandon their children? Now, this is Donald Miller's memory of his dad. It's not a good one. The picture he's painted, his dad was a drunkard. He was a man who in the, you know, the very little time that he spent with his children, he'd take him to the store to try and buy their affections, to compensate for his absence.

And let me repeat those final words so they can really sink in. It would be a marketing mistake to call God father when so many fathers abandon their children. Why would God reveal himself as father when so many fathers have done nothing but cause hurt to those, they meant to love and protect. Now, I wonder, what emotions do you feel when you hear of God as father?

Some people just haven't been given a good picture. Yeah, we watched that film last night, this small boy who was so traumatized by the lack of a father figure in his life.

And so what Donald Miller does is he confronts us with a fundamental question. How do we perceive God? God is invisible. We've never seen him. How do we perceive God? Can I tell you? This is possibly the most crucial question you could ever ask. The most crucial question you could ever think through is, who is God?

Is he this harsh, overbearing judge? He's just watching and looking with that magnifying glass, waiting to smite you for every minute sin. Or maybe you think, no, no, no. He dotes on me so much that my sin doesn't really matter to him. God's too loving to punish me or my sin. Or maybe you see him as a sugar daddy whose sole purpose is to benefit and bless you.

How you perceive God is important because it will affect both the way you worship him and the way you relate and draw near to him. Amen. Perception is everything. Now, these past two weeks we've been thinking about discipleship. What does it mean to follow Jesus? Okay, and we all agree. Believing and trusting in Jesus is good.

Coming to faith in Jesus Christ is something truly worth celebrating. Amen? Yes. Becoming to faith is just the first step. The goal of the Christian life is to become like Jesus. Now, as I said last week, if imitation is the goal of discipleship, then we can't claim to be following Jesus as we ought if we're not committed to prayer.

Now, we saw this last week. Prayer for Jesus was not some optional, extra, it was not an addendum. He's busy doing ministry. Oh, I better, better make time to pray. It's actually the other way around. For Jesus, prayer was the very heartbeat that sustained his life and ministry. And the disciples, they're following him.

They see this and, and they're realizing this guy's an expert at prayer. And so they come to him and ask, Lord, teach us to pray. And so Jesus gives them what we call the Lord's Prayer. Now we know this prayer. It's so simple that even small children can memorize it. But here's the thing. Our aim is not to merely repeat it mindlessly.

You know, they do this in federal parliament before they start to bicker and argue with each other. Have you seen this? They recite the Lord's prayer before they get on and just act as if God doesn't exist. That's not our aim. Our aim is not to mindlessly repeat the prayer. We don't wanna just say it, we actually want to pray it, and we want it to serve as a model that gives life and shape to our prayers.

Jesus begins with these words found in Matthew chapter six, verse nine. He says This then is how you should pray. Our Father in heaven, hello, be Be your name. That's our focus for today. Our father in heaven. Hello, be your name. Now, can you see these words address this question about how we're to perceive God?

We are to know him as both father and king. Now, this opening line is short, but it's the foundation for everything that follows in prayer. Before we ask, before we confess, before we surrender, we are called to remember who God is and who we are to him, and that's what that song brought out today. You're a good, good father, and I'm loved by you.

That's speaking into this very issue. So let's unpack this term. Father, what does it mean? I think it's important to say from the get go that given the track record of so many earthly dads, if ever there was a term that needed to be redeemed, then surely this is it. Yeah. If ever there's a term that needed to be redeemed, it's this term, father.

How many times have you heard someone say, you know, I really struggle relating to God as father because of how bad my own dad was. You ever heard that, ever met someone like this? It's hard for them. This was Donald Miller's experience, and I'm sure he is not alone. So let's consider this word that Jesus uses.

'cause what we're gonna see is it's a term that's unique to him. It's unique to Jesus this term. Now, let me begin by saying this. Whilst it might not seem out of the ordinary for many of us today, we just assume, yes, we can know God as father, we address God as father. It may not be out of the ordinary for us, but in Jesus days it would've been revolutionary.

It would've been absolutely radical for Jesus to say this. Okay, open the Old Testament. Read it. What you'll see is that none of the big guns of the Hebrew faith fall to their knees and personally address God as father. Yes. You'll see in the Old Testament that you know, they, it speaks of God as father to the nation of Israel in a corporate sense, but not once.

Do you see an individual praying to God as their father, not Abraham, not Joseph, not Moses, not David, not Elijah, not Daniel. And by the time of Jesus, in Jesus' days, the Jews never would've done this. Never. They were so focused on the sovereignty, sovereignty, and transcendence of God that they wouldn't even dare utter the covenant name Yahweh.

That name is too wholly to be spoken casually. You don't be flippant and frivolous with the name of God for them. God. He's up there. He's to be revered. He's to be feared. He's to be respected. And then along comes Jesus, who speaks of God as my father, and then he invites those who follow him to do the same.

Now to the Jews of Jesus' Day, this was disrespectful and blasphemous. And in John chapter five, they try to kill him for this very reason. Our reading today was from Romans written by Paul. He's a Pharisee. He was a Pharisee. He would've been among those who would never have called Godfather. And yet meeting Jesus changes all of that.

Jesus makes a difference in the life of Paul and and, and as we heard in our reading today, Paul's been so liberated that he can talk about our adoption to sonship and how by God's spirit we can cry out. Abba. Father, can I tell you, this all begins with Jesus. It all begins with Jesus. He's the first one who comes along and says, aah Father.

And he teaches those who follow him. This then is how you should pray. Call out to Abba Father, can you hear how completely radical this would've been for the disciples? This then is how you should pray. This would've been completely radical. It's a radical invitation into a new relationship with God.

Made possible only through Jesus. Amen. So what does it mean for us to call God Father? What is it that we see in the life of Jesus that gives true meaning to a term that's been abused by so many? Now, the list is probably endless, but I'm gonna draw out three aspects of God's fatherhood. Now, we could exhaust this list.

We could probably spend months on this, but I'll just bring out three aspects. The first one is intimacy. We approach a loving parent, not a distant deity. As I said before, the Jews of Jesus Day, they stress the sovereignty and transcendence of God. If you ask where God is, God is up there and God is above all, he is Lord, and he is almighty.

He is the sovereign Lord God Almighty. What we see in Jesus is a God who draws near. God's people go from a relationship with him that is a distant corporate experience to an intimate one-to-one bond. I want you to get this. He is the father of the nation. He's the father of Abraham. He's our God. But in the New Testament, what we see, he's not father in a corporate sense.

He is father in individual, intimate, one-on-one sense.

This is good news. Now, we heard in our reading that the spirit testifies with our spirit. I want you to get this. This is great in our reading. The Spirit testifies with our spirit that we are God's children, and that from the spirit flows this impulse to reach out to him and cry. Abba. Father, you know what I'm talking about?

Those moments where you feel this impulse from the spirit where you can't do anything but cry out. Father Abba Daddy. And the spirit, you know, is producing this in us. You know, God, the Spirit will produce this in us to reinforce that God the Father longs to have intimacy with us. Can I tell you, we've been adopted for this very purpose.

Your adoption to sonship is for the purpose of intimacy. God wants to have a relationship with you. That's what we see. A second aspect of fatherhood is access. We don't need to impress God to earn a hearing. He invites us close. You know, it's sad but true, very sad, but true that some children struggle to get their father's approval.

I pray it wasn't your experience. For some children, they can struggle to get dad's approval. No matter what they do, they're not good enough. They can never live up to the standard set for them. And know, interestingly, this is something Bruce Springsteen spoke about in his autobiography, born To Run. He talked in depth about his father's disapproval and how he felt.

I never could meet the expectations that my father had for my life. You wanna be a musician son? Why do you wanna throw your life away with something so frivolous? I could never live up to my father's expectations. He says. Now he may have later referred to himself as the boss, but growing up he was anything but.

I want us to get this. Jesus could teach us to pray our Father, because he knew that our acceptance was based on him. Your acceptance to God the Father's, not based on you. It's based on him. The Son of God makes our sons and daughters of God. You probably remember the story at his baptism. He heard the voice of the Father.

You are my son, whom I love with you. I am well pleased. Can you hear these words spoken over your life? Can you hear God speak these words over you? Can you accept that God the Father loves you? Now, if you're sitting here and you are worrying about whether you'll ever be good enough, can I tell you? You won't be.

If you were wondering, will I ever be good enough to be accepted by God the Father, just accept the fact that you won't be. Your adoption is an act of grace. It's grace. Do you know I used to beat myself up spiritually and physically. I'd fall and then I'd turn on myself. You ever done this? I'd turn inwards.

I'd turn on myself and I'd tell myself, I'm a worm. I'm a maggot. There's no way God could love me. What I've had to understand is whatever the depth of my sin, my acceptance in Jesus is far, far greater. We've gotta understand grace. It's good news. Understand what it means to be in Christ. That that word in is the biggest word in the entire New Testament.

You are in Christ. When God sees you, he sees Jesus. And can I tell you, Jesus is worthy.

Amen. Are you with me? I hope your silence is just, you know, reflecting and mediating on these wonderful truths. Now, lemme bring this once more back to our reading from today. Paul said that the spirit you receive does not make you a slave again to fear. Let me tell you, any voice that says you are not good enough or not worthy is not from God.

God gave us a spirit that testifies to our adoption of sons and daughters. We don't come as beggars groveling for his approval. What we do is we come as beloved children. It's not about fear and performance. It's about relationship and trust. You can pray ABA Father, because in Christ you have been accepted.

So the heart of the Christian faith, the good news, a third aspect. A fatherhood is love and care. A good father knows the needs of his children and he does delight to provide. But let me, let me offer this caveat. Sometimes that provision will not be something material. It may instead be the gift of his very presence.

I like this story from Douglas Connolly. He writes, when I was about 15 years old, our family visited some caverns in Pennsylvania. At every stop on the tour, the guy droned on and on about steig mites and rock formations. Well, I just wanted to to rush ahead and see what was next. At one point, I left the lecture and moved ahead on the trail.

What I didn't know was that the guy was about to turn off all the lights in the caves so we could experience absolute darkness. When the lights went off, I was so frightened. I opened my mouth to let out a scream. At that moment, a hand touched my shoulder and a familiar voice said, Doug, I'm right here.

My dad had seen me walk away and had followed. It felt dark, but I felt safe in my father's care. We need this reassurance that we can cry out Abba. Father, when we feel trapped and alone in absolute darkness, can I tell you, Jesus is the light of the world and following him, there will be times. There will be times when we feel that we are alone and in absolute darkness.

Amen. It happens. Thank me. It happens. Those are the moments where you need to trust that you can cry out to Abba Father and you can pray. Lord, draw me, Nia, I want the assurance of your presence. You know, the only time Jesus didn't pray, my fathers when he prayed Psalm 22 on the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?

Now. At that moment, Jesus might have felt alone and in absolute darkness, yet he knew that he had not been abandoned. His final prayer before he died was Father. Father, into your hands. I commit my spirit. He knew that despite feeling abandoned and in absolute darkness, that he was not alone, and that the father was there to receive him.

Can I reassure you? You can rely on the love and care of your heavenly Father even in your darkest moments. Even if it's a dark moment, self-inflicted by sin, call on him. And remember, Jesus taught us to pray. Our Father, our Father, our Father, not my father, but our father. Prayer may be personal, but it's never individual.

We belong to a family of faith. Amen. So none of us should ever be alone in our struggles and petitions. We're called to bear one another's burdens. Now, let me wrap up this first part of the Lord's Prayer. By saying this, Jesus taught us to pray our Father in heaven. The heaven part acknowledges that yes, God is up there and yes, God is above all.

At the heart of the universe is the God who holds ultimate power and authority. Now, this is something that the Jews of Jesus Day believed. The Father part acknowledges that at the heart of the universe is a God who is ultimate love. Just think about that at the very heart of the entire universe that sustains all things is a God who was ultimate laugh.

And this is something radical that comes to us in Jesus. So when you pray, not if you pray, but when you pray, begin by reminding yourself, I'm coming to my father, and can I tell you? It doesn't depend on how spiritual you feel. It is based solely on your adoption in Christ. Now the title of our message today is Intimacy and Awe, knowing God as Father and King, and so we've looked at intimacy.

Let's shift our focus now to awe. Now, as I said, the early Christians, the Jews, they revere God. And for the early Jewish Christians, they pick up this tradition. Having a proper aura of God was probably easier for them than understanding their intimacy with God. But unfortunately for us, the pendulum in our day, I think has swung to the opposite extreme.

That's not uncommon these days to see stories of people engaged in all sorts of sin. Now, usually sexual, you see guys on the internet, they're going out, they're sharing the gospel, they'll encounter people trapped in all sorts of perversion. And when confronted with claims about God in the Bible, they'll respond by saying that God is love.

God is love. And what they mean by that is God's, you know this. He's this great big celestial teddy bear who dotes on me unconditionally. He's too, he's too loving and kind to punish me for my sin and all this. Talk about repentance and sin. That's intolerance. You know what I'm talking about? That's the spirit of our age.

The ultimate sin in our culture today is actually intolerance. Don't talk to me about repentance and sin. God loves me and accepts me just the way I am, and the most important thing I can do is to also accept who I am. I don't need to change. God made me this way and God loves me as I am. That's what you hear in the marketplace today.

That's the perception of God in our secular Western culture. It's a God created in our image. Now here what I'm saying in all of this, God is not king in this equation. To, hello, God's name is to let God be God. That's what it means to Hello God's name. We accept who you are. You are God. We let you be God.

I like this from Paul, David Tripp. He says, if I'm ever going to worship and serve God, I need to be rescued by grace from the worship and service of myself. It's not Hello be my name. It's Hello Be Thy name. Eugene Peterson, who wrote the message Translation of the Bible, he said, life's basic decision is rarely, if ever, whether to believe in God or not, but whether to worship or compete with him.

We're all worshiping something. We're called to Hello, God's name. Now we know the phrase familiar. I always struggle with this one. Familiarity breeds contempt. You know the phrase, that's our pendulum swing. Having accepted this invitation to know God as Father. The challenge for us is to not become so familiar with God that we lose this proper sense of awe and reverence.

Yeah. Now this opening line of the Lord's Prayer, I said yesterday to the prayer group, it presents both a comfort. God is Father, and it presents a challenge to let God be God. It's a comfort. And a challenge. We're called to know God as father and we are called to submit to him as king, or there's that word submission.

I want no higher authority, but myself. The Lord's press is, that's not where you begin. Now I want you to see something here. Jesus teaches us to address God as father and then tells us to pray that his name be hallowed. The first thing we ask for in prayer is not God bless me. It's not even God help me or God save me.

The first thing we should ask for in prayer is that God will be seen as God and exalted throughout the earth. That's the priority Jesus gives us. Are we okay with this? Prayer is not first and foremost about getting something from God. It is first and foremost about giving something to God, the honor, praise, and glory, Jew his name.

I love this story from Tim Keller. It's from his book on prayer. He writes, years ago I was preaching on the Lord's Prayer and commented rather offhandedly that since adoration comes before asking for daily bread, we need to spend time thanking and praising God for who he is before we get to our list of prayer needs.

One woman in my congregation took this to heart and a couple of weeks later related what a difference this advice had made. Before she said, I would run straight to my prayer list, and the more I went through all the problems and needs, the more anxious and burdened I became. Now I've started spending time thinking about how good and wise God is and how many prayers he's answered of mine in the past, and when I now get to my own needs, what I find is I can put them in his hands and I feel the burden coming off me rather than on me.

It's amazing what can happen when we first take time to magnify God. Do you know what it means to magnify God? It means to make God big. Not that we make God, but sometimes we see God as small and our problems as big. If we start by magnifying God for who he is, our problems suddenly fall into their proper perspective.

Yeah.

True prayer begins with hearts ablaze for him. Hearts that are hungry and desperate for God to receive the glory and honor to his name. And when you start with that in prayer, what you'll find is this will motivate every other kind of prayer. We magnify the Lord, we make him big. And by making him big, we orient ourselves and our problems to him, and the rest will just flow.

That's why Jesus begins this way. Our father in heaven, hallowed be thy name now to Hello. Something simply means to set it apart as sacred and holy. Jesus is saying when you pray, you know, pray in a way that makes it clear that you actually reverence God. He's not a vending machine. He's not the slop machine.

Pray in a way that shows people you reverence God. In Psalm nine, verse 10, we read those who know your name will put their trust in you. Now, this is not saying that those who can pronounce the name of God trust in him, it's actually talking about those who know God's character and power. That's what it means by the name of God.

It's to know his being, his person, his character and power. Listen to these words from Exodus chapter 34. Moses goes up Mount Sinai after the incident with the golden calf, and we read. Then God came down in the cloud and stood there with Moses and proclaimed his name Yahweh, and he passed in front of him, proclaiming Yahweh.

Yahweh, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands and forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin. This is what it means to know the name of God we trust in his character. And in prayer, what we're doing is we're gonna, hello his name.

We're gonna praise him for being compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, and, and, and that's gonna produce in us this heart's cry where we just flow and, and cry out to him. Great is thy faithfulness. Oh God, my father, you know, the hymn. How many times have you wanted to, in spontaneity just burst into that hymn.

There is no shadow of turning in thee. I like the, the one we've been singing lately. You know, all my life you have been faithful all my life. You have been so, so good. That's the best place to begin. Prayer. Prayer should begin with heart. Set a blaze for him. Let me add a warning here. I'll add a caveat, a warning check the state of your heart.

The last thing we want is to mouth religious truths from our heart that has grown cold. Yeah. We don't just wanna talk the talk, we want it to be an overflow from our hearts. The prophet eyes said these words. These people come near to me with their mouth and on me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.

It's possible to praise the Lord to say the right words, but your heart is far from God. And Jesus repeats these very same words to the people of his day. Can I tell you, we don't want him to be saying this to us. We don't wanna just go through the motions. We don't want familiarity to breed contempt. I said it.

What we want is for our hearts to be set on him. We wanna stand in reverent awe of him, delight in him and give him the worship Jew, his name. I'm gonna close with some words from John Piper. This is something I shared just over two years ago here. John Piper asked the question, what is sin? Now in asking the question, his aim was to redirect our attention to the fact that sin is more than just the bad things we do.

Okay? Sin is not just the bad things we do. Sin is also the good and precious things that we neglect to do in which we fall short. Now I'm reading this for the purpose of us seeing what it means not to, hello the name of God, okay? This is what it means not to. Hello, the word of God. The name of God, Piper said, asks, what is sin?

And he says, the glory of God, not honored the holiest holiness of God, not reverenced the greatness of God, not admired the power of God, not praised. The truth of God, not sought the wisdom of God, not esteemed the beauty of God, not treasured the goodness of God, not savored the faithfulness of God, not trusted the commandments of God, not obeyed the justice of God, not respected the wrath of God, not feared the grace of God, not cherished the presence of God, not prized the person of God, not loved.

That is sin. This is what it means not to. Hello, the name of God and Jesus says, when you come to your father in prayer, I want you to flip this. Flip this script, invert it, okay? I want you to obey God's commands. Cherish his grace, love his person. Just reverse that. When you reverse that, that's what it means to pray.

Hello, be thy name. Now, as I said earlier, to help us pray during the week, I've put some daily prayer points in the friendly messenger. There's a lot there a lot from Psalm 1 0 3, which is a beautiful psalm of praise. David actually starts by commanding his soul to praise the Lord. Can I tell you often praising the Lord's not natural.

You have to command yourself to do it, and I want us to do that. And as I said, there's a lot there. We can split it over the next two weeks. So can I encourage you, let's begin to really become active in prayer. And remember the quote that I said last week when it comes to prayer. We wanna do what? Keep it simple, keep it real, keep it up.

And I'll also encourage you to keep connected. Let's pray.

God, you are a good, good Father. We are loved by you. Father, we thank you for this first line from a simple prayer taught to us by Jesus. This first line alone is so much we could spend so much time meditating on that, and I pray that we would. I pray that we would all come to see you as our loving, heavenly Father and that the spirit within us would cause us to cry out Abba Father.

But Lord, we also pray that our lips would not just honor you, but that our hearts will be set ablazed by you. Father, we want to be people who stand in reverent awe and worship you. We want to truly, hello your name, holy Spirit, lead us into this. We pray for the glory of Jesus, in whose name we pray. Amen.