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The Nicene Creed: Our Father (Advent)

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Listen to this week’s sermon, The Nicene Creed: Our Father (Advent) preached by Pastoral Resident Kenneth Dyches from Luke 3:21-22.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt:

Hello everyone, this is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com. As I lead us in a prayer of illumination, asking the Holy Spirit to shine his light through his word on our hearts as we hear him speak to us this morning. Join with me if you would. Almighty God, you have revealed yourself to us through your prophets, through your holy word, and through the advent of your perfect Son. Help us now to see your glory and love through the reading and preaching of your word in Christ our Savior, we pray. Amen. Our scripture reading this morning comes from the gospel according to Luke chapter 3, verses 21 and 22. Now, when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened, and the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven. With you I am well pleased. This is God's word. Thanks be to God. You may be seated.

Pastoral Resident Kenneth Dyches:

Today we're talking about our heavenly father. And speaking of our heavenly father, about a year ago uh our family got every sort of illness, and so I was just sitting on the couch watching movies, and one of the ones I watched was King Richard. Now, King now Richard uh was a father, uh he is a father, uh, but he had a lot of his own faults, a lot of uh his own mistakes that he made. Uh but he was raising three uh daughters in Compton, and uh Compton was a place uh then that was had a lot of gang activity, uh a lot of poverty. Uh he himself uh was a security guard uh who worked nights, uh and his wife was a nurse uh who worked through the day. And so he was doing all he can, though, pushing through exhaustion, pushing through adversity to love his daughters well, uh to teach them, to help them to flourish, to help them with their studies. And he had a lot of knowledge about tennis. And so he would pour that into his daughters, taking time aside to go to the tennis court and to teach him them everything that he knew for their flourishing. One day when he was on the tennis court with his daughters, uh a gang came up to them and started harassing them, uh, catcalling uh his daughters. And so as they were leaving, he decided to turn around and ask them to stop. His daughters uh said it wasn't worth it, but he decided it was. And in the process, uh the gang beat him down, threw him to the ground, uh, beat him to a pulp. Later on, uh his daughters, when they were pushing through adversity uh to get to the highest levels of the sport of tennis, uh, they faced um being those coming from poverty in a sport that was known from those coming from wealth, as well as being uh black girls in what is predominantly a white sport. And looking back on that time uh when he was beaten uh for standing up for them uh and talking to his girls, he said, When I was a little boy, I grew up in Shreveport. One day my father took me to town. He gave me this money to pay this white man for something. Back in them days, black folks weren't allowed to touch white people. So I went to give the man this money and I accidentally touched his hand and he started beating on me. He knocked me down. His friends came over, they all started stomping on me and beating on me. And I look up and I see my father in the crowd, and he took off running. Left me there with these grown men beating on me. Now, I haven't been no great daddy, but I've never done nothing but try to protect you. This next step you're about to take, it would, it would be hard for anybody. But for you, you're not just gonna be representing you, you're gonna be representing every little black girl on earth, and you're gonna be the one who gotta go through the gate. And I just never wanted you to look up and see your daddy running away. His daughters were Venus and Serena Williams, arguably the greatest women's tennis players of all time. And so we see here that who your father is and what he does for you can change your whole world. Venus and Serena experienced a father who fought for them, who valued them, who delighted in them enough to pour his whole life into them. And as such, they delighted in doing something that pleased them and seeing themselves through their father's eyes. I wonder how your father, how your parents have shaped your understanding of what makes you valuable, what you're capable of, and what makes you happy. How has what you believe about your heavenly father experienced and shaped your understanding of what makes you valuable, what you're capable of, and what makes you happy? J.I. Packer says, if you want to judge how well a person understands Christianity, find out how much he makes of the thought of being God's child and having God as his father. If this is not the thought that prompts and controls his worship and prayers and his whole outlook on life, it means that he does not understand Christianity very well at all. For everything that Christ taught, everything that makes the New Testament new and better than the old, everything that is distinctively Christian as opposed to merely Jewish, is summed up in the knowledge of the Fatherhood of God. Father is the Christian name for God. The fundamental problem, though, is that we were created to live through the Father's eyes, but instead we often live in light of an orphan narrative. An orphan narrative changes what we believe makes us worthy of love and delight. It's informed by a wrong understanding of who our Heavenly Father is and what he does. We try to find love and delight we were created for in the wrong ways. And what you believe makes you worthy or unworthy changes every relationship that you have. So, what do you believe makes you worthy of love? Some of you could give me the right answer, a Christian gospel answer, but I think how we live is a better measure. And so do you work late hours to make sure that you're not a failure because you're loved based on whether or not you succeed? Do you bend over backwards for others so that they'll never leave you because you're loved for how well you serve them? Do you accumulate material goods and measures of the good life, like a nice house, so that you can finally feel good about your life because you're loved when you have enough? Do you obsess over healthy eating and working out to make sure you delay death as long as possible and feel attractive because you're loved if those things are true of you? And do you s or do you spend hours a day curating social media to make sure you stay relevant because you're loved as long as you're relevant? All of these are insidious false gospels that have captured our hearts. Hearts that are empty and can only be filled by the delight of their Heavenly Father, who created them exactly for that, to behold his face delighted in them. So, what I'm talking about today is that we were created to live our lives through the Father's eyes. We were created to live our lives through the Father's eyes. And I have two points today. The first is who is your father? And the second is what does he do? Or, as it's been said elsewhere, who is your daddy and what does he do? If you know, you know. So the first point, who is your father? Go ahead and look at your worship guides and look at the Nicene Creed in your bulletins. We're gonna look through the first, just that first several lines. It says, We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible. So that first line, we believe in one God. That comes from Deuteronomy 6.4, which says, Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. So here we see two things. One, uh, we see who God is. He is the Lord, he is one, and that shapes our response to him, which is to love him with all of our heart, soul, and strength. When Jesus is asked the greatest commandment, he references this verse: to love the Lord our God with all our heart, all our soul, and all our strength. See, we aren't polytheists where we have a pantheon of gods who can change their whim and their will. Uh, we're also not pluralists where we kind of just take from whatever religion that we please or that we like or spirituality. Um, both of those things promote false loves. It's hard to know and understand what it means uh to uh receive the Father's love, to be adopted as a child uh when we have all of those those options. No, our God is self-existent, he's preeminent, and he's sovereign, right? Uh and you might hear that and say, okay, so we there is one God uh who claims sovereignty over all things, and he demands all of our hearts. That sounds domineering, right? Why would I want to worship a God like that? But if God is all powerful, if God is all good, right, then he created you. He knows what is best for you, and he's capable of giving you what is best for you, right? He is a good God and good father. And so as we give him all of ourselves, we receive in turn all that is best for us, all of his love. Which leads me to that second part, the Father. Isaiah 63, 1 says, You, O Lord, are our Father, our Redeemer of old is your name. Jesus' favorite name for God, the one he used the most, was Father. Oftentimes, when addressing the Father, he would cry out, Abba, right? This term of intimacy. God is not just our sovereign God, creator of all things, he is also our heavenly father. He's not just a God who is distant and watching us from afar, he's the God who relates to us intimately as a father relates with his child. We serve the God and Father, the one who is Almighty, or else Shaddai. In Genesis 17, 1 it reads, When Abram was 99 years old, the Lord appeared to him and said, I am God Almighty, walk before me faithfully and be blameless. And so we see here that God reveals himself to Abraham as the Almighty. When he covenants with him, he is the God who promises to bless Abraham and his family and to bless all the nations through him. He is restoring humanity who is sinful and apart from God, who cannot come to him on their own terms. He's restoring them back to relationship with himself. He's condescending as the Almighty God to do that, to promise to accomplish it. And not only does he promise that, but as the Almighty, he can make it happen. He can accomplish that. He can bring us back into the family of God and bless all the peoples through him. And then he's also the maker of heaven and earth. In Genesis 1.1, we see that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And then we also see that he stood back, he looked at his creation and he called it good. Right? God did not just create all things and walk away. Humanity and his creation wasn't an afterthought in his mind. No, he gazed upon it. He saw and knew his people and his earth and his creations and his animals, and he called them good. Right? God, our God is a God concerned with goodness and with beauty. And he, as he looks upon us, that makes us good and beautiful. And then finally, he is the creator of all things visible and invisible. So 1 Corinthians 1 16 says, For in him all things were created, things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities, all things have been created through him and for him. Right? So whether it's uh your thoughts or your feelings, uh, those parts of you you haven't even discovered yet, whether it's the things that we don't know about the cosmos or the things that we don't even know about our oceans, uh, whether it's uh economics and the uncertainty uh in our world uh or the wars or the natural disasters, our God is a God who's created all things. All things are for him, from him, through him, and to him. He is the creator of all things, and we can take comfort in that. And so you might be asking the questions, okay, this is a lot about who God is, who our father is, but you know, maybe you're asking, well, who cares? Like, what does this actually mean for my day-to-day life? Like, why is this important? Well, I think Elmo can tell us a little bit. So if you don't know who Elmo is, and you probably do, but he's a Muppet, right, from Sesame Street, a children's TV show. Um, and apparently he has a Twitter account. And so if you were to go, uh so a few, maybe just a few years ago, um, Elmo threw it out there. He said, Hey, uh, and you can just imagine Elmo saying this, you know, just checking in, how is everybody doing? And Elmo was not uh ready for this the response. Um people just poured out their hearts, they poured out their anxieties and their fears and their insecurities, and they were doing this all on Twitter. And so Elmo responded, oh, glad I asked. And then pushed people towards some counseling resources, right? Um so what is going on? Why why did people who were telling these these deep, intimate details about their life, why were they doing that with Elmo? Right? It's because we live in a world that uh responded to COVID, right? We live in a world of death and disaster. We live in a world where so much is uncertain and people need to be seen and known and loved, right? But so many people are not receiving that. And so they went to Elmo on Twitter. And so who is our father? He's the one before you, with you, and after you. He's the one we can always depend on. Right? My dad was always uh he had his own faults, but he was there at every one of my baseball games. Uh, he always showed up. He was always there early, he always helps me uh with all of my skills. And I didn't turn out to be a great baseball player, but I knew that he was going to be there. The father is the one who created you. Uh in the Psalms it says, He knitted you together in your mother's womb. So in every moment of every day, your heavenly father knows your every thought. He knows everything going on in your life. You are intimately known by him. He is the one in control over your life. This life is not a pass-fail. Like if you do the right things, then you're gonna be okay. No, God is in, he is the one who works all things for the good of those who love him. He's the one who holds your life, your destiny, your each step in his hand. He's the one who holds all things. Like I said, ordering all the things for the good of those who love him. So as we look at the world, all the uncertainty in it, it's not just devolving towards chaos. No, we live in a world in which the sovereign God holds all things in his hand and is moving them towards his glory and all those who are in, for the good of all those who are in him. And finally, he's the one who delights in you. He values you over all else, like no one ever could. It's true, unwavering, fulfilling, satisfying, life-changing love that's not just possible, but already present in our Heavenly Father. And our Heavenly Father, He has integrity between who He is and what He does, unlike anyone else ever could. So that leads me to my second point. What does He do? We've seen who the Father is. We know that we're created to live our lives through the Father's eyes. And so now we see what he does. Look with me at the text in Luke chapter 3, verse 21. And it starts with Now, when all the people were baptized, and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heavens were opened. Now that first word there, now, cues us in that sort of some context that we should be paying attention to in the passage. And so what we see is John the Baptist, who had come before Jesus to point to him, was inviting people to come and to be baptized, to acknowledge their sin, to acknowledge their iniquity, to acknowledge their need for cleansing in order to come to God. Now the Jews were expectant because of the prophets of a Messiah that would come and that would save them, right? That would restore them back to right relationship with the Father. And they knew that that was because of the promises given to Abraham. And so they come to him and they say, We have Abraham as our father. We know that we're gonna be inherit the kingdom. And he says, No, no, no. And throws the diss at them, right? God can raise up children from these stones. He doesn't need you. No, what you need to do is recognize that you have been relating to God wrongly. You have not been receiving his delight and his love. You need to come and be cleansed of your sin, turn away from it and turn to God. And then he says, and I am just baptizing you with water, but there's one to come who will baptize you with the Holy Spirit. Now you might be sitting here and saying, like, okay, well, I've been away from the church for a long time. I've come back today or in the past few months. Uh does this apply to me? Or you might be saying, I don't know, like, I just don't know if I'm worthy to come before God. Am I in a good place to come to my Heavenly Father? But we see in this passage, Luke, the two types of people he names are tax collectors, who are people who grew up in the religion, who grew up as Jews, but were now serving the state of Rome, right? Who had been largely cut off from the people of God, uh, and then soldiers. And so these are people who are on the fringes of society that he's inviting to come in and be baptized into the people of God. Right? This message is for all of us. And he's also speaking to Jews, right? As I just said, he's inviting them to lay down. He said, You think you know the God that you worship, right? You know the scriptures, you know God's promises, and yet I'm telling you, you need to turn from your sin. You need to be cleansed, you need to come to your heavenly Father. And so then that leads us to Jesus. Now, Jesus here is coming to be baptized, but those who are coming to be baptized were being were coming to repent of their sins. So that should lead us to ask the question, is Jesus in need of repentance? Well, certainly not. None of the scriptures or the gospels talk of him that way. Instead, John the Baptist actually says that uh this is the Lamb meant to take away the sins of the world, right? So he was spotless. He had nothing to repent of. So why is he being baptized? Well, we see it in the text. It says, when all the people were baptized, and then, and when Jesus also had been baptized, right? So as all of the tax collectors, as the soldiers, as the Jews, as all who had come and acknowledged their sin and inequity, their need for cleansing in order to restore the relationship with God, as all of them were baptized, Jesus along with them was baptized. And it's not until all of those are there present with Jesus that the Heavenly Father tears open the heavens and speaks. And that word uh for speak, uh, it's um It's a word in the Greek that essentially is audible, right? So this isn't just like this kind of visceral moment where people are having this kind of weird, you know, psychedelic dream. That God is speaking to his people. And notice also when he speaks, he's speaking to Jesus, who has not yet done his ministry. He has not yet died and been raised. He hasn't done the work he came to do yet. And yet the heavenly father speaks to him and says, You are my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. And so Jesus, God is not speaking these words over him because he's earned them. He's speaking them because Jesus has chosen to identify as his child along with his people. And the Father is speaking this as Jesus is doing that, meaning that these words are not just for Jesus. He is speaking them to Jesus, but he's speaking them to him in the context of this crowd that was just baptized with him. He's speaking so that all there can hear, this is yours in Jesus. These words are for you. And New City, these words are for you. You are my beloved Son. With you I am well pleased. These words are for those who identify as the children of the Father. So we can move out of our orphan mindset. We can let go of our other loves, and we could submit all things to the Father who loves us, not because of what we've done, not because we're in the right place, not because we're doing the right things, but simply because we choose to identify in his Son, Jesus Christ. And it's important that we hear these words spoken over us. We were created, our hearts were created to receive those words from the Father. If you're like me and you've grown up yearning for a Father to speak those words over you, then you'll identify with my experience in college. I had a mentor who was discipling me, and we would normally go over the scriptures and prayer and the Christian life. But one day he sat me down and said, Kenny, I need you to hear something. It's like, okay. And uh he just looked me in the eyes and he said, I love you. And in that moment, I started weeping. I didn't understand why in the moment. But looking back, I realized I was created to have those words spoken over me. And when he when he did that, the father was using him to speak adoption into my life, to say, You are my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. In that moment, my orphaned heart began to receive healing because of it, because I received from my father what my heart yearned for, and what all of our hearts yearned for. And we see that in verse 22, which says, And the Holy Spirit descended on him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came from heaven. You are my beloved son, with you I'm well pleased. That word beloved in the Greek is pertaining to one who is in very special relationship to another. Dearly beloved, valued and prized. Right? Jesus, uh, the father also speaks this uh over Jesus in Matthew 17, 5, the transfiguration. Here he speaks it straight to him and to all those in him. There he also says it to his disciples, saying, This is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. Right? The Father is delighting in his son, and this is how God loves. Right? The Father delights in us. He speaks that to us, he wants us to hear it from him. Uh and he also says that to others on our behalf. Uh, when we see the Father in the new heavens and new earth, we're going to receive glory. Right? The Father is going to look at us and declare all of the ways that we image him in glory. And of course, we will give that back to him. But he, that is how the Father loves us. In Ephesians 5, 1 and 2, we see how Paul calls often God's people beloved. He says, be imitators of God. Why? Because we are beloved children. Even when we seek to be obedient to God, we're doing that in the same way a child is obedient to their father, right? They're following their father, they're watching everything he does because they want to be just like them, because they know that they are beloved. They know their place. In Ephesians 1, uh Paul speaks of us being blessed in the beloved. It's as we identify in the beloved who is Jesus Christ that we receive every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places. If you want to experience love, joy, peace, security, power, wisdom, all of those things are yours in as you identify as the beloved in Christ Jesus, as you hear your Father take delight in you. And our Heavenly Father, it says in Luke 12, 32, Jesus says, It's your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Our Heavenly Father is not Santa, right? Santa who's always watching and only gives you presence, you know, determining if you're good or naughty or nice. That's not how our Heavenly Father operates. No, our Heavenly Father loves to give us good gifts to those who ask, right? If you aren't sure if you know God, our Father loves to give the Holy Spirit, his very presence, his very self, to those who ask. He loves to give the kingdom. He delights to give the kingdom and his blessing to all those who come to him in his son. It's like when I come home from work and I come in the door and my children run to me, right? They have the light all over their faces, and I pick them up and I twirl them around. We'll run around the house, we'll rustle. It doesn't really matter what we do because all they want is my delight in that moment. That's what they want. That's what they're looking for, to know I am beloved of Kenny, and I he delights in me for who I am. Oftentimes I'll tell my kids I'm proud of them after they do a great job at karate or at dance, uh, or if they do a good job cleaning things up around the house, which, you know, that's another thing. But I'll tell them I'm proud of them. But I've even in writing this sermon, I realized I want to be saying that more often before they do those things. So they know that they're beloved and I delight in them just for who they are. So as they do those things, they're doing it not in order to receive something for me at the end, but they're doing it because they just know that I delight in them. I delight in them being who they are and who they've been created to be. And so some of you need to hear what I often hear. Every morning I'll do a quiet time and go through the scriptures. Um, and I'll ask you to spend a moment to ask the Spirit to reveal to me the mind of Christ. Uh to, in wisdom, help me to understand what God's will is for me, what he wants me to attune to. And almost every morning I hear the same thing. God bringing me back to this scripture. You are my beloved son, in whom I'm well pleased. He knows that I need to hear that every morning. And so, why do I need to hear that? Well, oftentimes, as an example, I'll come into the pulpit and I think to myself, if I do a good job today, I know I've got some job security. Uh maybe some people will come up to me afterward and say, that was a great sermon. You're you're a good preacher, you're a good pastor. Uh I'll feel like I'm succeeding and I'll and I'm doing well. But that's that's my orphan mindset that I have to come and do well in order to be received and accepted, in order to have value, in order to be okay, right? I think we all experience that in different ways, but it leads to anxiety and fear and lack of joy. Versus when I come into the pulpit and I know that no matter what happens, the Holy Spirit is speaking to you in your hearts. Uh, he's sovereign over this congregation, he's sovereign over me in my life, in my family, then this is just a playfulness with God. This is me participating with him in what he is doing. And God does the same thing with you in your workplaces, in your families, in all the places you live, work, and play. The Heavenly Father is inviting you to know that you are known and loved, that He's pleased with you, and to walk in that. In conclusion, Mark Twain says, the two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why. The last thing I'll point out in the text is that uh in Genesis 1, combined with John 1, we see that the Heavenly Father speaks all things into being just with his voice, but he does that through the Son, and we see the Holy Spirit dwelling over the waters. Here too, in this passage, we see recreation as the Father again is speaking. He's speaking to all those who are in the Son, and the Spirit dwells over Jesus. And so what we're seeing here is that God who created all peoples from nothing is recreating them in Jesus, and he's recreating them as those who can receive his delight and his love. Because we are all those who are orphans. We've all gone away in our own hearts. Uh, we all do this in different ways day to day. Uh, none of us are children of God except in as much as we are in the Son, the Son who knows what it is to be an orphan because he came down from heaven, right? He humbled himself to experience life here on earth, uh, to be pushed away by his own people, to be betrayed, uh, to go to the cross and die for our sins, taking our sins upon himself and experiencing the wrath of the Father as the Father turns his face away from him, so that he can die for our sins, that all who are in him would be cleansed, would receive that cleansing that we need, and be raised to life with him in newness of life as he defeats death for all who are in him, so that we can receive what Jesus received here, which is you are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Go ahead and pray with me now. Heavenly Father, you are a good God. You're all powerful, you're all-knowing. You created us in your image, you created us to do good works for your good purposes and to bring you glory. Lord, we thank you for that. And we also thank you that though we go away, though we are orphans, though we take our inheritance and squander it, Lord, though we are unworthy, you sent your son to come, to come and to bring us back home, to come and to put your ring on our finger and reclaim us as your children, to run up to us in delight and embrace us. Lord, help us to experience that. Oh Lord, we we surrender our lives to you. We surrender the lives that we believe in our orphaned mindset. Lord, speak that over us, speak it to our hearts in ways that we can hear. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.