I Believe in God the Father Almighty

by Dave Wilkinson

Jeremiah 18:1-11, Matthew 6:28-30, 7:11

September 2, 2001

I would have written the Bible differently. That's because of where and when I live. To the mind of many modern people there is a hole in the Bible. The Bible is the supreme religious book. But the Bible never makes any attempt to prove the existence of God.

This is because most everyone at every time throughout history has had some form of religious faith. Atheism is the position you have to argue yourself into. It's not the natural human state. We'll talk about this more beginning next Sunday in my new adult class on "Know Why You Believe."

Now yes, Psalm 53:1 says: "The fool says in his heart that there is no God." But that is not seen as atheism. The idea in the Psalm is that a fool says that "there is no God who sees and cares what I do so I can live my life any way I choose."

The fool of Psalm 53:1 is not the intellectual fool. That is a modern phenomenon. He is the moral fool. He doesn't deny the existence of God on intellectual grounds. He denies the involvement of God because he wants to avoid the commandments of God. As C. S. Lewis described his own attitude before he came to Christ, "I did not want there to be a God. For I did not want to be interfered with and God struck me as the great, cosmic interferer." In the same way, the fool's ignoring of God is not from mental despair, but the result of wishful thinking.

The biblical writers did not feel the need to prove the existence of God. To them God's existence is too vividly experienced, and God's action is too right out there for any doubt to arise.

This is why the Bible gives you no salvation points whatsoever for intellectually accepting the existence of God. That is the human norm. And as James 2:19 reminds us, the demons know very well that there is a God. All that information does is make them tremble with fear.

True saving belief in God is much more than head acceptance. We talked about this in the meditation on the phrase "I believe." Belief also means heart acceptance or trust. And it leads to what what John Wesley called "pocketbook faith" which is obedience.

Faith is more than knowledge. The Apostle's Creed does remind us, however, that there is definite, solid content to the God we trust. When the Creed speaks of God, it means "the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1 Peter 1:3). It is not dealing with some philosophical ideas of God but with the God who revealed himself in Scripture and supremely in Jesus Christ.

I read about a small Catholic boy who told his parents that God is their parish priest. His astonished parents asked: "Why do you think that?" "We say it every Sunday. I believe in God, the Father O'Mally."

It's not O'Mally. It's almighty. "I believe in God the Father, Almighty."

Now in the Old Testament, God is the God of total, unrestrained authority. A typical picture is the image of the potter as Jeremiah saw him at work If the clay assumes the wrong shape, the potter simply squeezes it back into a lump and starts over again. The clay has nothing to do with it. The clay has no voice. The potter can make or mar it, alter, change, obliterate it, as he wishes. "O house of Israel," says God, "can I not do with you as this potter has done?' God can pluck up and break down and destroy, or build and plant, just as He wishes and wills.

That's what is meant by almighty. But in a way -- just by itself -- that is a terrible picture. For at the back of it there is the idea that in the divine authority, people can be treated as things. It suggests that the person has no more rights in the eyes of God than the clay has in the eyes of the potter.

This picture of a God will certainly produce awe and reverence and fear. It may lead to submission and acceptance and resignation. In other words, it could produce Islam. But this picture, by itself, could not possibly produce love. It could not produce Christianity.

Christianity requires the second word along with the first -- that God is also the Father. We need to keep Almighty and Father togther. Yes, He is the potter. But He is also the Father who delights in a relationship with His clay and eagerly listens to its voice.

Do you remember the pot bellied pig craze of the 1980's? People shelled out thousands of dollars to own one of these exotic house pets imported from Vietnam. We had one that lived down the street.

The breeders claimed these mini-pigs were quite smart and would grow to a weight of only forty pounds. Well, they were half right. The pigs were smart. They could be trained to walk on a leash, do tricks, and use a litter box. But they had a tendency to grow to about 150 pounds and could become quite aggressive.

What do people do with an unwanted pot-bellied pig? Pig roasts are not the answer. Their meat is tough, stringy and marbled with fat. Besides, they're pets.

Fortunately, Dale Riffle came to the rescue. Someone gave Riffle one of these pigs, and he fell in love with it. The pig, Rufus, never learned to use its litter box and developed this craving for carpets and wallpaper and drywall. Yet Riffle sold his suburban home, and moved with Rufus to a five-acre farm in West Virginia. Then he started taking in other unwanted pigs. And before long, the guy was living, literally, in hog heaven.

In a few years there were 180 residents on his farm. They snoozed on beds of pine shavings. They wallowed in mud puddles. They soaked in plastic swimming pools and listened to piped-in classical music. They waited their turn for one of Dale Riffle's belly rubs. They socialized in age-graded affinity groups. And they never had to fear that one day they would become bacon or pork chops.

Dale Riffle told a reporter, "I think we're all put on earth for some reason, and I guess pigs are my lot in life."

How could anybody in his right mind fall so totally in love with pigs?

Well I'll tell you something even more amazing. An infinite, perfect, holy, majestic, awesome God is passionately in love with insignificant, sinful, sometimes openly rebellious, frequently indifferent people. God loves people like you and me. In fact, God loves us so much that He wants to adopt us into His family. And even beyond that, he wants us to call Him "Father." That's even beyond what Dale Riffle was willing to do.

Now when the Bible calls God "Father," it is describing relationship; not gender. The Bible does not say that God is male. In fact, the first thing we hear about God is that God created both male and female in His own image. Being female is just as much a part of the image of God as being male. But by calling God "Father," we celebrate the profoundly personal relationship between the Almighty and people like us.

The underlying theme of the Sermon on the Mount is simply this: You are not an orphan. You are the child of God, who relates to you as a loving parent. Listen to Jesus' words: "Why do you worry ? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you--you of little faith? --- If then, you who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask Him!"

Now Jesus is not saying that God is a cosmic Santa Claus who gives us everything we want. Jesus is saying that God is the loving parent who gives us everything we need.

And this God who is our Father is also the God who is almighty.

Some people have a problem with this word. Does it mean that God can make a triangle with four sides? Can He make a rock so big he can't lift it?

While it can be fun to explore these questions, especially if you're in 8^th grade, they don't have much relevance to this word as used in the creed. Lets look at some of the points being made.

First, we are reminded that all power and authority in this world derive from God. Rulers, governments and Christian leaders all derive authority from God and are responsible to Him for the way they exercise it.

Second, we are reminded that things that seem impossible for us are perfectly possible for God. Remember Gabriel's gentle chiding of Mary, as she expressed astonishment that she, a virgin, was to bear the Savior of the world: "Nothing is impossible with God."

Finally, remember that almighty does not mean capricious or whimsical. Scripture stresses the faithfulness of God. When God makes a promise, He keeps it. He will not suddenly change His nature and reject those who come to Him in faith and repentance. God has committed Himself to us, in word and deed. The fact that He is almighty doesn't mean that He can or will suddenly change His mind about this. In His power and wisdom, God has chosen to achieve our salvation and has committed Himself to us.

Almighty and Father. We need to hold the two together. And when we do we find that we have a powerful Father whom we can perfectly trust. What a great foundation for hope.