Father’s Day 2002
Pastor
Scripture
There are two things that strike me as I listen to Jesus pray. First is his expression of the Father—Son relationship. It is a reciprocal relationship not a one-way relationship. They each glorify each other. There is clearly a dynamic relationship between the two that we can only glimpse at and wonder at the mystery of it all.
The second striking element is how Jesus defines eternal life. Eternal life is knowing God. Please notice that it is not just in knowing the father, as some people believe. It is also in knowing Jesus Christ.
He does not frame eternal life in the context of heaven and hell. Heaven and hell seem to be about punishment and reward in eternity. Although Jesus is the one who has told us almost everything we know about heaven and hell, it was not his emphasis. His emphasis was upon knowing the Father and Son. If you put the ideas of heaven, hell, father, and son together you come to conclusion that eternity is about presence and separation.
Think about how God went about
revealing to us “eternal life.” In the Old Testament
God did not give us much of an impression of an afterlife. Here are a few examples:
Ecclesiastes 9:10 “Whatever
your hand finds to do, do it with all your might, for in the grave, where you
are going, there is neither working nor planning nor knowledge nor wisdom.”
Job 7:9 “As a cloud vanishes
and is gone, so he who goes down to the grave does not return.”
Psalm 6:5 “No one remembers you when he is dead. Who
praises you from the grave?”
Psalm 30:9 "What gain is there in my destruction,
in my going down into the pit? Will the dust praise you? Will it proclaim your
faithfulness?”
“It seems quite clear that in most parts of the Old Testament there is little or no belief in a future life; certainly no belief that is of any religious importance. The word translated ‘soul’ in our version of the Psalms means simply ‘life’; the word translated ‘hell’ means simply ‘the land of the dead’, the state of all the dead, good and bad alike, sheol.”[1]
“Such a conception (of the disintegration of body and soul), vague and marginal even in Paganism, becomes more so in Judaism. Sheol is even dimmer, further in the background, than Hades. It is a thousand miles away from the center of Jewish religion; especially in the Psalms. They speak of Sheol (or ‘hell’ or ‘the pit’) very much as a man speaks of ‘death’ or ‘the grave’ who has no belief in any sort of future state whatever—a man to whom the dead are simply dead, nothing, and there’s no more to be said.”[2]
Somehow, the Jews gradually understood about eternity. “Judaism had greatly changed in this respect by our Lord’s time. The Sadducees held to the old view. The Pharisees, and apparently many more, believed in the life of the world to come.”[3]
The question is, why did God not speak more about eternity in the early days. In the Garden of Eden, why wasn’t there a stern lecture about heaven and hell? The absence of any such discussion in the Old Testament is surprising because the pagan world in which Judaism was living was filled with such discussion.
When you study Egyptian culture, you realize how preoccupied they were with the afterlife. Their whole system of life seemed to be an attempt to secure the well-being of the dead. To Egyptians, without a proper funeral, the body and soul could not reunite after death.
Careful construction of the tomb, elaborate preparation of the body, and offerings to the gods of death were standard fare.
Both the Greeks and the
Egyptians believed the soul had to cross a river before it could complete
its journey. Greeks put a coin in the
mouth of the deceased to pay the ferryman.
The ancient world around Judaism had a well developed theology of the
descent into the afterlife. In my book
on
The
dead seem to know the location of Hades less than the living, as several
entrances to Hades were known from all times (one of them is in Taenarum, another in Cumae; Odysseus arrived
to Hades navigating the stream of Oceanus). The souls
descending to Hades carry a coin under the tongue in order to pay Charon, the ferryman who ferries them across the river. Charon may make exceptions or allowances for those visitors
carrying a certain Golden Bough. Otherwise is this Charon
appallingly filthy, with eyes like jets of fire, a bush of unkempt beard upon
his chin, and a dirty cloak hanging from his shoulders. However, although Charon embarks now one group now another, some souls he
keeps at distance. These are the unburied: none may be taken across from bank
to bank if he had not received burial.
In the midst
of all these ideas, God had a reason for not revealing more to his people. I wonder if it wasn’t because God wanted them
to center upon Him and not upon what he was going to do for them.
This was the view of C. S. Lewis as he wrote about the Psalms:
“It is …very possible that when God began to reveal Himself to men, to show them that He and nothing else is their true goal and the satisfaction of their needs, and that He has a claim upon them simply by being what He is, quite apart from anything He can bestow or deny, it may have been absolutely necessary that this revelation should not begin with any hint of future Beatitude or Perdition.”[4]
Too much about heaven and hell centers the
religion upon ourselves. We would see God mainly as how we
obtain heaven and avoid hell. Too much on earthly rewards also centers religion upon ourselves.
“Worldly hopes… are not the characteristic thing about (Judaism).”Again, C. S. Lewis said:
“Century after century, by blows which seem to us merciless, by defeat, deportation, and massacre, it was hammered into the Jews that earthly prosperity is not in fact the certain, or even the probable, reward of seeing God. Every hope was disappointed. The lesson taught in the Book of Job was grimly illustrated in practice. Such experience would surely have destroyed a religion which had no other center than the hope of peace and plenty with ‘every man under his own vine and his own fig tree.’[5]
In the Old
Testament, neither heaven nor hell, nor worldly rewards were the main
focus. Our faith is to be centered upon
God.
Exodus 19:5-6. Now
if you obey me fully and keep my covenant, then out of all nations you will be
my treasured possession. Although the whole earth is mine, you will be for me a kingdom of priests and a
holy nation.'
I study his law in order to know him. It tells me about his nature and character. I read his word in order to know him. He talks to me. But even when he does not talk to me, I come to know him anyway, because his word reveals himself to all who want to know him.
Now we come back to
Fathers:
Poor fathering leaves a child centered upon himself. Aloof fathering makes a child wonder: What do they think of me? There is not even enough connection to allow the child to form a correct understanding of who he is.
On the other hand, angry fathering leaves a child wondering: How can I protect myself? In the case of abuse, I cannot protect myself, so I will stay safe by being nothing.
Whether I become insecure or hostile depends on whether I am inward or outward in my temperament.
Affirming parenting allows me to think about others. Successful parenting is when a child can think about something other than himself. He can think about ideas, about people, about events, without always worrying about himself or his pain. He can learn in school. He can meet people without an agenda. He can meet the world without all this internal baggage. He is not distracted by conflicting internal emotions.
Affirming
parenting best prepares us to know God for himself alone rather than for what I
can get out of him.
·
Our first knowledge of God is that he is there.
·
Then we discover that we do not have a
relationship with him.
- Then we learn that our sin keeps us from him because he is holy.
- We need his forgiveness and we want it because we want a relationship with him, as a child wants a relationship with his father.
My desire for God is based on a desire to know him. But if I spend my whole life thinking about me, how can I think about God.
When I preach like
this, I do not want to minimize heaven and hell. Nor do I want to minimize the wonderful
things God does for us. Rather, I want
to bring us to the foundation of faith which is to know God and to be known by
him.
The best example or illustration we can have of fathering has to be the Heavenly Father. With him, it is not about what he can do for us. It is about his presence in our lives. If I have the father, I have everything about the father as well. However, if I only look for what my father can do for me, then where does that leave the father? The father is not a paycheck. Every father is more than happy to be a paycheck, but it comes with the guy. It cannot come in place of the guy.
If all you want from God is the paycheck of
forgiveness of your sins and an escape from hell, God will provide it. On the other hand, if you know the Father and
the Son you will have eternal life that happens also to include heaven.
Jesus looked toward heaven
and prayed, ‘Father, the time has come.
Glorify your Son, that your son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people
that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now
this is eternal life; that they may know you, the only true God, and
Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”