Hey, hey, everybody.

I'm so glad you're here.

I want to give a shout out to Westco Rancho, to our audience, wherever they are listening, and I want to encourage you, if you have a Bible with you, there are two passages I want you to turn to.

Matthew chapter 26, verse 36 through 42.

And then also, if you can find 2 Corinthians chapter 4, verse 6, just one verse there.

If you don't have a Bible, they will be on the screen, but especially the Matthew 26 passage, you might want to circle some words, take some notes.

Folks, the next two sermons that I do are perhaps two of the most important sermons that I've ever delivered.

These sermons are heartfelt.

It's the culmination of a life's journey and trying to answer one of the most difficult questions that I think all of us face.

And it's dealing with the world in which we live and dealing with the sense of lostness, the sense of...

This meaningless that just hangs over our head, the reality of the world is not the way it ought to be.

We're not the way we ought to be.

And we did a series in the past series.

We continued to ask the question, but if you notice, we just kind of kept planting seeds, but we really never answered it.

And so in these next two messages, I really want to encourage you to lean in and ask God if it's something he wants to say to you.

And this could be one of those life transformational things.

I want to start by a couple of years ago, actually a bit more than a couple, when my kids were smaller.

You know how when your kids are small, you watch all the Disney movies and all the Jungle Books and everything, and you have to watch them all again when your grandkids come, which you don't mind because you reminisce about what it used to be like with your own kids.

But there was a particular movie that really struck me.

It was called The Little Princess.

It's a very emotional, visually imaginative adaptation of Frances Burnett's novel.

And the movie follows a young girl, Sarah Crew, whose father sends her to a very strict boarding school in New York City while he goes off to fight a war.

And just the way the writers in the script, it's heart-wrenching just the fact that this young girl has to be separated from her father.

The mother's nowhere in sight.

You're left to imagine this is a single parent.

She has a deep love for her father, and now she's going to have to separate from him.

And she can't imagine what life would be without her dad.

So.

At first, as she goes to the boarding school, she's treated like a princess, which is what her father always called her and convinced her that she is.

So her joy, her sense of self-worth, her significance, her greatest pleasures in her life are at home with her father.

But now her father's away, and then he goes missing in action.

And that's where the movie takes a sharp turn.

She feels, Sarah, feels alienated, never hearing from her father that she adores.

and the boarding school.

Begins to believe that maybe the money's going to run out to take care of her, so they start subjecting her to harsh labor.

And she's treated with disdain, anything but a princess.

She's ridiculed, she's abused, she's harassed physically.

And even though her attitude is to try to make the best of everything, to find little joys in the midst of all this sorrow.

You can tell as the movie progresses, there's this gaping hole that starts to form in her life that she doesn't know how to deal with.

And she starts to realize she may never see her dad again.

Now, as the movie continues to develop, and I don't care how hard your heart is, guys, I don't care how tough you think you are, you're going to cry in this movie.

You're going to cry.

The movie ends when Sarah realizes that her father is actually alive and is living nearby, but because of a war injury, he has amnesia.

So he's not even aware that he has a daughter.

Imagine, you're a daughter adored by your father, and now your father can't even remember that you exist.

Now, thank God, really, there's a good ending to the movie.

Sarah finds him.

They are reunited.

She's reunited with her real father in her real home.

And she's forever content and satisfied now as she rests in her father's arm.

And I want to tell you, no matter how tough you are, when it comes to that last scene, you're going to cry like a little baby.

You're going to weep.

And the theme really is that you're never going to be happy.

You will never be ultimately happy until you find your way home into the father's arms.

Now, I want to talk to you about something that is so subtle.

And again, I think this is a lifetime of ministry of talking to people and trying to figure out what's going on.

Because there's something that happens in all of our lives that is so subtle that you really never think about it, but it comes into play when it comes to your relationship with God.

We said in that entire series that we all know something's missing.

We know it.

Something is off.

Something's not right, and we know it, but we don't know what to do with it.

And so we go out, according to Ernest Becker in The Denial of Death, we go out, every culture does, and we try to suppress the inner voices of despair by one of three ways.

Remember what they are?

The romantic solution.

You tell yourself, if I can just find my soulmate, if I can find that significant other, then my life will have meaning.

If that doesn't work, you turn to the creative solution, which men are really guilty of this.

They go out and tell themselves, if I can just separate myself from the herd and the rest of these bozos.

and prove that I'm special, unique, and superior, then I will prove that my life has meaning and everything will be worthwhile.

And every culture has the third option, the religious solution, where we go out and say, I am gonna prove that I am righteous.

And if I am righteous and better than most other people, then I don't know what's after death, but I know that I'm gonna be safe and secure because I am far more righteous than everybody else.

And I employ what is called the religious solution.

Augustine.

Like Solomon in Ecclesiastes, tried everything under the sun.

Remember, that's what the book of Ecclesiastes is about.

And nothing worked.

And he came to this conclusion that is a very famous line that every pastoral student who's ever studied theology or been to Bible college or seminary knows.

Augustine said, you have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our souls are restless until we find our rest in him.

Now, what did he mean by that?

He meant that we are designed by God.

that the restlessness in us is an inner ache, a deep spiritual thirst for meaning, for love, for trust.

And we pursue futile substitutes that are destined to fail because they're not eternal and our soul knows it.

And true peace is only going to come just like the movie, when you find yourself at home at rest in the arms of the Father.

But here now, here now is where the major problem occurs.

And we underestimate it.

How do we find our way home to the Father?

And do we really want to go home?

Oh, this is the question.

Do you really want to go?

This is a major problem that most of us don't think about.

Imagine just for a moment, you're a young girl who's been sexually abused and controlled by your father for years, and now you're told that God is your father.

How do you view God?

This is years and years of counseling, folks.

When you tell a person like that that God is their Heavenly Father, Here's the first thing that comes to their mind.

Oh, God wants to control me.

He's just a more powerful version of my earthly father.

He doesn't truly love me or understand me.

There must be something he wants from me.

And he cannot be trusted.

And his love must be conditional on what I do or do not do for him.

Do you think she wants to go home to the father?

Maybe you grew up in a home where your father is stringent.

I mean, rules, rules, and more rules.

You obey them or the hammer drops.

Your father was just waiting for you to mess something up, and you feel that no matter what you did, it was never good enough.

And now you're told that God is your father.

The first book I wrote called Dinner with Skeptics, it became really a crash course in apologetics, but I did not set out necessarily to write it for that reason.

I wanted to tell the story of a woman I met in Australia who had been sleeping with numerous men through the course of her life because she was desperate for the approval of some man.

Because she could never get it from her father.

And so she ran away from Sacramento to Brisbane, Australia at 16 years of age.

And she invited me to a dinner to talk about God, but it really wasn't about God.

She wanted to make fun of God because she felt that God was just a glorified version of her father.

And that night, six hours later, she learned about the real God and gave her life to Christ.

That's what the book is about.

Now in her mind, her name being Laura.

When you talk to her over those six hours, she viewed God as the cosmic boss.

He's made his rules clear, and when you violate them, you're going to have to pay the penalty.

But the problem is, Laura believed, you're always going to violate them.

So if your acceptance before God the Father is based on your righteousness, who can be accepted?

Why would I want to run to a father like that?

Sometimes my mother would say, come over here, Jeffrey.

I'm going to teach you a lesson.

Come here.

And I knew that meant you're going to get a spanking.

And I chose to run usually, which made the spanking worse.

You know, back in the good old days when there was corporal punishment, your mother would make you, she'd give you a knife and she'd say, go out.

And I want you to cut a limb off the tree.

And I'm going to swipe your little legs.

You remember those days?

I turned out okay.

I think the point is, do you really want to go home to a God who is going to spank you?

That's how you view God.

Every time you go near to God, he's going to remind you of all your failures.

What about if you grow up in a home where you're very religious?

This is applicable to so many of you.

You're taught that it is important to engage in spiritual practices so that you can be assured of your own righteousness, goodness, and salvation, and therefore be accepted by God.

So when you were younger, you never missed worship, but not because you yearned to be with God and God's people, but as proof that you're righteous and acceptable.

You never missed prayer meetings when you were young or devotional times, but not because you were in pursuit of God.

But because you really believe that through these efforts, you'll be saved.

Since you do good things, God owes you a good life.

How do you view God then?

If you're like that, you view God as someone whose favor you can earn.

And when you're really, really good, he'll be good to you.

You're in what we call the performance trap.

You're trusting that the sacrifices you make religiously will turn away God's wrath and he will accept you.

So this is how you view all of your religious activity of your life.

Now, the problem with that is, do you really want to move close to a God who's ready to consume you when you misbehave?

See, you may not think consciously, outwardly about that, but it plays a huge role inside.

What if you grew up believing that God exists for...

Oh, this is a good one.

That God exists for you and you not for him.

That your God likes everything you like and hates everything you hate and always gives you what you want.

God exists for your purposes and you belong to a group of people or a church that has convinced you that God always wants you to be healthy, wealthy, and prosperous.

And if you behave, he'll always give you what you want.

How do you view God then?

As someone who can be manipulated for your purposes.

The problem is if you know you can manipulate God, that's not a God you're going to worship and serve.

that's a God you're going to manipulate.

And you're not going to move close to him in order to get to know him and experience him.

You're going to move close to him to manipulate him.

So because you've created God in your own image, hey, you know who you are.

You're weak.

And if you create God in your image, he's weak too.

You don't want to move close to a God like that.

I remember reading the story years ago of a painter, an artist by the name of Willy Osa.

He was a German artist who worked as a janitor.

in a church in New York at nighttime so he could paint and do his artwork in the daytime.

And the reason I read about his story is because one of my favorite authors, Eugene Peterson, who is responsible for the message, the translation of the Bible, became a good friend with Willie Osa.

And so he and Osa, Osa was an atheist.

He worked for the church as a janitor, but basically he was angry at God because he felt God should have delivered the Jews from German occupation and from the genocide.

So in his mind, God was a cosmic boss who made arbitrary decisions who could not be trusted.

One day, Osa, the painter, convinced Eugene Peterson to sit for a painting.

So Eugene Peterson was just going to sit there for hours, and Willie Osa is going to paint him.

And he started to paint hour after hour, day after day.

And the problem is...

that Peterson continued to ask for kind of a preview.

After he was halfway through the painting of this portrait, let me see the progress.

And Willie Osa would never allow him to do that.

And then one day, Osa's wife walked into the room.

And when she saw the painting, she said something in German that was translated like this.

This is sick.

You make him look like a corpse.

Osa was upset that the cat was out of the bag.

And he replied, he's not sick.

This is the way he's going to look when compassion is gone, when the mercy gets squeezed out of him, when he realizes God has no mercy or compassion and neither do his people.

In effect, many people have a similar portrait of God in their minds.

A God that is shaped, and this is very true of culture, but also true in church.

A God that is shaped not by scripture, but by their experiences with Christians, the church, suffering, philosophy, religious hypocrisy.

In fact, you may not know it, but your view of God is often born out of aberrant experiences or distilled from some radical philosophy.

And unfortunately, a person's earthly father can significantly shape how you perceive the heavenly father.

And that matters because that will determine how you move toward him.

If someone experienced the Father as loving, present, affirming, it's going to be far more easy for that person to imagine God as a loving and acceptable Father or approachable Father.

But if you experienced a Father that is distant, critical, harsh, controlling, unreliable, absent, then those characteristics can unconsciously project onto God.

You with me?

So a person may believe intellectually, as many of you would probably claim, that God is loving, while at the same time emotionally experiencing God as someone impossible to please, ready to reject you, and fundamentally distant.

My mentor, the person who mentored me for years, used to make this statement all the time.

He would say, the artist has painted a picture of God that may actually reflect the artist's own wounds and prejudices rather than who God truly is.

And so many see God as sharply...

Implacable hostility or hostile, devoid of any kind of love and mercy.

Others see God as an idea.

Secular philosophers reduce him to a single premise or idea.

Sociologists study him and pretend that he's some kind of cultural phenomenon.

Existentialists tend to squeeze him into some type of feeling.

But the picture that many have of God, most of us have of God's been tainted.

By your life experiences.

You see the conundrum.

Here's the conundrum.

I'm saying that we all walk around in desperation, quiet desperation.

We know something's wrong.

We know something's missing.

And then some pastor comes along and tells us, you're trying to plug the hole by things that connect.

never plug the eternal hole by temporary means.

And then he tells you that God is your father and he's the father that you're looking for.

And reconnecting him with him is going to give you the thing that your heart most wants or desires.

But here's the problem.

Here's what I found in ministry.

Number one, the picture of God you have in your minds is not one that you particularly want to move close to.

In fact, most people would rather keep their distance.

Taking your chance and hoping for the best because you think that moving too close to God might require you to give up something you're not willing to give up.

And he might, if you get too close to him, reveal something you're afraid to see.

Now listen, listen.

How does anyone even really know what God is like?

How do you know?

You don't.

Unless God chooses to reveal himself, you cannot know what he's like.

Remember, one of the ways that culture copes with the reality of death is by creating a religious solution.

Every culture comes up with their idea of God.

And then they come up with their ideas of requirements to appease God.

But the truth is, if God has not revealed himself, every cultural conjecture is equally valid, equally true, or equally false.

No one idea of God is greater than another idea of God unless God has revealed himself.

Now, here's the good news.

God has revealed himself.

One of the most powerful passages of Scripture is 2 Corinthians 4.6.

For God who commanded the light to shine out of darkness has shined in our heart to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ Jesus our Lord.

That passage is packed with a punch.

Light is the Hebrew idea of what is great, what is good.

Knowledge is the Greek idea of the sophist wisdom belongs with God.

Glory is the Roman idea.

All roads lead to Rome.

The glory of the Roman Empire.

And here's the apostle Paul who writes this, who is a Hebrew by birth, a Roman citizen living in a Greek city.

And in one verse, he says, all the light and the glory and the knowledge of God is seen in the face of Christ Jesus, our Lord.

So what that means is if you want to know who God is, the first part, the good news is you can know what God is really like.

The gods of all other religions and cultures are impersonal.

Do you understand that?

The gods of every other culture are impersonal and unknowable and are not meant to be experienced.

But the Christian God is unique in that he is personal.

He has personhood.

that before he even creates and he demonstrates his power, there is love in the relationship between God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit.

God is a God who is meant to be related to and experienced.

Okay, we're making progress.

If that's true, what's the problem?

Why do so few of us experience him in relationship the way that he seeks to be experienced and the way we want to experience him?

Because as you turn your attention to the Bible, there are four words that describe God.

And they're not comforting.

So here we go again.

In a way that we're supposed to be comforted, the intimidation intensifies.

Let me give you the four words quickly.

Number one, sovereignty.

He's the boss.

Remember in Daniel 5, Belshazzar calls in Daniel to interpret his dream.

And Daniel reminds him of what happened to Nebuchadnezzar.

And he says, he was driven away from people and given the mind of an animal.

He lived with the wild donkeys and ate grass like the ox.

And his body was drenched with the dew of heaven until he acknowledged that the most high God is sovereign over all kingdoms on earth and sets over them anyone he wishes.

Did you hear that?

You don't get into power unless God puts you into power.

How many of you think God's made some bad decisions?

This is what sovereignty means, right?

You don't get into power, and if you get removed, it's because God determined it's time for you to be removed.

Let me read it again.

Until he acknowledged that the most high God is sovereign over all kingdoms of earth and sets over them anyone he wishes.

Sovereignty can seem tyrannical when your life takes a turn for the worse.

I mean, the sovereignty of God is great while everything's going good in your life, right?

God is sovereign.

He's blessing me.

I love it.

But what happens when your life takes a turn for the worst?

I've often mentioned a professor of New Testament at Johnson University that I sat under for a couple of years.

And when you walked into this guy's classroom, I'm telling you, he had a white beard and white hair.

He looked like Moses.

You thought Moses was teaching a class on the New Testament.

And he was so gentle, peaceful.

Everybody loved Bob.

I mean, everybody.

Bob would come into the cafeteria and sit with the students.

And he just, you know, you just felt like when you're around Bob, you were almost like around the, you know, the burning bush.

You need to take your shoes off.

You're standing on holy ground.

And then Bob's niece was diagnosed with leukemia, and it changed him.

The first three months, he prophesied that God was going to heal his niece, and he just knew it.

He had no doubt God's going to heal her.

And the whole school prayed.

We all got involved, and we were so amazed at his confidence and his hope.

But she died, and it changed him.

He was quiet, didn't want to teach, didn't want to be around students.

And over time, over time, just walked away from God.

Now, if you're a golfer in the room, if you're holy and righteous, you are.

But you'll know where you were in 1999 when you heard of Payne Stewart's plane going down in South Dakota.

Payne Stewart was at the peak of his career.

He just won the 1999 US Open, defeating Phil Mickelson in the final round.

He had recently become a Christian thanks to Paul A.

Zinger.

How do you know that?

Because I read the book A.

Zinger that talks about his testimony to people like Payne Stewart.

The trajectory of his wife, Tracy, who's an Australian who married Payne, and Payne's life with his children changed, and they were looking for a totally different future, a Christ-centered future.

And six months later, he's traveling with four other buddies on his Learjet 35 registration N47BA, and it crashed into a field in South Dakota, killing everybody on board, and it was one of the strangest aviation accidents in U.S.

history.

They had taken off that morning from Orlando, Florida, bound for Dallas with Stewart, two other passengers, two other pilots.

And during the climb to about 39,000 feet somewhere, the aircraft apparently suffered a loss of cabin pressure, pressurization.

And the pilots, as a result, and passengers became incapacitated from hypoxia, oxygen deprivation.

And the NTSB concluded that the crew failed to receive supplemental oxygen.

Although the investigation could not determine exactly why the pressurization was lost, with nobody able to control the plane, the plane's autopilot continued to function, flying almost four hours and roughly 1,500 miles with everyone asleep, everyone dead, until finally, and by the way, if you remember, they set up F-16s to try to intercept the jet, and that's when they saw no signs of life inside.

And obviously, the Learjet ran out of fuel, entered into an uncontrolled descent, crashed into a field near Minot, South Dakota, 12.30, 12.13 p.m.

All six people died.

Now, if you follow that story, Tracy, a strong believer, the funeral was viewed by millions.

It took place in Orlando, Florida.

But I remember the statement that Tracy made, and it was this, what possible purpose could God have for allowing this?

See, sovereignty sounds good when everything's going well, but it seems tyrannical, like an oppressive authority when life takes a tragic turn.

And whether you admit it or not, there's a part of you, there's a part of you, I don't want to move too close to God.

I've read the book of Job.

And if I move too close, maybe he'll notice me.

And then maybe the potter and the clay, and maybe he'll want to shape and refine me.

I'll tell you what, I'm fine just to stay over here kind of in and out, unnoticeable.

But if sovereignty can seem tyrannical, What about the second word, holiness?

Seven out of every 12 references to the name of God refer to God's holiness.

German scholar Rudolf Otto says, God's holiness goes way beyond goodness into a tremendous mystery.

To never think an impure thought.

Who can imagine that?

My impure thoughts are usually interrupted by another impure thought.

God doesn't have any of those.

A.W.

Tozer, the fantastic theologian, says this.

Neither the writer nor the reader of these words is qualified to appreciate the holiness of God.

Quite literally, a new channel must be cut through the desert of our minds to allow the sweet waters of truth that will heal our greatest sickness to flow in.

We cannot grasp the true meaning of divine holiness by thinking of someone or something very pure and then raising the concept to the highest degree we are capable of.

God's holiness is not simply the best we know infinitely bettered.

We know nothing like the divine holiness.

It stands apart, unique, unapproachable, incomprehensible, unattainable.

The natural man is blind to it.

He may fear God's power and admire his wisdom, but his holiness he cannot even imagine.

I don't know why it is.

I guess I'm full of golf analogies today.

But every time I read that, I think of the first time I saw my PGA, the time that I saw my first professional golfer's event.

It was Pebble Beach, 1992.

And someone had got me a ticket to go watch the U.S.

Open.

I had never seen live golf like by professionals.

I had seen it on television, and I had played it with friends.

And in 1992, the bus dropped me off at Pebble Beach, and I walked to the first tee, and guess who was about to tee off?

You might know these.

It was Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Tom Watson.

I watched them play the first hole.

I was tempted to leave.

Do you know why?

Because I realized...

The game I had been playing was not golf.

Somebody, wouldn't you love to play a round of golf with Jack Nicklaus?

No, I wouldn't want to play a round with Jack Nicklaus.

You know how torturous that would be?

I find God's holiness like that terrifying.

Isaiah said, woe is me, I'm undone.

Peter said, go away from me, I'm a sinful man.

So if sovereignty seems tyrannical, holiness terrifies me.

Hebrews 10 says, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.

Man, if I move too close to God, I'm not sure I want to go there.

Do you remember the story I told you years ago about an article I read about an Italian truck driver who used to drive his truck all through Italy and he would stop at all the brothels on his way on his truck route?

Until one day a friend of his says, man, when you get up to this particular town and this particular place, make sure you go into that brothel.

Make sure you ask for this woman by name.

Her pleasures are the sweetest you're ever going to experience.

So he can't wait.

It's about a two and a half hour drive.

He's dropping his load.

And then he shows up at this brothel.

He goes in.

He asks for the woman by name.

He opens the door only to discover that woman is his wife.

The newspaper article said that it took five men to pull him off her as he tried to strangle her.

He was completely untroubled by his own duplicitous lifestyle, but when the tables were turned, he could not accept the horror of being a victim to his own philosophy.

As humans, we love the concept of holiness when we're right, but we're incredibly reticent to apply it when we're wrong.

We love the holy standard when we're able to point out other people sin.

But when they point out ours, we get defensive.

We don't want someone to expose the real us, and nobody can do that like God.

Why would I want to move close to God when he's got the goods on me?

My mother used to say to us, you just wait till your father gets home.

Do you know how torturous that is?

And you hoped that it would happen like an hour before he got home.

Because if you had to wait all day, imagine somebody saying, you just wait till God gets home.

Who wants to move close to a God?

Sovereignty seems tyrannical.

Holiness seems terrifying.

Then there's this whole thing, the third word, omniscience.

Which God knows everything.

Isaiah 40, who has understood the mind of the Lord or instructed him as counselor.

You can't give God instruction.

He knows everything.

Past, present, future.

He knows what you're going to decide to do.

He knows how you're going to live today and tomorrow.

He knows every approaching storm of your life.

He knows what you're hiding.

He knows every secret, every mystery.

He knows what you're planning, what you're thinking, what you're contemplating.

And worst of all, he knows your true motivation.

David said in Psalm 139, where can I go from your spirit?

Where can I flee from your presence?

I go to the heavens.

You're there.

I make my bed in the depths.

You're there.

If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me.

Your right hand will hold me fast.

If I say, surely the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me, even the darkness will not be dark to you.

The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you.

God sees everything I do.

I find that taunting.

There was a little boy once who was asked, who is God?

And this is his reply.

God is the one who is looking around to see who's having a good time so that he can put a stop to it.

If sovereignty is tyrannical, holiness is terrifying, omniscience is taunting, and then you've got immutability.

By the way, you know the saying, you can run, but you cannot hide?

Do you know who first said that?

Joe Lewis, the African-American boxer.

You can run, but you cannot hide.

How much more true is that of God?

He sees everything, and then...

Immutability, the fourth word, means he's never going to change.

And few things intimidate us as much as the inability to change something.

By nature, we are all manipulators.

To some degree, we like to change what we do not like.

But God is unchangeable.

You can't change him.

He's never going to change.

He's always going to be sovereign, holy, omniscient.

And nothing's ever going to be different.

Now listen.

You've done well.

Here's the cymbals crashing now.

I remember years ago reading the story about a little Indian boy who had never been to the cinema.

And his friends told him how great the cinema was, but they couldn't really describe what the cinema's like.

So he finally borrows some money, he's going to go to the cinema for the first time.

But he walks in, and he walks in the door where the screen is behind him, so the only thing he sees is the projector at the top.

And he thinks it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.

Look at that beautiful light and all the dust particles moving around.

This cinema thing is awesome.

And then his mind and his eyes keep turning, and then he catches the screen, and he realizes that's nothing compared to that.

Now listen.

This is what creation, the prophets, the teachers of the Old Testament were like.

Every way in which God spoke to man was like a beam bearing particles of the greater picture, like glittering rays of dust particles, numberless little specks glistening, until in one composite, splendor-filled picture, the light shines, and finally...

We know who God is, the fullness of God in the person of Jesus Christ.

Now, why does that matter?

Every understanding you think you have about God, the nature of God, the way God relates to you, has to come under the objective truth of Jesus.

It has to be scrutinized.

The only thing that matters is not what you've experienced in your life, not what culture tells you that God is like, Not.

not how you've created God in your own image.

It doesn't even matter what you think God should be like.

The only thing that matters is what is God truly like.

And the only way you can know that is if God reveals himself and he has.

And here's why that matters.

Go over to Matthew chapter 26 now and let's read what happens in the garden.

Here's what we're told.

Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane and he said to them, sit here.

Well, I go over there and pray.

He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him and began to be sorrowful and troubled.

Then he said to them, my soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death.

Stay here and keep watch with me.

Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, my father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me.

Yet not as I will, but as you will.

Couldn't you men, or then he returned to the disciples, rather, and found them sleeping.

He said, couldn't you men keep watch with me for one hour?

He asked Peter.

Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.

The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.

He went away a second time and he prayed, my father.

If it is possible for this cup to be taken away, unless I drink it, may your will be done.

When the disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray, how did he respond?

What's the first two words?

Do you realize you won't find that in any other faith or religious system?

Nobody called God Father.

In fact, he calls God Abba, Father, which is more like our English word, Daddy.

I have mentioned numerous times my father and the great sin of my teenage years.

And I did live with a stringent father.

I lived with a father who, these were the rules and you live under my roof.

This is the way things are going to go.

And I remember my 13, 14-year-old brother screaming every Sunday morning, I don't want to go to church.

I don't want to go to church.

And my dad said, you're going to church, son.

If you're 18 years old and you're under my roof, you're going to church every Sunday because that's what this family does.

And for a long time, I felt that my father was a bit rough until I did something that according to his rules, I couldn't live there anymore.

And then my dad moved beside me and I began to realize that authoritative rules that are not given arbitrarily, but out of the goodwill and goodness of the father's heart.

are not mutually exclusive from grace, mercy, kindness, and forgiveness.

In that moment in my life, I realized, listen carefully, this is so important, because the Bible goes to great lengths to communicate this.

I am in the family not because of anything I have done or not done.

I am in the family because my father brought me in.

And I remain in the family because I've been given a place that can never be taken away.

It wasn't earned.

It was given, right?

My father can be authoritative and genuinely loving, gracious, and forgiving at the same time.

These are not mutually exclusive terms.

And in that moment with my dad, I realized my father always wants what is best for me.

My father hurts when I make bad decisions.

But even when I make bad decisions, my father wants me to come to him so he can walk me through it.

And there is no limit.

I can mess up every day.

And at the end of the day, my father welcomes me back into his arms.

The father's love is the only place where the fire never goes out in the fireplace.

And in that moment...

In that one experience, I realized my father loves me, and he's always going to love me.

Because he loves me, he will sometimes discipline me to save me.

Because he loves me no matter what I do, he will welcome me home into his arms.

And if I lay crying at night, even if my tears are my own doing, my father always runs to comfort me because I'm his son, not because I've earned it and not because I've been obedient.

The father runs toward the suffering child regardless of the child's performance that day because he is his child.

The father's goodness means that I can trust his heart even when I don't understand his hand.

See, do you see that sovereignty is only tyrannical if it's unbounded by goodness?

But when a sovereign God tells you that every event of your life, he's going to take it, even the stupid things you do, he's going to take them all when you run into his arms and use them all for good.

I was on the airplane coming back from Chicago on Monday of some meetings.

I watched the two towers again, Lord of the Rings.

And near the end of the two towers, Samwise Gamgee gives a famous inspiring speech to Frodo about how the great meaningful stories of our lives are always filled with darkness and danger, but there's good in the world worth fighting for.

Here's what he says.

It's like the great stories, Mr.

Frodo, the ones that really mattered, full of darkness and danger they were.

And sometimes you didn't want to know the end because how could the end be happy?

How could the world go back to how it was when so much bad had happened?

But in the end, it's only a passing thing, this shadow.

even darkness must pass.

A new day will come.

And when the sun shines, it will shine out the clearer.

Those were the stories that stayed with you.

That meant something, even if you were too small to understand why.

But I think, Mr.

Frodo, I do understand.

I know now folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back, only they didn't.

They kept going because they were holding on to something that there's some good in this world, Mr.

Frodo, and it's worth fighting for.

Jesus cried out, Holy Father, submitting to the Father's will, knowing it would bring something beautiful, something so wonderful that no amount of pain would diminish its glory.

Sovereignty is not tyrannical if it's unbounded by goodness.

And holiness is not terrifying when it's tempered with grace.

I had the incredible blessing of having a father who did give us laws, but they weren't arbitrary.

They were for our protection.

His judgments were very fair and very clear, but most of all, his grace and forgiveness exceeded them all.

And you're told in Romans 5 that you have been justified through faith.

not through your works, that you have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we've gained access by faith and to this grace in which we now stand.

And that means that not only is sovereignty not tyrannical, that holiest is no longer terrifying because it's tempered with grace, it also means that omniscience, the fact that God knows everything, it's not taunting because it's always accompanied by mercy.

Sure, he knows everything, but he always forgives you.

He's got all the goods on you.

And it doesn't matter.

You're still in the family.

You didn't earn to be in a family.

You're a son and daughter because he declared you a son or daughter.

So on your worst day, on your worst day, you're his favorite son and daughter.

It doesn't change.

It can only change if you're there by merit, but you're not there by merit.

Lamentations 3 says, Because of the Lord's great love, we are not consumed.

For his compassions never fail.

They are new every morning.

Great is your faithfulness.

Hebrews 4, let us then approach God's throne of grace.

with confidence so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Do you realize, and we gotta do this because of time, do you realize that if we collected everything Jesus said about God, if he reveals to us who God is, Here would be the words in summary.

God is your father and knows what you need and wants to give all good things to you.

God hears your prayers and gives good gifts as he cares for the vulnerable, forgives, and seeks all that is lost.

God is generous and compassionate.

He sends rain on the righteous, unrighteous.

He feeds the birds, clothes the lilies, and knows human needs before they are voiced.

He forgives, is patient, and always welcomes those who return to him.

God is truthful, merciful.

faithful, forgiving, and has a special heart for the weak, poor, and abused.

God loves healing, forgiving, restoring, and setting things right.

His concern for sinners, outsiders, the poor, the sick, the socially rejected, and spiritually lost is beyond our human comprehension.

And this is the part I really like.

God is infinitely higher than humanity, yet astonishingly near.

Morally uncompromising, yet eager to forgive.

The judge of the world, yet the seeker of the lost.

A king whose power is expressed not only in authority, but in mercy, restoration, and concern for the least.

In other words, God would much rather forgive and restore than punish and isolate, no matter how many times you've sinned against him.

Have you ever read the passage that says, while you were still a sinner, God died, Christ died for you?

You ever stop to think about what that meant?

It's God's way of saying to you, you want to know who I am?

You weren't even reaching out for me.

You weren't even repenting and confessing anything.

You were apathetic toward my existence.

You weren't loving me.

You weren't even mindful of me.

And in that moment, in that moment, I loved you so much that I gave up what was most precious to me so that I would not lose you.

Folks.

Until you...

Now, like I said, there are two parts to this.

But until you see the Father for who he really is, not who you think he is, not who somebody taught you he is, not what culture, but who Jesus says that he is, and you're going to be bombarded with all kinds of false information until you see the Father for who he really is, that he's always for you on your worst day.

When you muck it all up, at the end of the day, he still wants you to win.

He still wants you to come out victorious.

Until you realize that, you will never pursue him with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength because you won't want to move close to him.

You've got to stop projecting your idea of God onto God.

God is your father.

And until that penny drops...

You will not be able to rehinge yourself to your creator's moorings in order that you can find your deepest satisfaction in him.

As long as you see God, look, you don't think I've done...

Oh man, how much time can we spend on this?

How many times do you think that I'm the pastor?

How many times do you think I go up in my office and I'm ready to pray and I remember something I did last Now, first of all, who brought that to my mind?

Yeah.

And all of a sudden, I lose interest.

Oh, I don't really want to talk to God.

God, and I'll mouth the Lord's prayer.

And I'll go back over here because I don't want to think about that in my mind.

You know what the problem is?

Disconnect between who God is because God said, Jeff, come on, man.

You don't think I know you mucked it up?

You don't think I know how weak you are?

You don't think I know you're not righteous?

Man, if you were righteous, you wouldn't even need me.

You wouldn't need the cross.

Now get over here.

I imagine God said, Get your bad self over here.

Until you realize that.

Romans 8, the spirit you receive does not make you slaves so that you live in fear again.

Rather, the spirit you receive brought about your adoption.

You're a son.

And by him we cry, Abba, Father.

The spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God.

God's children.

Can I ask you, dad, something quickly?

Would you do anything to protect your children?

Would you do anything that would bring ultimate harm to them?

Would you discipline them to save them?

Would you do anything possible to love and nourish and restore and forgive and prosper your children?

If your son or daughter abandoned you for years, but then wanted to come back, would you welcome them back?

And you know what?

You're evil.

That's what the Bible says.

Let me read it to you.

Luke 11, 13.

If you then are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?

Holy Spirit, what is that?

His presence.

His presence.

Granted to those who seek him, pursue him, draw near to him.

Until the penny drops.

You won't do what I'm going to ask you to do next week that changes everything until the penny drops.

Let me end like this because of time.

I'm going to end with this.

It's lengthy, but I can do it in about five minutes.

You okay?

You can do this.

Years ago, I'm a big fan of Phil Yancey, his writings.

He wrote a story years ago about a young girl who grew up in a cherry orchard just above Travis City, Michigan.

He says her parents had been old-fashioned.

They tend to overact to her nose ring and her music that she listens to and the length of her skirts.

They grounded her a few times, he says, and she sees inside, I hate you, she screams at her father when he knocks on the door after an argument.

And he says that night she decided that she was going to act on a plan that she had rehearsed many times.

She had visited Detroit only once before on a bus trip with her church youth group to watch the Tigers play.

And because newspapers in Traverse City reported lurid details of gangs, drugs, and violence in downtown Detroit, she thought, well, you know what?

That's the last place my parents will look for me if I run away from home.

California, Florida, but not Detroit.

Her second day there, she meets a man who drives the biggest car she's ever seen.

And he offers her a ride, buys her lunch, arranges a place for her to stay.

He gives her some pills that make her feel better than she's ever felt before.

She was right all along.

She decides her parents were keeping her from all the fun.

The good life continues for a month or two, two months, a year.

And the man with the big car, she calls him boss, teaches her a few things that men like.

Since she's underage, men are willing to pay a premium for her, so she lives in a penthouse and orders room service whenever she wants.

Occasionally, she thinks about her folks back home, but their life seems so boring now that she can hardly believe she grew up there.

She has a brief scare when she sees her picture printed on the back of a milk carton with the headline, Have You Seen This Child?

But by now, her hair is blonde.

She has so much makeup and body piercings that no one would ever recognize the girl on the carton.

After a year, the first sallow signs of illness appear, and it amazes her how fast the boss turns mean.

These days we can't mess around, he growls, and before she know it.

She's out on the street without a penny to her name.

She still turns a couple of tricks at night, but they don't pay much, and all the money goes to support her habit.

And then the winter comes in Detroit, and she finds herself sleeping on metal gates or grates outside big department stores.

Although sleeping is the wrong word, a teenage girl at night in downtown Detroit can never relax her guard.

Dark bands circle her eyes.

Her cough worsens.

And then one night, she lies awake listening for footsteps.

All of a sudden, everything about her life looks different.

She no longer feels like a woman of the world.

She feels like a little girl lost in a cold and frightening city.

She begins to whimper and cry.

Her pockets are empty.

She's hungry.

She needs a fix.

So she pulls her legs tight underneath her, shivers under the newspaper she's piled atop her coat.

Something jolts a synapse of memory, and a single image fills her mind of May in Traverse City, where a million cherry trees bloom at once.

God, why did I leave, she says to herself, and pain stabs at her heart.

My dog back home eats better than I do now.

She's sobbing, she knows in a flash.

that more than anything else in the world, she wants to go home.

It's the cry of the human heart to go home.

Three straight phone calls, three straight connections with the answering machine.

She hangs up without leaving a message the first two times, but the third time she says, Dad, Mom, it's me.

I was wondering about maybe coming home.

I'm catching a bus up your way, and it will get there about midnight tomorrow.

If you're not there, well, I guess I'll just stay on the bus until it hits Canada.

It takes about seven hours for a bus to make all the stops between Detroit and Traverse City.

During that time, she realizes the flaws in her plan.

What if my parents are out of town and miss the message?

Should I have waited another day until I could talk to them?

Even if they are home, they're probably written me off.

A long time ago was dead.

I should have given them some time to overcome their shock and think it over.

Her thoughts bounce back and forth between the worries and the speech she's preparing for her father.

They go something like this, Dad, I'm sorry.

I know I was wrong.

It's not your fault.

It's all mine, Dad.

Can you forgive me?

And she says these words over and over, her throat tightening, even as she rehearses them.

She hasn't apologized to anyone in years.

And when the bus finally rolls into the station, the driver announces in a crackly voice over the microphone, 15 minutes, folks, 15 minutes, that's all we have here.

She thinks 15 minutes to decide my life.

She checks herself in the compact mirror, smooths her hair, licks the lipstick off her teeth.

She looks at the tobacco stains on her fingertips and wonders if her parents will even notice if they're there.

She walks into the terminal not knowing what to expect, not one of a thousand scenes that have played out in her mind prepared her for what she saw next.

There in the concrete walls and plastic chairs, bus terminal in Traverse City, Michigan, stands a group of 40 brothers and sisters and great aunts and uncles and cousins and a grandmother and a great grandmother to boot.

and they're all wearing goofy party hats and blowing noisemakers, and taped across the entire wall of the terminal is a computer-generated banner that reads, Welcome Home.

Out of the crowd of well-wishers breaks her father.

She stares, tears quivering in her eyes like hot mercury, and begins the memorized speech, Dad, I'm sorry.

He interrupts her, Hush, child.

We've got no time for that.

No time for apologies.

You'll be late for the party.

A banquet.

is waiting for you at home.

Don't you see?

Don't you see that that is the heart of the Father for you?

No matter what you've done, no matter how bad it seems to you, even if you've done it every day for the last 40 years, sooner or later, you got to decide that you can trust the Father and come home.

Now, here's the key.

This is not just a one-time experience.

This has to become the posture of your life.

Every single day, over and over again, trusting and knowing that the Father will embrace you no matter how much you've mucked it up.

Because the ultimate home for which your heart is searching is in the arms of the Father.

Father, I pray this weekend you would take this message and it would serve as the precursor.

to the culmination and final answer of how our hearts can be fully and satisfied once and for all.

I pray if there's anyone in the room that's been away from the Father for so long because they think somehow they got to straighten up before they come home, maybe they come home tonight.

Maybe they come home this weekend.

Because until we come home, until the penny drops of who God really is, our Father, and we've been adopted in, we're not in this family because we're good or we earned it.

He brought us in through grace, and therefore by grace we remain.

Show us the way home to the Father that we may never leave again in Christ's name.

Amen.