p. 7 | OUR FATHER

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Sep 17, 1902

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 28, No. 38.

“OUR FATHER.”

Thus Jesus taught His disciples to pray to the great God of heaven. The very expression gives the lie to all the heathen conceptions of God. He is not a tyrant of whom we hear, but never wish to see except afar off. He is not a cruel monster whose hellish wrath must be placated by gifts, offerings, and sacrifices. He is not so high and lifted up that we must obtain access to Him only through numberless intermediaries of varying degrees. He is not abstract essence or force.

No, God is a Father. The child can go to the father, even tho he is a king. He can climb upon father’s knee, look into father’s eyes, rest his head upon father’s breast, and feel the beating of the strong, sympathetic, loving heart. He can tell father his troubles, and know that his story will be heard. He can lay before father his needs, and he knows that if possible they will be supplied. He can speak to father of his ambitions, his desires, his victories, and find a sympathetic and helpful listener. Yea, more; if he has sinned, he can tell this to father and find forgiveness and strength.

All this is true of the kind, true, noble, earthly father. Is it not pre-eminently true of God? Whence did every father, any father, obtain even one excellence which he possesses?—Was it not from the great Creator, “the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ?” Will the great Father withhold from His children that which He has given to earthly fathers to impart?

No earthly father excels in everything. One is pre-eminently noble, one intellectual, one generous, one wise, one sympathetic, one strongly religious, one brave. Some earthly fathers have some of these qualities combined in a large degree. But God has them all, pre-eminently, in sublime, associated beauty. He is the One altogether lovely and good and just and wise and noble. He has every quality of good in its utmost perfection. Surely, then, if we admire and love earthly fathers because of their qualities of heart, how much more should we love God. If we can go to them in confidence because of these qualities, how much more ought we to go to Him! Has He not assured us—we who are sinners—that “like as a father pitieth his children, so Jehovah pitieth them that fear Him. For He knoweth our frame; He remembereth that we are dust.” Ps. 103:13, 14.

But more than this: Jehovah is “our Father.” He is not alone the Father of Jesus, or of Adam in his sinlessness, or of Moses in his faithfulness, or of Elijah in his loyalty, or of Paul in his devotion. He is our Father if we will but believe, however small we are in earth’s eyes. Isa. 57:15. He is a Father to whom we can go, with whom we can come into touch. Tho invisible to us, because in our mortal state of sinful imperfection His glory would destroy us, He has not left Himself without witness. He sent His only-begotten Son, to live God’s life in the flesh that we might know and see God’s goodness. But all that Jesus revealed of the glorious qualities of perfect goodness were but the revelation of the character of “our Father.”

He is a personal Father. He has a personal presence. He is not some great abstraction, as formless as chaos, which creeds of philosophic heathen origin have endeavored to explain as without body or parts. Not so does God represent Himself in His Word, and He does not tantalize His children. We can never understand all that He says, all that He means, for He is infinite and we finite. But what we can understand is not intended to mislead. “Our Father” is a personal being, the very center of the great universe, ballasting its shining orbs, and guiding its retinues of suns, yet noting even a sparrow’s fall. From Him, Jehovah, the personal God, “our Father,” pulses out to all parts of His creation His own life currents, bringing Him into constant touch with every living creature.

Then, dear soul, go to Him as your God and your Father, personal, omnipotent, omnipresent, infinitely loving, more real than any earthly father can be, and He will comfort your hearts in Christ Jesus.