January 12, 2024 • 30 mins
Using John Owen as a spring board, Pastor Eric reflects on the reality that the Father loves us an our need to meditate on this profound truth in order to find true and lasting joy.
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(00:16):
Welcome to another podcast fromFaith Baptist Church here in Visalia.
My name is Eric Norlick.
I am one of the pastors here in Visalia.
And it is my privilegeto host this podcast.
And today I want to do somethingjust a little bit different.
(00:39):
I am by myself as in, I don't haveanyone else with me in the podcast
because I, I've been reading some.
Works a biography on John Owen anda some of John Owen's writings.
And I thought this, this this,this guy, John Owen really is
(01:01):
relevant to us today in in manyprofound ways, in many, many ways.
He was a prolific writer In fact,his last work he finished and it
was going to press the very day thathe died and it was on the glory of
Christ and it is a seminal work.
(01:24):
It is a profound work of, WhoJesus is and, and, and the
importance of seeking his glory.
And I think I want to at some pointreflect on that, but I was just
reading on John Owen's focus onhis Trinitarian devotion and in,
in some of the words he had to say.
(01:45):
And one of the things that JohnOwen is known for is his ability.
In particular to the, to the Trinity,his writings on the Trinity, his devotion
to the Trinity, and his expositingof the implications of the Trinity.
And he spent a great deal of time andeffort writing on Trinitarian truths,
(02:10):
and they are a treasure for us todaybecause for John Owen, the doctrine
of the Trinity is immensely practical.
It isn't just theological it isn'tjust reserved for the scholastics.
And those who are considered theintellectuals actually we are all called
(02:36):
to grow in grace and knowledge and weare all called toward an intellectual and
even scholastic pursuit of who God is.
It's, it was, it's an importantconcept to understand and to focus
on because of its theological beautyand the glory that's seen there.
(02:57):
I mean, when we look at theTrinity, we see that he is.
One God, and there's unity in threepersons, there's plurality, and within
this unity and this plurality, we seeglory, we see beauty, we see love, and
(03:20):
there are profound implications forgazing into The nature of who God is that
motivates us and we don't spend enoughtime and so I thought I would maybe take
a little bit of time to gaze at someTrinitarian realities in particular.
(03:45):
I want to focus for today onthe nature of God as Father.
This is you know, looking atthe persons of the Trinity,
Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We begin with saying that our Godis our Father, our Heavenly Father.
And this was something that Owenspent an enormous mass of writing on.
(04:11):
In fact, he was passionate and relentlessin communicating the nature of Father.
In particular, what it means tosay that the Father loves us.
He saw this as tremendously practicaland motivational, and I think that
(04:33):
this is important because thereare a lot of Christians today who
are simply not convinced in thelove of their Heavenly Father.
I mean, the same people who will saythat Jesus loves me, because they
look at what Christ did on the crossand they say, well, that's love.
(04:55):
They don't grasp the source of thatlove, which comes from the Father.
There's a cognitive gap betweenthe trust that Christians
have in Jesus and their trust.
And it's almost as if they fear thatbehind Christ, there is a father who
(05:18):
is distant and dark and even sinister.
And Owen, he said this, he says,Many dark and disturbing thoughts
are apt to arise in this thing.
Few can carry up their hearts and mindsto this height by faith as to rest
their souls in the love of the Father.
They live below it in thetroublesome region of hopes
(05:41):
and fears, storms and clouds.
All here is serene and quiet, but howto attain to this pitch they know not.
And Owen again in another writingsaid this, How few of the saints
are experimentally acquainted withthis privilege of holding immediate
communion with the Father in love.
(06:01):
With what anxious, doubtfulthoughts do they look upon Him?
What fears, what questionings arethere of His good will and kindness?
At the best, many think there isno sweetness at all in Him towards
us, but what is purchased at thehigh price of the blood of Jesus.
It is true that alone, that alone is theway of communion, but the free fountain
(06:24):
and spring of all is in the bosom.
The father, what is Owen saying here?
He's saying that it's almost asif Jesus has, has had to purchase
the love of the father or, or,or forgiveness from the Father.
(06:45):
And is really, Christ is the one wholoves, but the fountain in Spring of
love is found in the Father thi This iswhat Owen actually, Sinclair Ferguson.
In his biography, he calls thisserpent theology, because it is
(07:11):
an attack against the relationshipbetween God and his image bearing son.
And it is the same kind of attackthat Satan used in the garden.
What did Satan say?
He first throws doubt on the truthfulnessand the reliability of God's word.
(07:31):
He says, did God actually say?
And when Eve responds that God hadsaid that they would die if they ate
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge,of the knowledge of good and evil,
the serpent said to the woman, Well,you surely, you will not surely die,
but there's something more sinister.
in Satan's words.
(07:53):
And it is, it is that he twists the veryword of God in order to aim at a very
important point that he's driving at, andthat is to distort the character of God.
That's Satan's end goal.
He, he wants the nature of Godto be less than, than the good
(08:18):
God that he is in Eve's eyes.
And And so he's distortingthis, but we see from the
beginning that God is a good God.
In fact, only one tree inthe entire orchard, in the
entire garden was forbidden.
This is an incredible generosity,and it is a simple command
(08:43):
to not eat of that one tree.
Father wanted his childrento love and trust God.
And obey him in simply andbeautifully and in a childlike
way, do what he told them to do.
(09:03):
And in this way, he desired that theywould grow strong in faith and trust
in his goodness and give him glory.
It is the obedience to hiscommand that strengthens.
Our trust and our love.
And this is exactly what God aimedfor in the garden with Adam and Eve.
(09:26):
But Satan, he twists the commandand he says to the woman, did it
God, did God actually say, You shallnot eat of any tree in the garden.
What a mean, despicable God is this.
How can a good God withholdsomething from you?
He doesn't really love you.
(09:48):
That's what he's saying.
That's what Satan is doing with his words.
He, he never, he doesn't really giveyou everything for your enjoyment.
And this is what he's tryingto draw out of Eve, a complaint
(10:11):
against the goodness of God.
And this is where the truthof God is exchanged for a lie.
And that lie is, at its root,is very Basic and it is that the
father doesn't really love you.
In fact, he is malevolent toward you.
(10:32):
He begrudges you of any enjoyment.
He restricts your life.
He's a taskmaster.
He doesn't want you toenjoy good things at all.
This is who you call God.
That was Satan's lie.
And that lie has permeatedthe world ever since.
(10:56):
And it infiltrates into our very thinking.
That our Father doesn't love us.
That He doesn't reallywant what is best for us.
He's a policeman.
He's a divine scrooge.
He's the spoiler.
His honor and His glory areenemies of our freedom and joy.
(11:19):
What a twisted way to thinkand people they say that
they believe in a God of love
Do they really that doesn't seem to bea life that demonstrates this Because
(11:40):
what we find is that people even peoplewithin the church don't really seem
to love God with a, a single devotion,with, with zeal and with strength.
They, they, they don't worshiphim with zeal and with energy.
They don't long to gather inthe church in order to focus on
(12:08):
worshiping the God who loves them.
And so what we see is people who saythat, yeah, my God is the God of love.
That it's really just.
A smokescreen and under deepunderneath is a deep mistrust of God.
(12:33):
This, this must be true becauseotherwise, why is it, why does it
take so much coaxing to call God'speople to abandon themselves in
obedience to our loving father?
If we believed that he is good andthat his ways are good and that he
(12:56):
truly does love us with all of thelove of his nature, the infinite.
Wouldn't we abandon ourselvesto that love and disservice?
But that's not what we do.
We see this hinted in thedescription of the prodigal son.
(13:20):
He spends his entire journeyhome rehearsing his speech that
he's going to say to his father.
Oh father, just treat me asone of your hired servants.
He's not expecting to see hisfather gather up his robes.
and run down the hill and embrace himand kiss him and celebrate his return.
(13:43):
That's not what he's expecting.
No, what he's expecting is what hehas learned from his Jewish culture.
There's going to be a shaming ceremony.
He's going to be disowned as a son.
And he deserves this.
He doesn't expect anything lessthan to be treated as a slave.
(14:11):
This was the mindset of hisBrother who said, look, these
many years I've served you yet.
You never gave me a young goat thatI might celebrate with my friends.
He sees himself as a slave and not a son.
He has no sense of the father's love.
(14:34):
What a, an epidemic.
And yet we see that when thefather saw the son in the
distance, he indeed hiked up his.
robes and he breached social etiquette andhe ran to his son and he cried out, my son
(14:57):
has returned and he embraced him and hekissed him and he threw a party for him.
This is the love of our father.
It is unexpected, but it is who he is.
Jesus paints another picture inthe parable of the, of the, of
(15:20):
the talents, the servant, ratherthan using his master's wealth
productively, he returns it.
In the the handkerchief which hehad hidden it when he first got it.
And why does he do that?
Well, he says, becauseI was afraid of you.
You are a severe man.
(15:40):
You take what you did not depositand reap what you did not sow.
This is his caricature of his master.
And yet this master has just toldthe servant that if he turns his
talent into five talents, he wouldbecome a mayor of five cities.
There's no, there's no reason or logic.
(16:03):
Five talents, and he becomesa mayor of five cities.
That is extravagant rewardfrom an extravagant master.
He is not a severe man at all.
He is incredibly generous,
but this is how we think of our father.
(16:28):
And so we find our heartsclosed to him because we think
his heart is closed to us.
Owen saw this as he wrote, and hewanted to communicate as he expounded
on the nature of the Trinity that.
The nature of what it means that Godis love, that we have a loving father.
(16:57):
There are many Christians in Owen'sday, in our day, that were plagued
by this mistrust of the father.
And it is a disease of the soulthat flares up again and again.
Owen says this, What fears,what questionings are there
(17:17):
of his goodwill and kindness?
At the best, many think there is nosweetness at all in him toward us.
But what is purchased at thehigh price of the blood of Jesus?
Jesus had to coax the Father tolove us by dying on the cross.
It is true that the blood of Jesusis the means of the communication.
(17:40):
But the free fountain and spring oflove is in the bosom of the Father.
Why should we think lessof the Father's love?
That was because we hear the message.
God loves you because His Son diedfor you, so trust Him as your Savior.
The Son forced God to love you.
(18:00):
That's what comes out.
That's not how the Biblepresents the Gospel.
This turns the Gospel on its headand it feeds mistrust of the Father.
And this is so damaging.
The gospel teaches that God so loved theworld, his disposition toward the cosmos
(18:23):
was that he refused to allow it to carryon in its curse and ultimate destruction.
And so he gave his only son.
This is the father giving up his son.
It is the Father who initiatesbecause of His love, and so that
(18:47):
whoever believes in Him shouldnot perish but have eternal life.
God, the Father, showed His lovefor us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us.
You see, there is no gap between thelove of the Father and that of the Son.
Christ died for us because the FatherLoves us it isn't in order to persuade
(19:15):
a reluctant father to love us Thishas been the kind of thinking that has
plagued Christianity early on Therewas a heresy that taught that the
thought the God of the New Testamentcame to rescue us from the God of
(19:36):
the Old Testament The God of the OldTestament is a mean vindictive God,
but Jesus Christ has come to rescue us.
That was What was taught itwas condemned as heresy, but
it's seed Continues to be sown.
(19:59):
This is what we need to understand Thefather's love is the sine qua non of the
work of Christ for us Because John 1627 says for the father himself loves you
And we need to come to a properunderstanding of the nature of the
(20:25):
father It is a malaise that remainsin the soul when we do not grasp
And we find it suck away our joy,our peace, our energy, our worship,
our witness, we become anemic.
(20:47):
And so we need a propermedicine for our sick souls.
We need a gospel tonic that will putus in a right understanding, that
will fill us with joy and assurance.
What do we need to do?
Brothers and sisters, dear church, we needto take a daily dose of the Father's love.
(21:17):
You need to reflect on the highprivilege of being called a child of God.
The Father is a sun, like a, like a, likea sun in the sky that beams eternal love.
And Christ is the stream, and throughChrist we are led to the Father who is
(21:40):
the fountain of all grace and kindness.
As Owen says, He is A father, a mother,a shepherd, a hen over chickens.
Owen says we need to receive firstand then return the father's love.
Well, how do we receive the father's love?
(22:00):
Well, we receive thefather's love by faith.
He has demonstrated his love in Christ.
In love, he sent his son for us.
By Christ's death, all cause for thefather's wrath against us is removed.
If the Father did not spare His Son butgave Him up to the cross for us, then
we have only one conclusion to reach.
(22:22):
And it is that the Father willgraciously supply all of our needs.
We have every reason to trust Him.
It is A God who has designed our salvationfor our good, our, as Owen said, our
(22:46):
benefaction, but Owen also called theFather's love, a love of complacency.
And that word originallymeant satisfaction.
It was a love of satisfaction thatthat is a love that is designed
to satisfy us, to fill us withhappiness, with joy and peace.
(23:15):
Like Zephaniah 3.
17, the Lord your God is in yourmidst, a mighty one who will save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will quiet you by His love.
He will exalt over you with loud singing.
This is our HeavenlyFather and He loves us.
He rejoices over us.
He is glad because of us.
(23:37):
He exalts over us with loud singing.
He runs to us, but when wecome back to Him in repentance,
seeking His face, He loves us.
And we must, we musteye the Father's love.
(23:59):
We must fix our gaze on the Father's love.
Stop looking at your sin.
This is what we do.
We fix our gaze on our own sin
and we forget the loveliness of God.
We see our own unloveliness and weAnd we miss the loveliness of God.
(24:26):
We look past the love of our father, butwe are meant to fix our eyes on Christ so
that they may be raised through him to thefather's love that is demonstrated in him.
We are to drink so deeply of God's lovein Christ that we reach the head of the
waters found in the heart of the father.
(24:48):
When the eye of our faith sees thefather's love, the mouth of faith will
drink deeply of the streams of grace.
And this is how we will receive his love.
And we will find ourselves inevitably,irresistibly returning to this love.
And just as Christ is the one towhom the father's love comes to us.
(25:11):
So in Christ, our love isreturned to the father.
And we have the entirety of the Trinity atwork in order to raise us to a deeper and
more profound understanding of this love.
The Holy Spirit himself is at workdemonstrating, drawing us so that
(25:39):
we might know the Father's love.
The Father's love is antecedent to ours.
Our love is consequent to his.
We love him because he first loved us.
Our love goes to Him, even thoughwe were once haters of God.
(26:04):
And He has come to usbecause He is a lover of man.
He loved the world.
And we love Him because He first loved us.
And so His love is unchangeable.
Ours is mutable, but His never changes.
(26:26):
He may not always smile outHis love to us, but He never
ceases to actually love us.
We may not always see what looks likeHis love, but His immutable nature
means that His love never stops loving.
And we need to contemplate this.
(26:50):
Owen says, This is the love of the AllSufficient, infinitely satiated with
Himself in His own glorious excellenciesand perfections, who has no need to go
forth with His love unto others Nor toseek an object of it without himself.
He is sufficient unto his own love.
He had his son also his eternal wisdomto rejoice and delight in himself
(27:15):
delight himself in from all eternity.
This might take up andsatiate the whole delight.
of the Father.
And then Owen adds, and it is, andhe, he will love his saints also.
This is a free love.
There's nothing in us that causes it.
(27:35):
It is from Him alone.
And so this is the taskthat we must aim toward.
That we must be delivered fromthe deceit of Satan, which says
that the Father does not love us.
That we must grow in communionwith our Heavenly Father.
(27:56):
We must discover what Daviddiscovered in Psalm 63.
So I have looked upon you in thesanctuary because of your, because your
steadfast love is better than life.
My lips will praise you, so Iwill bless you as long as I live.
In your name, I will lift up my hands.
(28:19):
Or as Owen says, thus, when the soulsees God in his dispensation of love
to be infinitely lovely and loving.
rests upon him and delightsin him as such, then hath it
communion with him in love.
Our task is to delight inthe love of our Father.
We need to take dailydoses of the Father's love.
(28:45):
So meditate on this.
Meditate on the truths revealed tous in Scripture about who God is.
And find yourself motivated to receivethat love and to give it back because
he is such a great God and he isworthy of our worship and he loves us.
(29:18):
I
hope you find that helpful.
I look forward to our next podcast.
Until then, come visit us 10 30 andSunday mornings here in Visalia.
(29:39):
Six o'clock at our evening service.
We'll see you later.
Thanks for watching!
Welcome to another podcast fromFaith Baptist Church here in Visalia.
My name is Eric Norlick.
I am one of the pastors here in Visalia.
And it is my privilegeto host this podcast.
And today I want to do somethingjust a little bit different.
(00:39):
I am by myself as in, I don't haveanyone else with me in the podcast
because I, I've been reading some.
Works a biography on John Owen anda some of John Owen's writings.
And I thought this, this this,this guy, John Owen really is
(01:01):
relevant to us today in in manyprofound ways, in many, many ways.
He was a prolific writer In fact,his last work he finished and it
was going to press the very day thathe died and it was on the glory of
Christ and it is a seminal work.
(01:24):
It is a profound work of, WhoJesus is and, and, and the
importance of seeking his glory.
And I think I want to at some pointreflect on that, but I was just
reading on John Owen's focus onhis Trinitarian devotion and in,
in some of the words he had to say.
(01:45):
And one of the things that JohnOwen is known for is his ability.
In particular to the, to the Trinity,his writings on the Trinity, his devotion
to the Trinity, and his expositingof the implications of the Trinity.
And he spent a great deal of time andeffort writing on Trinitarian truths,
(02:10):
and they are a treasure for us todaybecause for John Owen, the doctrine
of the Trinity is immensely practical.
It isn't just theological it isn'tjust reserved for the scholastics.
And those who are considered theintellectuals actually we are all called
(02:36):
to grow in grace and knowledge and weare all called toward an intellectual and
even scholastic pursuit of who God is.
It's, it was, it's an importantconcept to understand and to focus
on because of its theological beautyand the glory that's seen there.
(02:57):
I mean, when we look at theTrinity, we see that he is.
One God, and there's unity in threepersons, there's plurality, and within
this unity and this plurality, we seeglory, we see beauty, we see love, and
(03:20):
there are profound implications forgazing into The nature of who God is that
motivates us and we don't spend enoughtime and so I thought I would maybe take
a little bit of time to gaze at someTrinitarian realities in particular.
(03:45):
I want to focus for today onthe nature of God as Father.
This is you know, looking atthe persons of the Trinity,
Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit.
We begin with saying that our Godis our Father, our Heavenly Father.
And this was something that Owenspent an enormous mass of writing on.
(04:11):
In fact, he was passionate and relentlessin communicating the nature of Father.
In particular, what it means tosay that the Father loves us.
He saw this as tremendously practicaland motivational, and I think that
(04:33):
this is important because thereare a lot of Christians today who
are simply not convinced in thelove of their Heavenly Father.
I mean, the same people who will saythat Jesus loves me, because they
look at what Christ did on the crossand they say, well, that's love.
(04:55):
They don't grasp the source of thatlove, which comes from the Father.
There's a cognitive gap betweenthe trust that Christians
have in Jesus and their trust.
And it's almost as if they fear thatbehind Christ, there is a father who
(05:18):
is distant and dark and even sinister.
And Owen, he said this, he says,Many dark and disturbing thoughts
are apt to arise in this thing.
Few can carry up their hearts and mindsto this height by faith as to rest
their souls in the love of the Father.
They live below it in thetroublesome region of hopes
(05:41):
and fears, storms and clouds.
All here is serene and quiet, but howto attain to this pitch they know not.
And Owen again in another writingsaid this, How few of the saints
are experimentally acquainted withthis privilege of holding immediate
communion with the Father in love.
(06:01):
With what anxious, doubtfulthoughts do they look upon Him?
What fears, what questionings arethere of His good will and kindness?
At the best, many think there isno sweetness at all in Him towards
us, but what is purchased at thehigh price of the blood of Jesus.
It is true that alone, that alone is theway of communion, but the free fountain
(06:24):
and spring of all is in the bosom.
The father, what is Owen saying here?
He's saying that it's almost asif Jesus has, has had to purchase
the love of the father or, or,or forgiveness from the Father.
(06:45):
And is really, Christ is the one wholoves, but the fountain in Spring of
love is found in the Father thi This iswhat Owen actually, Sinclair Ferguson.
In his biography, he calls thisserpent theology, because it is
(07:11):
an attack against the relationshipbetween God and his image bearing son.
And it is the same kind of attackthat Satan used in the garden.
What did Satan say?
He first throws doubt on the truthfulnessand the reliability of God's word.
(07:31):
He says, did God actually say?
And when Eve responds that God hadsaid that they would die if they ate
of the fruit of the tree of knowledge,of the knowledge of good and evil,
the serpent said to the woman, Well,you surely, you will not surely die,
but there's something more sinister.
in Satan's words.
(07:53):
And it is, it is that he twists the veryword of God in order to aim at a very
important point that he's driving at, andthat is to distort the character of God.
That's Satan's end goal.
He, he wants the nature of Godto be less than, than the good
(08:18):
God that he is in Eve's eyes.
And And so he's distortingthis, but we see from the
beginning that God is a good God.
In fact, only one tree inthe entire orchard, in the
entire garden was forbidden.
This is an incredible generosity,and it is a simple command
(08:43):
to not eat of that one tree.
Father wanted his childrento love and trust God.
And obey him in simply andbeautifully and in a childlike
way, do what he told them to do.
(09:03):
And in this way, he desired that theywould grow strong in faith and trust
in his goodness and give him glory.
It is the obedience to hiscommand that strengthens.
Our trust and our love.
And this is exactly what God aimedfor in the garden with Adam and Eve.
(09:26):
But Satan, he twists the commandand he says to the woman, did it
God, did God actually say, You shallnot eat of any tree in the garden.
What a mean, despicable God is this.
How can a good God withholdsomething from you?
He doesn't really love you.
(09:48):
That's what he's saying.
That's what Satan is doing with his words.
He, he never, he doesn't really giveyou everything for your enjoyment.
And this is what he's tryingto draw out of Eve, a complaint
(10:11):
against the goodness of God.
And this is where the truthof God is exchanged for a lie.
And that lie is, at its root,is very Basic and it is that the
father doesn't really love you.
In fact, he is malevolent toward you.
(10:32):
He begrudges you of any enjoyment.
He restricts your life.
He's a taskmaster.
He doesn't want you toenjoy good things at all.
This is who you call God.
That was Satan's lie.
And that lie has permeatedthe world ever since.
(10:56):
And it infiltrates into our very thinking.
That our Father doesn't love us.
That He doesn't reallywant what is best for us.
He's a policeman.
He's a divine scrooge.
He's the spoiler.
His honor and His glory areenemies of our freedom and joy.
(11:19):
What a twisted way to thinkand people they say that
they believe in a God of love
Do they really that doesn't seem to bea life that demonstrates this Because
(11:40):
what we find is that people even peoplewithin the church don't really seem
to love God with a, a single devotion,with, with zeal and with strength.
They, they, they don't worshiphim with zeal and with energy.
They don't long to gather inthe church in order to focus on
(12:08):
worshiping the God who loves them.
And so what we see is people who saythat, yeah, my God is the God of love.
That it's really just.
A smokescreen and under deepunderneath is a deep mistrust of God.
(12:33):
This, this must be true becauseotherwise, why is it, why does it
take so much coaxing to call God'speople to abandon themselves in
obedience to our loving father?
If we believed that he is good andthat his ways are good and that he
(12:56):
truly does love us with all of thelove of his nature, the infinite.
Wouldn't we abandon ourselvesto that love and disservice?
But that's not what we do.
We see this hinted in thedescription of the prodigal son.
(13:20):
He spends his entire journeyhome rehearsing his speech that
he's going to say to his father.
Oh father, just treat me asone of your hired servants.
He's not expecting to see hisfather gather up his robes.
and run down the hill and embrace himand kiss him and celebrate his return.
(13:43):
That's not what he's expecting.
No, what he's expecting is what hehas learned from his Jewish culture.
There's going to be a shaming ceremony.
He's going to be disowned as a son.
And he deserves this.
He doesn't expect anything lessthan to be treated as a slave.
(14:11):
This was the mindset of hisBrother who said, look, these
many years I've served you yet.
You never gave me a young goat thatI might celebrate with my friends.
He sees himself as a slave and not a son.
He has no sense of the father's love.
(14:34):
What a, an epidemic.
And yet we see that when thefather saw the son in the
distance, he indeed hiked up his.
robes and he breached social etiquette andhe ran to his son and he cried out, my son
(14:57):
has returned and he embraced him and hekissed him and he threw a party for him.
This is the love of our father.
It is unexpected, but it is who he is.
Jesus paints another picture inthe parable of the, of the, of
(15:20):
the talents, the servant, ratherthan using his master's wealth
productively, he returns it.
In the the handkerchief which hehad hidden it when he first got it.
And why does he do that?
Well, he says, becauseI was afraid of you.
You are a severe man.
(15:40):
You take what you did not depositand reap what you did not sow.
This is his caricature of his master.
And yet this master has just toldthe servant that if he turns his
talent into five talents, he wouldbecome a mayor of five cities.
There's no, there's no reason or logic.
(16:03):
Five talents, and he becomesa mayor of five cities.
That is extravagant rewardfrom an extravagant master.
He is not a severe man at all.
He is incredibly generous,
but this is how we think of our father.
(16:28):
And so we find our heartsclosed to him because we think
his heart is closed to us.
Owen saw this as he wrote, and hewanted to communicate as he expounded
on the nature of the Trinity that.
The nature of what it means that Godis love, that we have a loving father.
(16:57):
There are many Christians in Owen'sday, in our day, that were plagued
by this mistrust of the father.
And it is a disease of the soulthat flares up again and again.
Owen says this, What fears,what questionings are there
(17:17):
of his goodwill and kindness?
At the best, many think there is nosweetness at all in him toward us.
But what is purchased at thehigh price of the blood of Jesus?
Jesus had to coax the Father tolove us by dying on the cross.
It is true that the blood of Jesusis the means of the communication.
(17:40):
But the free fountain and spring oflove is in the bosom of the Father.
Why should we think lessof the Father's love?
That was because we hear the message.
God loves you because His Son diedfor you, so trust Him as your Savior.
The Son forced God to love you.
(18:00):
That's what comes out.
That's not how the Biblepresents the Gospel.
This turns the Gospel on its headand it feeds mistrust of the Father.
And this is so damaging.
The gospel teaches that God so loved theworld, his disposition toward the cosmos
(18:23):
was that he refused to allow it to carryon in its curse and ultimate destruction.
And so he gave his only son.
This is the father giving up his son.
It is the Father who initiatesbecause of His love, and so that
(18:47):
whoever believes in Him shouldnot perish but have eternal life.
God, the Father, showed His lovefor us in that while we were
still sinners, Christ died for us.
You see, there is no gap between thelove of the Father and that of the Son.
Christ died for us because the FatherLoves us it isn't in order to persuade
(19:15):
a reluctant father to love us Thishas been the kind of thinking that has
plagued Christianity early on Therewas a heresy that taught that the
thought the God of the New Testamentcame to rescue us from the God of
(19:36):
the Old Testament The God of the OldTestament is a mean vindictive God,
but Jesus Christ has come to rescue us.
That was What was taught itwas condemned as heresy, but
it's seed Continues to be sown.
(19:59):
This is what we need to understand Thefather's love is the sine qua non of the
work of Christ for us Because John 1627 says for the father himself loves you
And we need to come to a properunderstanding of the nature of the
(20:25):
father It is a malaise that remainsin the soul when we do not grasp
And we find it suck away our joy,our peace, our energy, our worship,
our witness, we become anemic.
(20:47):
And so we need a propermedicine for our sick souls.
We need a gospel tonic that will putus in a right understanding, that
will fill us with joy and assurance.
What do we need to do?
Brothers and sisters, dear church, we needto take a daily dose of the Father's love.
(21:17):
You need to reflect on the highprivilege of being called a child of God.
The Father is a sun, like a, like a, likea sun in the sky that beams eternal love.
And Christ is the stream, and throughChrist we are led to the Father who is
(21:40):
the fountain of all grace and kindness.
As Owen says, He is A father, a mother,a shepherd, a hen over chickens.
Owen says we need to receive firstand then return the father's love.
Well, how do we receive the father's love?
(22:00):
Well, we receive thefather's love by faith.
He has demonstrated his love in Christ.
In love, he sent his son for us.
By Christ's death, all cause for thefather's wrath against us is removed.
If the Father did not spare His Son butgave Him up to the cross for us, then
we have only one conclusion to reach.
(22:22):
And it is that the Father willgraciously supply all of our needs.
We have every reason to trust Him.
It is A God who has designed our salvationfor our good, our, as Owen said, our
(22:46):
benefaction, but Owen also called theFather's love, a love of complacency.
And that word originallymeant satisfaction.
It was a love of satisfaction thatthat is a love that is designed
to satisfy us, to fill us withhappiness, with joy and peace.
(23:15):
Like Zephaniah 3.
17, the Lord your God is in yourmidst, a mighty one who will save.
He will rejoice over you with gladness.
He will quiet you by His love.
He will exalt over you with loud singing.
This is our HeavenlyFather and He loves us.
He rejoices over us.
He is glad because of us.
(23:37):
He exalts over us with loud singing.
He runs to us, but when wecome back to Him in repentance,
seeking His face, He loves us.
And we must, we musteye the Father's love.
(23:59):
We must fix our gaze on the Father's love.
Stop looking at your sin.
This is what we do.
We fix our gaze on our own sin
and we forget the loveliness of God.
We see our own unloveliness and weAnd we miss the loveliness of God.
(24:26):
We look past the love of our father, butwe are meant to fix our eyes on Christ so
that they may be raised through him to thefather's love that is demonstrated in him.
We are to drink so deeply of God's lovein Christ that we reach the head of the
waters found in the heart of the father.
(24:48):
When the eye of our faith sees thefather's love, the mouth of faith will
drink deeply of the streams of grace.
And this is how we will receive his love.
And we will find ourselves inevitably,irresistibly returning to this love.
And just as Christ is the one towhom the father's love comes to us.
(25:11):
So in Christ, our love isreturned to the father.
And we have the entirety of the Trinity atwork in order to raise us to a deeper and
more profound understanding of this love.
The Holy Spirit himself is at workdemonstrating, drawing us so that
(25:39):
we might know the Father's love.
The Father's love is antecedent to ours.
Our love is consequent to his.
We love him because he first loved us.
Our love goes to Him, even thoughwe were once haters of God.
(26:04):
And He has come to usbecause He is a lover of man.
He loved the world.
And we love Him because He first loved us.
And so His love is unchangeable.
Ours is mutable, but His never changes.
(26:26):
He may not always smile outHis love to us, but He never
ceases to actually love us.
We may not always see what looks likeHis love, but His immutable nature
means that His love never stops loving.
And we need to contemplate this.
(26:50):
Owen says, This is the love of the AllSufficient, infinitely satiated with
Himself in His own glorious excellenciesand perfections, who has no need to go
forth with His love unto others Nor toseek an object of it without himself.
He is sufficient unto his own love.
He had his son also his eternal wisdomto rejoice and delight in himself
(27:15):
delight himself in from all eternity.
This might take up andsatiate the whole delight.
of the Father.
And then Owen adds, and it is, andhe, he will love his saints also.
This is a free love.
There's nothing in us that causes it.
(27:35):
It is from Him alone.
And so this is the taskthat we must aim toward.
That we must be delivered fromthe deceit of Satan, which says
that the Father does not love us.
That we must grow in communionwith our Heavenly Father.
(27:56):
We must discover what Daviddiscovered in Psalm 63.
So I have looked upon you in thesanctuary because of your, because your
steadfast love is better than life.
My lips will praise you, so Iwill bless you as long as I live.
In your name, I will lift up my hands.
(28:19):
Or as Owen says, thus, when the soulsees God in his dispensation of love
to be infinitely lovely and loving.
rests upon him and delightsin him as such, then hath it
communion with him in love.
Our task is to delight inthe love of our Father.
We need to take dailydoses of the Father's love.
(28:45):
So meditate on this.
Meditate on the truths revealed tous in Scripture about who God is.
And find yourself motivated to receivethat love and to give it back because
he is such a great God and he isworthy of our worship and he loves us.
(29:18):
I
hope you find that helpful.
I look forward to our next podcast.
Until then, come visit us 10 30 andSunday mornings here in Visalia.
(29:39):
Six o'clock at our evening service.
We'll see you later.
Thanks for watching!
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