I Believe; God the Father

【MUSIC】 【MUSIC】 【APPLAUSE】 Come on, does anybody in the house love Jesus today? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Welcome to church, everybody. Give me a favor. Everybody that's joining us online, all of our locations, everybody here at Lakewood Ranch, would you put your hands together? Let's welcome everybody that are joining us at church today. Welcome. So glad to have you here. And my name is Bernard. If I haven't had the privilege of meeting you, I have the privilege of serving on the team here. And I just want to say nice to meet you. Thanks for being here. I have the privilege of starting off, kicking off this new series that we're doing called I Believe. And I want to just give honor to our honors due to my pastor, Pastor Randy and Amy. They are a phenomenal just people in general, but I just love them as pastors, as friends, and that I get to do this with them. But as we kick off this series today, I want to give you permission. I want to help you if you've never heard him speak before. First of all, this is what I've learned. If you really want to engage in the learning process, you can talk back to this preacher. Okay? That means, you know, there's just something about when you say amen to the preacher that helps you to remember it. It helps you say, uh-huh, preach. That's all right. That was good. Preach. B, you just go ahead now, whatever. And if you're not used to talking in church, I understand. There's a little note card there in front of you. You can just take that and just wave it just like that.

But when you wave it, that means amen. That means amen, but when you wave it, you got to do like this. Got to make the face with it. All right. That's when you know it's real good, right? But as we kick off this, I believe, series, here's the big idea. The greatest revelation isn't simply that God is almighty. It is that almighty has chosen to be our father. Okay? That's the big idea today. So before we dive into anything, I want you to finish this sentence in your own head, okay? I want you to finish this sentence in your head. I believe. And then what you're going to do is you're going to go ahead and fill in the blank, all right? I believe. Go ahead and fill in the blank right there where you are. Now, I just heard some of y'all went off spiritual immediately, right? The first thing you did, you said, I believe God is good. Uh-huh. That's a good answer. Yes, God is good. Some of you went sports. You believe that this is the Cowboys' year. And I just want you to know, I'll be praying for you because that's a faith that has been tested and found wanting. And I also want you to know that that's a generational stronghold that needs to be broken. All right. So anyways. Now, some of you did go personal on that. Some of you went personal. It may be, I believe I can get through the week. Or I believe my marriage will make it. Or I believe my kids are going to be okay. Now, here's the thing. Everybody in here believes something. Everybody believes something. And because of that, the question isn't whether you have faith.

The question is, can what you believe actually hold the weight of your life? Can what you believe actually hold the weight of your life? Because beliefs aren't just ideas we carry. Beliefs actually carry us. They shape how we see God. How we see ourselves. How we handle suffering. How we approach our future. How we respond when life doesn't go according to plan. And that's why for the next five weeks, we're going back to the foundation. The beginning in this series, what we call I Believe. And we're going to anchor this series in one of the oldest and most widely used summaries of the Christian faith. It's called the Apostles' Creed. Now, if you grew up in a denominational church, you are familiar with this. You recited it often. You may not have completely understood what it meant. But you're used to this Apostles' Creed. But I understand for context. We've got a very diverse audience and congregation, so I want to help us to understand what's happening. Now, first of all, creed simply comes from the Latin word, which is credo, which means I believe. And here's why this matters. Most Christians know that we believe, but sometimes we're not very good at explaining what we believe. Our culture has a creed, right? Your feed has a doctrine, your algorithm has a catechism, but something is always teaching you what matters,

teaching you what success looks like, what truth is, who you are and what you should desire, which means, actually, the question isn't if you're being discipled, the question is who is discipling you? And today, we begin exactly where the creed begins with God the Father, and in a moment, we're gonna recite it, and at the end, we're gonna do something special, so you don't leave, because we're gonna spend some time with the Father, but we're gonna focus on the first part of this creed, which is the Father, because the greatest thoughts you'll ever have are the thoughts about God, because everything flows from those thoughts. And what you believe about God eventually determines how you live before God, how you see God affects how you see yourself, how you see God affects how you pray, how you see God affects how you suffer, how you see God affects how you handle disappointment, how you see God affects how you even approach your future. So this Apostles' Creed, it's important in why it matters. Before we actually declare this together, I want us to understand, I wanna give us a little bit of context, a little history, to understand why Christians have been saying these words for generations.

We're not introducing something new. This has been around. We're actually reconnecting with the ancient rhythm that has actually helped anchor Christians in their faith for centuries. Now, the Apostles' Creed, it wasn't literally written by the apostles, but it was created as a means to help early believers know what we actually believe. And they took it from the apostles' teaching, all right? So its roots developed in the early centuries of Christianity, and the church ended up summarizing. And this is really important because Christianity at that time, it was growing rapidly. It was growing super fast. And there were so many distorted views of Christianity, so many different versions of Christianity. People were questioning, was Jesus really God? Was he really human? Did he physically rise from the dead? Was the material world something that God created and called good? Could you follow Jesus while blending Christianity with other religious ideas around you? These are some of the things that were happening in the early church and for Christians. And though there were different names, different ideas, but essentially the same problem. People kept trying to remake Jesus into someone other

than who he revealed himself to be. This was what was happening, and it's still happening today. Every generation is tempted to create a Jesus who agrees with everything that we already believe. In other words, we all like a Jesus who never confronts us. We like a Jesus who never corrects us. We like the Jesus who never challenges culture. We love the Jesus that never challenges us. But if Jesus always agrees with me, there's a pretty good chance I'm not following Jesus. Aye. Crank up down the AC, because it's about to get hot up in here. Maybe you're just following yourself and attaching Jesus' name to it. That's why doctrine really matters. Doctrine is important. And remember, the world at that time in the early church, there was no printing press, there was no Google, there was no YouTube, there was no Bible app, there was no Bayside app, there was no podcast. Scripture was literally copied by hand, and actually a lot of people couldn't even read back then. They needed a rabbi or somebody to read the scriptures to them. So the church, they actually needed a clear way of saying what we believe. This is what we believe. And the creed actually became three things. One, it was a baptismal confession.

When people got baptized back in the early church, they confessed this creed because this was the why behind their baptism. Because at the time, Caesar was saying that he was Lord, but when you got baptized, you were saying that Jesus is Lord. And then it was also a teaching tool. This creed helps us to know who God is, who Jesus is, what he has done, who the Holy Spirit is, what is the church, and what is our ultimate hope. And then third, it was a doctrinal guardrail, all right? The creed actually helped keep Christianity centered on the historic faith that was handed down from the apostles. This is really important for us to understand. We're not just doing this here today to become more traditional. What we're doing, this is a part of who we are. This is what anchors us. And when we declare it, we are actually joining believers across generations, across continents, across cultures, and centuries who've confessed these exact same truths. We're actually stepping into a stream that was flowing long before we ever got here. And by God's grace, it'll keep flowing long after we're gone. So before we read it together, I wanna just make one thing clear. There's a phrase that when we read this

that you're gonna hear and think, wait, wait, wait, what, what, what are you saying? So when the creed says the Holy Catholic Church, now we love our Catholic brothers and sisters, but it's a lowercase C because it's not speaking of the Roman Catholic Church. It is speaking, this word Catholic means universal. It's specifically referring to the universal church of Jesus Christ, okay? Now, because of that, this church of Jesus Christ is every nation, every tribe, every language, every generation, every follower of Jesus. This is what it's speaking to. So the next five weeks, we're not just gonna study the Apostles' Creed, we're gonna declare it, and we're gonna declare it together. So would you all stand with me on your feet? And as we recite these words, I want you to remember what it means. It means I believe, this is what we believe. If you call yourself a Christian, a follower of Christ, this is what you believe. This is an anchor, this is a declaration. This is our confession of faith. And so let's declare it together. Ready? Go. I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried. He descended to hell. The third day, he rose again from the dead. He ascended to heaven and is seated at the right hand of God, the Father Almighty. From there, he will come to judge the living and the dead. I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Holy Catholic Church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting. Amen. Now, Father, I pray in the name of Jesus that as we study and present your word and your truth today that you would open our hearts to hear and to receive, remove every hindrance and every distraction. I pray in the name of Jesus that as we encounter your truth, we will become more like you, the sons and daughters that you've created and redeemed us to be. In Christ's name, I pray, and everybody said. Amen. You may be seated. So when we go back to the first line of this Apostle's Creed, I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Now, there's enough theology in that first line that I could be here till next Sunday preaching right now.

I just need you to know. I could, but we're not gonna do that, all right? I have 20 minutes. But I want you to notice three big realities in that first line. There's three pillars just in that first sentence. Number one, God is above us, right? He's almighty. Two, God made us. He's creator. And three, God is for us. He is Father. Now, above us, he made us, he's for us, and we actually need all three. Because if he's creator without Father, he's powerful, but he's distant. If he's Father without almighty, he's loving, but limited. But the Christian revelation of this whole thing is. Father Almighty. The God who possesses unlimited power has unlimited love for us. So here's the first point today. The Father is bigger than you think. Can I just get a uh-huh? Yes, the Father is bigger than you think. And here's the key truth. The size of your worship is connected to the size of your revelation of God. Aye.

The size of your worship is connected to the size of your revelation of God. So before we talk about Father, we have to remember who the Father is. First of all, in Genesis 1, verse 1, it says, in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. So before there was anything, there was God. Before there was galaxies, God. Before there was oceans, there was God. Before there was mountains, there was God. Before there was oxygen, there was God. Before there was gravity, there was God. Before there was time as we know it, there was God. And God didn't struggle to create, he spoke. Let there be light, and light showed up. That is power. Some of us, we speak the things in our house and they still ain't listening to us. Alexa, Alexa, maybe it's your kids. You just, you saying forever and ain't nobody paying attention. But look, God speaks and galaxies respond. My God. He is omnipotent. What does that mean? He's all powerful. In fact, in Matthew 19, verse 26 says this. Jesus looked at them intently and said, humanly speaking, it is impossible,

but with God, everything is possible. So he's omnipotent. Then the second thing is he's omniscient. What that means is he's all knowing. In Psalm 147, verse five, it says, how great is our Lord, his power is absolute. His understanding is beyond comprehension. There has never been a moment where God has said, wow, I didn't see that coming. God's never had that experience. He has never, there's no new information when it comes to God. He's omniscient. Here's another thing, he's omnipresent. What that means is he's everywhere present. God is everywhere present. Psalms 139, verse seven. I can never escape from your spirit. I can never get away from your presence. He's everywhere all the time. What I love about that is before you get there, God's already there. When you hit that doctor's appointment, God's there. That conversation, God's there. That uncertainty, he's there. That business decision, he's there. The children's future, he's there. Your tomorrow, he's there. And revelation like that should produce something that in church today we've lost, which is awe.

Complete awe of such a powerful God who's omnipotent, who's omniscient, who is omnipresent. Yeah, we should be comfortable in God's presence, but never be casual about his glory. Yes, he's approachable, but he's not ordinary. He's God. He's personal, but he's still holy. He's close, but he's still king. He's king of all kings, and he's Lord of all lords. And I wonder if sometimes our anxiety is evidence that we've been staring at the size of our problem longer than we've been staring at the size of our God. Yes. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Amen. Because when God gets bigger in your vision, problems start finding their proper position. Some of us are carrying the universe like you're the one responsible for keeping it spinning. But God says, you can go to sleep. I got the night shift. He's almighty. He's creator. So what that means is that when it seems impossible, the creator can speak into that. And if it doesn't exist, he can create it. So we trust.

But here's where Christianity gets almost unbelievable. This God, infinite, eternal, all-knowing, all-powerful, everywhere present, creator of heaven and earth, says this one thing. He says, call me father. I don't know if you get it, but he is bigger than you think. And here's the second thing, he's better than you think. God is better than you think. And here's the key truth. Your earthly father is not the blueprint for God. God is the blueprint for fatherhood. Now, this is really important. For some people, the word father feels safe, but for others, it hurts. Maybe your father was absent. Maybe physically present, but emotionally absent. Maybe demanding, maybe he was angry. Maybe his affection had to be earned. Maybe you spent your childhood and even your adulthood now trying to hear these words, I'm proud of you, and you never heard of it. So when somebody says God wants to be your father, something inside of you pulls back. You get this visceral reaction because you don't know how to relate to a God that calls himself father because you had a bad representation of a father. Because if God is like your earthly father, you're not sure if you really want him. But here's what I need you to understand today.

God is not a magnified version of your earthly father. He's better than you think. In fact, every human father is supposed to be imperfect. They're supposed to be an imperfect reflection of God because God is the only original. He's an original. Everything else is a copy. And so perhaps you need to release your father because he did the best he knew how with what he knew, but he was at best a small reflection of who our heavenly father actually is. And our heavenly father wants to fill those gaps, but we have to trust him. In fact, he reveals himself in Exodus chapter 34, verse six. "'The Lord passed in front of Moses calling out, "'Yahweh, the Lord, the God of compassion and mercy, "'I am slow to anger and filled "'with unfailing love and faithfulness.'" I hear in that scripture, that's father, compassionate, merciful, patient, faithful, loving. Then Jesus gives us perhaps the clearest picture of the father's heart in Luke chapter 15. We know this is the prodigal son story where the son tells the father, give me my inheritance. And really in that in culture, what he was saying was, I wish you were dead. That's basically what he was saying. He took the inheritance and he ran off and he squandered it and he partied and did everything he wants to do. He left, waste everything.

And finally he decides I wanna go home, but he's not thinking like a son anymore. He knows that he thinks that in order to come back home, he's gotta think like an employee. And he starts going, well, okay, I'll go back and I'll work for my dad. Instead of sitting here eating with the pigs, I'll earn my way back into his grace. I'll become a servant. But I love in Luke chapter 15, the father, he responds. It says in verse 20, he says, so he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming, filled with love and compassion. He ran to his son, embraced him and kissed him. Now don't miss this, don't miss this. The father runs to the son. He saw him coming from a long distance. Now you gotta understand a dignified Middle Eastern man, a patriarch, didn't normally go sprinting down the road. Right, this father sees his son and dignity doesn't keep him from standing still. He ran towards him. I'm sure the son has a speech prepared to justify why he is coming back. You know, I'm sure he had all these excuses. I've sinned, I don't deserve your grace. Make me a servant. And the father, in this case, interrupts him and says, because, you know, really the son's thinking like an orphan.

He's thinking like an employee, but the father's thinking, son, religion makes us wanna work our way back to God. It's all about our works. But the father says, come home, come home. And I don't know where you're at. Maybe you're here and you need to hear this, that no matter how bad that you think you are or what you've done or what damage you've caused, I want you to know this, the heart of the father is this, come home. He's running towards you. None of what you have squandered, none of what you've done moves him, because the heart of the father is that you would come home. And he told him, he says, kill the fatted calf. Let's celebrate because my son has come home. You thought God was standing there with his arms crossed saying, let's see if you've learned your lesson. Now, maybe your earthly father did that, but God doesn't do that. The father says, here I am, come home. Welcome home. He comes running for you. Even though you may smell like a pig pen, he's running for you. Even though you feel embarrassed, he's running for you. Maybe you still have questions, he's running for you. You don't have everything fixed, it's okay, he's running for you.

You don't have to clean yourself up so that you can come to the father, you just come to the father and he begins to make you whole. Because that's the love of a father. So the father, he's bigger than you think, he's better than you think, and here's the third thing, the father cares more than you think. He cares more than you think. Here's the truth, if God is your father, you don't have to live like everything depends on you. Am I at Bayside this morning? Okay, I just wanna make sure, because it got real quiet. If God is your father, you don't have to live like everything depends on you. In fact, Jesus teaches in Matthew chapter six, verse 11, give us today our daily bread. Give us today our daily bread. Daily bread, everybody say daily bread. Daily bread. Mm-hmm, key word, daily. Now, I know that we don't particularly like daily, right? We would prefer, Lord, give me the five-year strategic bread plan, please. Right? Show me Q1 to Q4, right? Give me the projected outcomes, give me the spreadsheet, oh God, forget about the daily, I need to know everything, everything, okay? But God says daily, why?

Because sometimes God doesn't give us a lifetime supply, but he wants a lifetime relationship. If you had everything, if you had all of the answers, you wouldn't trust him, because you have everything that you wanna need. And Jesus says this in Matthew six, verse 26, look at the birds, they do not plant or harvest or store food in barns for your heavenly father, but he feeds them, and are not you far more valuable to him than they are. Now, Jesus is not giving them a lesson on bird watching. Even though bird watching is fun, I recently, I don't know what it is. You know, we bought this property, we moved out there, and my wife and I, we sit there and we eat dinner, and we just watch nature. And we have all these birds and ducks and chickens, we got all this stuff happening, and we just sit there for fun and narrate what we think is happening as they do their bird thing. And there's been several times where a bird has flown into our window, and it, boom, hit down on the ground, it's out for the count. And we're like, oh, and we went out and we prayed for it. Lord, just bring this bird back to life. Lord, let it get up and sing, ♪ I'll fly away, oh glory. ♪ Life. Make it comfortable and pray that it comes back too

after it knocked itself out, and I don't know, wake up the next morning, it's gone. I don't know if it got eaten or if it flew away, but either way, praise God. But Jesus wasn't giving a lesson in bird watching, right? He's revealing the Father. If the Father notices birds, how much more would he notice you? I want you to know that you're not overlooked. You are not forgotten. You are not carrying your life alone. Some of us are stressed out about December while it's still August. We're fighting battles that haven't even happened, and we're rehearsing these conversations nobody has had. And Jesus says, look at the birds, stop worrying. Your father fed you yesterday, he's your father today. He'll feed you tomorrow when it gets here, and he'll still be your father tomorrow. He is God, he loves you, he's always present, he's always providing. All you have to do is just trust him. He wants to be a father to you. Sometimes his provision is an open door. Sometimes it's a closed door. Sometimes his provision is yes. Sometimes the most loving provision he can give is a no or a not yet, because a good father does not simply give his children everything they ask for.

He gives them what is good for them. Listen to this. Trust is believing that the father's heart is good even when his hand is hard to understand. Can I say that one more again? Run that back. Okay, trust is believing that the father's heart is good even when his hand is hard to understand. The father, he teaches us so many things and sometimes we just have to trust him even when we don't understand. Here's the fourth thing. The father is closer than you think. The father is closer than you think. I remember my wife, when we first got married and I was traveling, singing, I was into music and we were in California and we ended up going out to Venice Beach and we were just kind of hanging out and stuff and we had no idea then, but most of you don't know this story, but my wife at birth, her and her twin brother were adopted. And so recently, about seven years ago, she discovered her biological family on her father's side and they are all from California. Well, little did we know that on that beach that day when we first got married, that on Venice Beach, most likely her father was right there in the middle of all of that stuff

that were happening because he goes there every single day. That's where he works. He hangs out there and for years, that was her biological father. She did not know that and it wasn't until some 20 something years later that we ended up meeting him, but this is what I come to understand is God is always, the father is always closer than you actually think. And here's the key truth. You aren't a slave trying to get God's attention. You're a child who has been brought into his family. You can believe in God and still live like an orphan. Listen, an orphan mindset says everything depends on me, but a child of God says, my father is almighty. An orphan says, I have to provide for myself, but the father says, I know what you need. The orphan says, I have to prove my worth, but the father says, you are mine. The orphan says, I have to earn love, but the father says, I loved you first. The orphan says, if I fail, then I'll be rejected, but the father says, come home, I won't reject you. So here's the question, what would change if you actually believe that you have a good father? Not simply I believe in God, but I have a father. What happens to your anxiety, your striving, your insecurity, your need to control everything, your comparison, here's the revelation.

When I forget who my father is, I actually start carrying things that belong to him. When I forget who my father is, I start carrying things that belong to him. Tomorrow's stuff, that's father's stuff. Outcomes, father's stuff. People you can't change, that's father's stuff. Your future, that's father's stuff. You were never built to carry all of it. He says, cast your cares on me, for I care for you. That's the heart of the father for all of us. And what I love about that is, in Romans chapter eight, it says that we've been adopted. So you have not received the spirit that makes you fearful slaves. Instead, you receive God's spirit when he adopted you as his own children. Now we call him Abba Father, for his spirit joins with our spirit to affirm that we are God's children. And since we are his children, we are his heirs. In fact, together with Christ, we are heirs of God's glory. Because if we are to share his glory, we must also share his suffering. I love this because Paul is writing to this Roman world that understood adoption as a legal transfer of identity and inheritance. The old status was replaced by a new one, a new family, a new name, a new future. And this is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is exactly what Christ did for us. You are not a servant begging for scraps, but you are a child welcomed to the table, God's table. You are his family, you are his son, you are his daughter, you are family, he is closer than you think. You don't have to cower, you don't have to keep performing and trying to earn what grace has already provided. He has already given you an inheritance. Therefore, your spirit can cry, Abba Father. You're not earning it. It's been given to you and you're just learning to live from it. This is the gospel since separated us from the father. We couldn't bridge the distance ourselves. So the father sent his son, Jesus, Jesus lived the life that we couldn't live. He died the death that we should have died, but he rose again, defeating death, hell in the grave. And in John chapter one, verse 12, it says, but to all who believed in him, believed him and accepted him. He gave the right to become children of God. Christianity is not merely God making bad people better. It's the father bringing lost children home since separated us, but God made a way for us to come back. And so if you've never made a decision today to trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, the father is saying to you, come home, come home, come home. Would you bow your heads with me? Would you ask the Lord, what are you saying to me through this message? And if you've never made a decision to trust Jesus Christ as your Lord and savior, to allow him to, he paid for the penalty of your sin so that you wouldn't have to. He also made a way for you to be reconnected to your heavenly father. And so if you're saying today that you want that, you want salvation, you want to be reconnected

to your heavenly father. On the count of three, you're just going to lift your hand as an indication saying, yes, that's me. I want to receive salvation. I want to trust Jesus as my Lord and savior. One, two, three, lift your hand all over this room. That's you. Online. Make that indication. Thank you. Hold it high. Fantastic. All right, you can put your hands down. If you lifted your hand or desire to lift your hand, we're all going to say this simple prayer together as a family. Say these words after me, father, God, forgive me of my sin. I believe that Jesus died for me, that he rose again. So I make a choice to say, yes, I surrender. And I invite you now to be my Lord and my savior. Thank you for saving me in Jesus name and everybody said, amen. Now here's what's really important. As I was talking about the father today, there's some of us that have tremendous awe of God. There's a reverence. There's a respect for God and you're very stoic in, in, in your awe of him. Then there's some that are, you have a great intimacy with God. You know, he's, he's my friend. He's my brother. He, he hooks me up and, but sometimes you can have all of this all, but not accept the invitation to intimacy, a relationship that a father wants with his son and his daughter, you can be so casual in your intimacy, in your relationship.

You forget that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, that not to be afraid of him, but to reverence and respect his awe. He is the creator of the universe. He is God. There's, there's no one like him. I mean, he is all powerful and there's an awe that should come with that, a respect, a holiness, that a holy God, I respect, but also one that wants to be called father. So you may be one of those too. And in a moment, we're getting ready to sing this song called Elohim. And while they're singing this song, here's your response. If you find yourself one of those people where you have great awe of God, but no intimacy, maybe your response is God, I want a relationship. Show me your intimacy. Or maybe you've got the whole intimacy thing down and maybe your response is God, give me an awe of you. And maybe your response is this, you're sitting here and you've had a terrible relationship with your father. And first, I am sorry on behalf of your father, who may have not treated you the way you deserve to be treated. I apologize on his behalf, but I also challenge you to let the heavenly father step into that place. And today you can release him and allow the father to heal your father wounds because he wants to step in to that situation and he invites you to come home. You've been resisting him because of what has been represented to you or misrepresented to you. And the father saying, come home. So as they sing this song, the prayer team's gonna come and they're gonna be standing here. And if you just need help releasing, and maybe you just want prayer

because maybe you want more intimacy with God or you want more awe, or maybe you just wanna be healed from the wounds that have been created by your father and you want help to release that. While we're singing this song, let's worship. Let's connect with him. Let me pray for you. Father, in Jesus' name, I ask that Lord, your grace would be revealed in this moment. Meet us where we are, in Jesus' name, amen.