Sermon Notes, May 22, 2016
Rev.
Garry McGlinchy
Pastor Garry continued his
series on the Trinity with a message titled “God the Father: Accessible and
Generous,” based on Matthew 7:7-12. Pastor
asked us to think about a friend we knew we could call upon at any time, and
then told us about his friend, Chris, who helps anyone who needs help. Chris looks upon helping not as an obligation,
but as an opportunity to use his gifts for God’s glory, and to build life-long
loving relationships with all his neighbors.
Last week we talked about how
God is constantly on the move in and amongst the world He created and
loves. He not only goes out, but He
gives out—He brings gifts. And since we
are made in His image, we also need to be sending and sharing. One popular view of God the Father is that He
is the wrathful and inaccessible deity within the Trinity, and that Jesus is
the loving and accessible deity within the Trinity. But we discover a much different view of God
in our scripture reading today.
Accessibility of God. In verses 7 & 8, we see that although the
Father is above and beyond us, He is also among and beside us. Although the Father is greater by far than
anything He created, He is accessible and available to interact with His
creation. Many people think God is far
removed from His creation, but this could not be farther from the truth. Acts 17:26-27 says that He made all the
nations from one man, to inhabit the whole earth. He marked their appointed times in history
and the boundaries of their lands. He
did this so they would seek him and reach out for him and find him, though he
is not far from any of us. He didn’t
just create Heaven and Earth and everything in it just to abandon it or observe
it from a distance like a mad scientist.
God isn’t a “hands off” God. No!
He is a God who cherishes us and wants to share everything with us. Yes, God the Father wants to give good gifts to
those who ask, seek, and knock.
The problem is we’re often
afraid to be direct with God. Think
about it. Ask, Seek and Knock are all
action words. This means that we have to
take action when speaking with God the Father.
We can’t just sit back and wait to get what we need. We need to Ask Him, and ask Him directly: don’t
beat around the bush with God.
The Extravagant Generosity of
Our Heavenly Father. In verses 9-10
Jesus highlights not only the accessibility of the Father, but the extravagant
generosity of the Father. Jesus, the one
telling the people that the Father wants to give good gifts to His children, is
Himself the greatest gift given by God.
The extravagant generosity of God is Jesus the Son. If it were not for the love of the Father, we
would not have the Son.
The Jewish people of Jesus’ day
were asking for liberation, freedom, hope and restoration. Instead of giving them the political,
temporal freedom they thought they needed, God goes one better and gives them
eternal, ultimate freedom from sin, death, and lifeless living. God not only hears us and answers us, but He
gives more than we could ever hope for.
The Way to Make Our Heavenly
Father Proud. This passage ends with
a challenge to treat people well. (Verse 12) The Father is pleased when His
children do to others as we would have them do to us. We cannot pay the Father back for His
kindness to us, but He wants us to pay His kindness forward to others.
At first, Pastor Garry was blown
away with his friend Chris’s accessibility and generosity. However he began to understand that Chris was
merely projecting the image of God that we were created in. He was loving God by loving those around him
with the gifts that God gave him. He was
most certainly making our Heavenly Father very proud! Simply put, Chris was loving God and loving
others.
In 1 John 1:7-8 we’re told to
love one another, for love comes from God.
If we don’t love, we don’t know God, because God is love. We have a heavenly Father we can be extremely
proud of. The question is, are we making our Father proud of us by doing to
others as we would have them do to us?
The Father sees our human need and gives us what we need most. He calls us to put ourselves in the shoes of
others and do for them what they need most.
What can you do this week to pay
the extravagant generosity of the Father forward to someone in need? Our #1 priority will have to be prayer. 1 John 5:14-15 says “This is the confidence
we have in approaching God: that if we ask anything according to his will, he
hears us. And if we know that he hears
us—whatever we ask—we know that we have what we asked of him.”
Pastor Garry asked us to write
down the names of people we’re praying for.
Write some specific need these people have. Write down our personal needs. Then bring them to the front and put them on
the altar. All week, pray for these people
and these needs. Ask. Seek. Knock.
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