Embracing God: Our Everlasting Father and Emmanuel

And today, as we learn that he's an everlasting Father, that term can kind of be a hard term. Because some of us have had unbelievable earthly fathers. And that really helped us understand the Lord. The love and the greatness of our everlasting Father. But there's some that didn't have that great of fathers. [00:17:02] (23 seconds)


Bring your sin, your shortcomings, your failings. Bring it all before our Savior Jesus Christ, for He longs, longs to hear your voice. Longs to step into those situations and longs to bring freedom where there's bondage. And so would you do that with me this morning? [00:19:44] (19 seconds)


Behold, that is the series we've been going through this Advent. So far, Pastor Dave has told us to behold a Lord that fulfills His promises, and then invited us to come. Behold and adore. That was last week. You know, the idea of this series is really to find places in Scripture where it says, behold, and then to study, absorb those spots, apprehend them, comprehend them, and do exactly what they're telling us to do, to behold those things. [00:25:21] (37 seconds)


Because to truly behold something means to slow down, to take it all in, to dwell in it. And I don't mean to speak for you, but for me, I have a hard time slowing down sometimes. Sometimes. In the last two decades, the human attention span has went down from 12 seconds to 8.25 seconds. That's the statistic. [00:26:10] (22 seconds)


And then 18, And I want to pause with that real quickly because I want to state the importance that it is a great thing to look back on God's past faithfulness so we can have a present confidence that He is good and that He's going to show up for us. So when God says, Remember not the former things of old, you know, former things or consider the things of old. [00:32:24] (23 seconds)


God's not coming to save His people from a bondage of physical slavery any longer. God's come to save us all from the bondage of sin. God's going to start pursuing our hearts. And in fact, in a way, it's what He's always been after is your heart. But how He's going about it now changes. Behold, God is doing a new thing. [00:33:28] (22 seconds)


This is very easy for us to take for granted, but for the people at the time of Christ, this isn't just a new thing. This is crazy and it's new. This is truly something to behold. How could a holy God, a perfect God, come and live among his sinful people? I mean, isn't God only found in the holy of holies in the temple? [00:35:13] (30 seconds)


God's with us in prison, through addiction, on a first date, during an ugly cry, in the school drop-off line. God's with us while we're working the graveyard shift, or working the 12 steps, or at the office, or at the gym. God's with us in therapy, at the checkout line at the grocery store. [00:36:50] (18 seconds)


God's with us when they can't find a heartbeat, when the cancer's back, when the kids stop coming home, or when we face the pain of them rejecting what they once believed. God's with us when we're not sure we want to believe anymore, when we praise Him with songs, or when we can't bring ourselves to sing. [00:37:38] (27 seconds)


Where shall I go from your spirit? Where shall I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you're there. If I make my bed in Sheol, you're there. You can't shake him. You can't shake him. You can try to stiff arm, you can give him a little shimmy, but he's Emmanuel. He's God with us. [00:39:01] (20 seconds)


And sometimes, Lord, we just think we're so broken and in shambles that a good God would never spend time with us. And we behold that you do. Lord, I don't know the hard situations. That people are walking within these rooms. But you do. And Lord, you enter into those things. Because you are a God that is with us. [00:40:17] (30 seconds)