Fatherhood

Let's see an image of Derek Redmond running the 400 in the Barcelona Olympics in '92. It's a great story and, you know, in anticipation to the London Olympics, I thought that's a fitting introduction to our topic this morning. If you've ever pulled a hammy or a muscle or a ligament, you'll know that frustrating sense of hopelessness that you experience. Most of the blokes here probably won't admit it. But in that instance, when you hear that pop and you feel that hot warm sensation running up your leg, you realise just how vulnerable you are.

As we're approaching the Olympic Games, you might hear the story about Derek Redmond and his father Jim Redmond. It's gone down in history as one of the all-time classic stories of the Olympics. It's a moment that celebrates the human spirit, the bond between a father and his son, unconditional family love. And for me, a magnificent analogy of the father heart of God and his love for his children. Have you ever been in that sort of situation?

A time when a word of encouragement from a friend or the strong arm of a confidant has brought you, crippled but alive, across the finish line. Across a moment that is so painful and so sore and so disappointing that you don't think you could do it, but because of that person, that help you have. Have you ever had a generous loan of money when you were in a terrible predicament, or an invitation to crash on a couch when it seemed the whole world had turned its back on you? When I watched this scene for the first time, I couldn't help but hope that one day I would be a father like Jim Redmond. That I would see my son hurt and in need and wouldn't care.

I wouldn't care of a fine. I wouldn't care about what officials might do or say. I just see my son and I would run out to help him. This morning, we're going to be talking about the greatness of fatherhood, but not human fatherhood. Human fatherhood, unfortunately, can be disappointing at times.

On the one hand, it can be magnificently splendid, but at other times it can be surprisingly disappointing as well. This morning, we're going to be looking at fatherhood, but the fatherhood of God. If you have your Bibles with you, I want you to open with me to Deuteronomy 1. And we're going to read a beautiful passage, a beautiful verse in particular. In Deuteronomy 1, we're sort of just falling into the middle of this passage in verse 19.

We're going to read from verse 19 to 33. Just before we do that, maybe just as a way of introduction or context, this is the beginning of Deuteronomy. It's the beginning of Moses' last great final sermon before he was to pass away eventually, but before the Israelites crossed over into the Promised Land. And so he gives a sermon pleading for his people not to forget God, not to forget what God has done for them in the wilderness and brought them out of Egypt. And it's his last advice from God to his people.

We'll pick it up from verse 19. Moses said, "Then, as the Lord our God commanded us, we set out from Horeb and went towards the hill country of the Amorites through all that vast and dreadful desert that you have seen. And so we reached Kadesh Barnea. Then I said to you, 'You have reached the hill country of the Amorites which the Lord our God is giving us. See, the Lord your God has given you the land.

Go up and take possession of it as the Lord, the God of your fathers told you. Do not be afraid. Do not be discouraged.' Then all of you came to me and said, 'Let us send men ahead to spy out the land for us and bring back a report about the route we should take and the towns we should come to.' The idea seemed good to me, so I selected 12 of you, one man from each tribe.

They left and went up into the hill country and came to the Valley of Eshcol and explored it. Taking with them some of the fruit of the land, they brought it down to us and reported, 'It is a good land that the Lord our God is giving us.' But you were unwilling to go up. You rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, 'The Lord hates us.

So He brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us. Where can we go? Our brothers have made us lose heart. They say, "The people are stronger and taller than we are. The cities are large with walls up to the sky.

We even saw the Anakites there." Then I said to you, "Do not be terrified. Do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God who is going before you will fight for you as He did for you in Egypt before your very eyes and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you as a father carries his son.

All the way you went until you reached this place. But in spite of this, you did not trust in the Lord your God who went ahead of you on your journey, in fire by night and in the cloud by day, to search out places for you to camp and to show you the way that you should go." We come to this point in Deuteronomy 1 where Israel, the people of God, had been wandering in the wilderness for forty years because they were disobedient. Moses here was retelling the story of what had happened. He said, "Forty years ago, this happened."

And so he tells them that they were at the verge. They were at the Jordan River about to go over. They sent out spies to go and check out the land. The spies came back and they said it's a great land, fertile, but there are really strong people in the land. And the people got discouraged and they didn't go into the land.

And so God set them to go and wander the wilderness for another forty years as punishment for disobeying Him, as punishment for not trusting Him, and He waited for that entire generation to pass away. And so Moses is at this point again, forty years later, and he's retelling them this story of what happened. They need to cross the Jordan River again. They need to come to terms with God's promise to them again. Let's have a look at verses 26 to 27.

Moses tells them what their forefathers had done. "But you, collectively, were unwilling to go up. You rebelled against the command of the Lord your God. You grumbled in your tents and said, 'The Lord hates us, so He has brought us out of Egypt to deliver us into the hands of the Amorites to destroy us.'" You know what?

This is so us. This is so human. I love the Old Testament for its honesty. I love it for its honesty because it doesn't sugarcoat anything. This is why I've got so much confidence in the Old Testament as God's word because any other document that wants to portray a philosophy, wants to portray a religion is so nice about it.

It is so sugar-coated. It portrays how great it is, and it never shows the flaws. But Israel's flaws are always shown. Israel's flaws are always shown. There's no attempt to ignore sin.

Nothing has changed. If we humans could write our own books, tell our own stories, we would remember the good things. We would highlight the best bits. We would put together those, you know, honour reels. Ignore those ugly moments in our lives.

The times we selfishly grab at money when the opportunity arises, the moments we ignore the cry of help from someone in desperation because it might conflict with my fun. It would take away money that could be better spent elsewhere. Our story may ignore those moments we forsake our dependence on God and where we try to figure out how we can do certain things in our strength. This is the plight of our hearts. It's the state of our heart.

But it is also that for all of humanity. "I will do it my way." And so we see Israel, having done it their way, come to a point where they have to yet again decide whether they will trust God, whether they will do it His way. Some people have said and some people have claimed that the God of the Old Testament is a vindictive bully of a God who would send His people for forty years into the desert waiting for them to pass away as punishment and then have their children cross into the promised land. What kind of a God would do that?

Well, if we look again at this story, you see that, yes, the previous generation did die out in those forty years of wandering. But God experienced their disobedience as a direct slap in the face. Remember, God had done so much for them up until that point. He had performed 10 catastrophic plagues against Egypt that caused Pharaoh to finally release them. He provided food in the desert, water in the desert for them for forty years, all the way before that as well up to that point.

God had sorted out the enemies, given them victory over their enemies. And when they come to that point, they don't trust God. They say, "No. We're not going in." After all that, God could have wiped out that entire group and just said, "Well, I've done my best.

I've done everything I could." The Bible says that their clothes didn't wear out. Miraculously, what they had didn't just get destroyed, didn't get ruined. God could have wiped out the whole lot of them and be done with it. Instead, He let their young ones, forty years later, have the chance again to make the choice for Him, to trust in Him.

Friends, that's grace. That is grace. Moses explains again, "You, Israel, you didn't believe and obey God's will, but here you are again." He goes on to say, "In those days when your forefathers rebelled, I tried to remind them of what God had done for us. But now I will remind you again of what God did."

Verses 29 to 31 goes on to say, "Then I said to you, 'Do not be terrified. Do not be afraid of them. The Lord your God who is going before you, He will fight for you as He did for you in Egypt before your very eyes and in the wilderness and in the desert. There you saw how the Lord your God carried you as a father carries his son all the way you went until you reached this place.'" Don't let your hearts falter.

Don't become anxious, Moses says. "Your God who before your very eyes conquered these enemies, conquered these armies that were, you know, trained. You are a ragtag bunch of slaves from Egypt and you conquered them. You got manna and quail in the desert. Water enough to feed your animals and your camels and your livestock.

God cared for you. God did all of this for you to get you to this place, and now He will be with you in the Promised Land. As a father carries his son, He has carried you to this place. As a father carries his son, He has brought you to this place. Isn't that a magnificent image of God's love?

Doesn't that just give you such a vivid image of how God loves His people? It's the father heart of God. There's no bully God here. There's no vindictive, fickle God here. He's the God who carries His children like a dad carries a son.

Strong. Strong. Protective. Determined. Capable.

That image that we saw of Jim Redmond carrying his son over the finish line is like the image here. God had carried His people to the finish line. The Promised Land. And all they had to do was to cross it. To go across the Jordan River.

They had crossed a sea before, the Red Sea. Much bigger, much wider, much deeper. And they had to just cross this little trickle of a thing called the Jordan River. But they refused. Can you imagine Derek, the one who hurt his leg, stopping a metre short of that finish line when his dad was carrying him and saying, "No.

I'm not going to cross this line." Telling his father, his father who had to fight off all the attendants. You see, he was just palming people off left, right, and centre as he was getting there. He had to be concerned perhaps about some sort of fine for running out onto the pitch or whatever. The father who had been to thousands of hours of trainings, who had driven his son every morning to training, who had been to hundreds of athletics carnivals and sporting events of all kinds, who had been cheering his son on many, many, many times.

The father who had sacrificed so much to see his son succeed in life. The father who carries his vulnerable son for that 99 metres, and then for the last metre, his son tells him, "I'm not going to cross this line." It would have absolutely dumbfounded the father. Friends, I believe we see something of that happening here in God's heart as He explains this again to His people. "After all that, my people," God says, "after all that, after all that I've done for you, you want to stay here?

You're upset with me that I took you from Egypt? You want to go back to Egypt? You want to stay in the desert? Well, okay. You know what I'm more afraid of?

What I fear the most in life is not that I won't get what I ask God for, but that I will get what I want from God. You know when people say, 'How can a loving God send people to hell?' Well, it's us who judge ourselves. The people who go through life rejecting God in how they live, wanting nothing to do with Him, and outright laughing off the idea of a sovereign God, an eternal loving God who continuously reaches out and calls them to Himself. The time will come when God says, 'You wanted nothing to do with me.

Now you have your wish.' My greatest fear is that God will give me what I want. God the Father carried His son, like a son called Israel, through the trials, through the hardships, through the temptations, through the hard times. Do you know that today, God is carrying you like a son, like a daughter? But this time, He doesn't carry us to a Promised Land.

He carries us to something greater and bigger and more magnificent than a piece of dry land, a plot of ground. God's drawing us to a place of harmony with Himself, a place of peace with Himself, a restored, perfect relationship with Himself. Do you want that? Do you want that? I have this image of a dad carrying his child through a fire when I think of God and our life, really.

He's carrying us and the fires are blazing. The life is hard. The fire rages, and God carrying us like His child doesn't mean that we won't get uncomfortable because the fire rages. God carrying us doesn't mean that we might not get a little bit burnt because the fire rages. God carrying us through this fire doesn't mean that we won't be uncomfortable, but the promise is that we won't perish in the fire.

We won't be consumed. God doesn't leave us in the fire. In the New Testament, this image of God is taken in Hebrews 4 and it's taken two thousand years after what happened in the desert. The author of Hebrews 4 writes this. And He speaks of Israel having found rest in the Promised Land, finding rest from their toil in the desert.

But in the book of Hebrews, He says there's a new rest because of Jesus. There's a rest from religion. There's a rest from hard work. A rest from imperfection and of inconsistency and of a lack of faith and frailty, a rest from sin. Let's have a look at Hebrews 4, and we're going to read verse 6.

I love how consistent God's word is, how the same message is just brought across over and over and over again. You don't have to be a rocket scientist. Hebrews 4, verse 6. He's talking about what happened in the Old Testament, and then he comes to this point of verse 6. Hebrews 4, verse 6.

"It still remains that some will enter that rest, and those who formerly had the gospel preached to them did not go in because of their disobedience. Therefore, God set a time, a certain day, calling it today, when a long time later He spoke through David as was said before, 'Today, if you hear His voice, do not harden your hearts.' For if Joshua or Moses had given them rest in the desert, God would not have spoken later about another day. There remains, then, a Sabbath rest for the people of God.

For anyone who enters God's rest also rests from His own work just as God did from His. Let us therefore make every effort to enter that rest so that no one will fall by following their example of disobedience." Friends, fathers, mums, grandparents, youth groupers, God has brought us to this place of rest. The author of Hebrews says, "We have come to this place," and we're not entering into this Promised Land because that happened. That was for a specific moment in time.

But there's a much greater truth that we can see in this. God is inviting us into a much better rest than the rest that Israel could have gotten. They were in the desert. They toiled. It was hot.

It was miserable. They could have entered a beautiful country. They were at that point. Now the book of Hebrews says, "We are also at that point." And Jesus Christ has made it possible.

Like a father carries his son, God has brought us to the threshold of an eternity without suffering, an eternity without sin, an eternity where we don't have to struggle to survive, where we don't have disappointments, where we don't have sons who make mistakes, where we don't have daughters who reject our love, where we don't have fathers who disappoint us, friends who hurt us. We are at a threshold, an eternity where we don't have to struggle to survive, but where we can live and thrive. "Today, if you hear His voice," the writer says, "do not harden your hearts." The Israelites, they were scared of the enemies in the Promised Land. They were scared of taking that step across that river.

But God had fought for them since Egypt, and He would fight for them again. Like Jim Redmond fought off those guards and those officials, God just saw His people and He ran to them. He had tunnel vision for them. The Israelites were scared that they wouldn't survive in the new fertile land. Meanwhile, God had provided manna and quail for them in the desert.

He had made water come from the rock. God would look after them. Likewise today, if we feel afraid that God cannot possibly be all that He says He is, God cannot do all that He says He will, but look at your life. Even the small things that you have, the little bit of health, the little bit of wealth, all of this is purely grace. Purely grace.

There is no reason that you were born in Australia, that you could have made that decision before you were born. Born into a lap of luxury. It is all grace. God the Father has driven you backwards and forwards from the trainings in your life. He's been with you every step of the way in the times of hardship, in the times of trials, of temptations.

He was there with you. He was there cheering you on. He was in your corner every time. The father God who fights off your enemy, fights off Satan, He's going to be just like Jim Redmond, fighting off those officials. He's by your side.

He's the Father God who cheers you on as you run this race called life. He's the Father who sacrificed His Son, Jesus Christ, your big brother, for you to cross that finish line. The Father God who carries you, His vulnerable son, His desperate precious daughter, those 99 metres and says, "Enter my rest. Enter my rest. I love you.

I'm here for you. I'm cheering you on."