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Improve your own sermons by reviewing some of the best from the Preaching Today collection. The information below provides a brief synopsis of what you can expect from the downloadable transcript.
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Why God Is Father, Not Mother
by Ben Patterson
Text: Matthew 6:9
Topic: Why to assert the Fatherhood of God
Big Idea: The authority of Scripture mandates God must be called Father.
Keywords: Fatherhood of God; God; Scriptural authority
Introduction:
- There exists a current trend to redefine the character of God as Mother.
- Illustration: Patterson quotes a feminist hymn and doxology that both speak of God as Mother and bring to light the radically unorthodox depictions of God created by the Mother image.
We need to recognize the importance of this issue.
- Ideas have consequences.
- Illustration: Patterson uses three brief illustrations to show how small variations in ideas have great long term consequences: the trajectory of a moon rocket, which side of a Swiss mountain snow melts off from, and a J. I. Packer quote about the purity of theology.
- The Motherhood of God idea has grave consequences.
Scriptures reveal God exclusively as Father.
- The divine Word incarnate taught us to call God Father. (John 13:20)
- Christ's instruction to use the familiar "Abba" ran counter, not parallel, to the patriarchal society of the time.
- The suggestion that patriarchal society tainted the Scripture denies biblical revelation in favor of progressive human religion.
God's masculine reference does not degrade women.
- God has no sexual identity.
- God's character includes feminine traits. (Isaiah: 42:14; 45:10; 49:15; 66:13)
- God's masculine reference does not make men more godly than women.
Depicting God as Mother is a descent back to pagan theology.
- God's masculinity sets him apart from ancient pagan gods.
- The depiction of God as Mother violates God's holiness through implication that he gave birth, rather than created, the earth.
God and Scripture cannot bend to ideology.
- God cannot serve political agendas.
- Illustration: The state church of Germany was bent earlier this century to serve Nazi political agenda, and Patterson quotes the Confessing Church of Germany's reasons for objecting to that practice.
- God cannot serve personal agendas.
- Illustration: Patterson quotes Dutch thinker Keiper who implies that suiting God to fit our ideology is essentially a form of narcissistic idolatry.
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