Why did Jesus come into the world?  To save from sins, redeem us, heal us. All true. However Jesus says in John 17:3 “Now this is eternal life: that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent”.

Blaise Pascal, the famous physicist and theologian said: God made us in his image and we returned the compliment.

And our God becomes as bound up, limited, impotent and untrustworthy as we are. Oh that we would see God as he is.

We are fallen people, living in a fallen, fractured, tainted world. Our brightest and whitest are a dingy grey compared with our original design and creation. Everything we know and see is tainted. Creation, in it’s magnificence, is tainted and a shadow of its former beauty. So we become accustomed and comfortable with imperfection.

• So we don’t expect all knowledge from our teachers. We  know they can make mistakes.
• we don’t expect complete honesty from our politicians. We know they lie. Spin dioctors. quickly forgive and vote again
• don’t expect complete truthfulness from advertising. We are always looking for the catch, the trick, the con.
• We don’t expect complete trustworthiness from anybody.

And then we come to God. The God who is revealed as Holy. Wherever God has revealed himself to man, he has revealed himself as holy.

We use underline, italics, parenthasis to show importance or stand out. Jews used repetition. Truly, truly  or Peter, Peter.

Only one attriubute of God that is taken to the superlative level. not just repeated, tripled. Not God is love, love love, mercy mercy mercy or grace, grace, grace, but,
Holy, Holy Holy

1. Isaiah 6:3 And they were calling to one another: “Holy, holy, holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.”
2. Revelation 4:8 Each of the four living creatures had six wings and was covered with eyes all around, even under his wings. Day and night they never stop saying: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty, who was, and is, and is to come.”

• Nothing we can do is good enough to be called holy, to meet that standard.
• Nothing we can give can buy this holiness, its not for sale.

Nothing but the blood of Jesus, the holy one, who gave his holy, perfect, majestic, set apart life as a sacrifice, as an offering, shed his blood, for our imperfections, for our sin, for our impurity, for our wrong doing, for our mistakes, for our regrets. So that we maybe holy in his sight

Ephesians 1:4-7 For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love, he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will— to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves. In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, in accordance with the riches of God’s grace.

When it comes to success and achievement, the world thinks in terms of strength, self assurance and aggressiveness.
That’s the world’s idea of conquest and possession.
The more you assert yourself and express yourself, the more you organise and manifest your powers and ability, the more likely you are to succeed.

Have you ever heard of a humble dictator?

1. Hugo Chávez- venezuela
2. Fidel Castro- Cuba
3. Ayatollah Ali Khamenei- Iran
4. Kim Jung-eel – North Korea
5. Vladimir putin- Russia

We see and experience abuses of power almost on a daily basis. Whether through media or workplaces. And yet the God we discover in the Bible, the one with absolute omnipotence, is a God of humility and his message runs completely contrary to that of the world. It is a clear indicator that the Christian, the one born again of another spirit and into another kingdom is all together different from the Spirit of this world.

God came and said a startling statement about the kingdom:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth

This must have come as a tremendous shock to the Jews. Who saw God through the OT stories and their own political and carnal motivations simply as a conqueror who smites his enemies. Yet there is much in the OT that displays the humility of God and the nature of his kingdom.

Jesus comes in the flesh and reveals the true nature of God. Powerful, yes, sovereign yes, but meek.

Dictionary.com one definition Meek = Easily imposed on; submissive.

• The word meek has come to mean dispossessed, weak, insipid and spineless.
• Some of Microsoft Word’s synonyms for meek are: timid, submissive, docile, compliant.

Estimated you watched approximately 52,500 ads on TV alone each year. (@ average 30sec 437 hours of advertising or 18 days 24/7).

So in this deluge of information and advertising, where so many people are clamouring for our attention to buy something or do something, to go somewhere.

1. How do we know God is trying to say something?
2. If he is, Is it important to hear what he is saying?
3. and if so, how do we hear his voice in all that noise?

1. Because God is The Communicator and we are made in his image.
The fact we love to communicate indicates that God is a communicator. Facebook, twitter, phone,
The story of the Bible is the story of God’s constant and continual communication with mankind.

Hebrews 1:1-2 begins: Long ago God spoke many times and in many ways to our ancestors through the prophets.  And now in these final days, he has spoken to us through his Son.

God is continually seeking man out to talk with him.

So as Martin Luther said, you are created for dialogue:
A phone is created for communication not as a calculator, though it can do that also. So are you created for communication.

2. It is important to hear what he is saying?
Have you ever lost your mobile phone? How did you feel?
What if someone is trying to get hold of me? What if something important has happened? What if I have been left a important message? A client is ringing me?

But what about God? Is it important to hear what God is saying?

• Only if you want to get to know your real father, for he is constantly leaving you messages
• Only if you want to understand what he thinks about you
• Only if you want to know why your here and what you were designed and shaped for.

God, your creator, designer, the one who said I shaped you in your mother womb, there is a race marked out for you. Why you’re here and what are you supposed to be doing.

Christianity is called a revealed religion. The revelation refers to God’s self disclosure to men and women. A revealing of who he is, who you are, what he has done and what we can do to live our best life.

• Supernatural
• Jesus incarnation
• The Word (read and spoken)
• Holy Spirit

Jesus is the word and to reach all men and women of all ages, God had written the word of God, the Bible. It is as perfect and true as Jesus himself.

3. How do we hear his voice in all that noise?
To hear God we have to make a decision we want to hear what he has to say.
The main way God speaks is through the Bible.

• The Bible is not so much a collection of facts about God, but a collection of letters from God to you.
• A collection of facebook posts to you revealing God’s heart, desire and purpose for you.
• It is his twitter update to you about your life and future.

One of the questions my kids asked when they’re young and I’m sure yours, When you talk to them about God is what does he look like? A good question and one that had been asked down through the ages. what is God like?

When Jesus came, he came to reveal to us just what God is like.

John 1:18  No one has ever seen God. But the unique One, who is himself God, is near to the Father’s heart. He has revealed God to us.

Jesus most revealing descriptor of God is as God the loving and caring Father.

Have you ever wondered why God chose to have us enter the world as helpless babies?
Could have had as born some way as young adults, physically complete like Adam and Eve.

Just maybe his purpose was that in growing and developing in the context of family, we would grow up experiencing a setting in which his love would be modelled. That we would get a glimpse of the love of God through the love and commitment of our mother and father.
That each child would grow up feeling unconditional love, be understood and accepted in a secure and encouraging environment environment.

No wonder Satan is so bent on destroying the image of the father and the family. The more it is distorted, The more it alienates people from the reality of a loving and caring heavenly father.

In a 1997 the U.S. Center for Mental Health Services provided national demographic data on children enrolled in state schools. They found that “on the whole, children living in single-parent families are more likely to experience poverty than children living in two-parent homes.” Further, “of those children living in poverty, 73 percent were living in families maintained by mothers, as compared to 22 percent of those children living with both parents, and 5 percent living with their fathers.”

In a study on the developmental roots of rape (in Criminal Justice & Behavior, Volume 14, 1987) undertaken for the American Association for Correctional and Forensic Psychology, researchers found that 80 percent of those rapists motivated by displaced anger came from fatherless homes. Those with other motivations also had a high incidence of fatherlessness.

Study Into Hispanic Youth Culture- 1997

“Gang kids predominantly come from broken homes where the father is absent. They generally fail to develop a self-identity. The gang becomes a substitute family, and gang affiliation becomes a substitute identity. Young Hispanic gang members develop a group identity where their identification with the gang and its ethos replaces the core of their self-identity. It amounts to an anti-identity, in that it is predominantly built on negative dysfunctional traits such as toughness and crime.”
1. Studies on a father’s influence on his child’s pro-social behavior reveals that:  Even in high-crime, inner-city neighborhoods, well over 90 percent of children from safe, stable, two-parent homes do not become delinquents.

The care and security of a loving home, with a mum and a dad was intended by God to prepare you for his love.
But because it is a fallen world, many people don’t grow up in a family environment reflecting God’s love, but have suffered hurt and rejection. These experiences can effect us to know God as he truly is and hinder us from trusting him.

• A father who wasn’t there
• Feelings of neglect
• Or broken promises

3 misconceptions about God the father that Jesus exposes

1. Authority
The abuse of authority in our past taints our view of God. We can see him as a punisher, school master, as abuser. But Jesus reveals him as the loving father. The tender nurturer. He even encourages us to pray Our Father in heaven. Even use the word Abba Father.

Matt 19:13 One day some parents brought their children to Jesus so he could lay his hands on them and pray for them. But the disciples scolded the parents for bothering him. But Jesus said, “Let the children come to me. Don’t stop them! For the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to those who are like these children.”  And he placed his hands on their heads and blessed them before he left.

If your father failed to clearly display God’s loving authority  and no dad is perfect and we all make mistakes, you need to recognise that fact, forgive him, and go on to receive The Father’s love. He waits even now, with outstretched arms.

• When Ben comes running in to the house covered in mud. I will take him outside and washoff the mud. I reject the mud, but not my Son.
• When Ben excitedly brings home artwork from pre-school, I always stick it on the fridge. Why because it’s great art? Or because it is an expression of the heart of the son I love.

Yes we have sinned, yes we have broken God’s heart, but we are still the centre of his desire.

2. Trust
Charles Blondin was a 19th century French acrobat, famous for his tightrope act 160 feet above Niagra Falls on a rope which was over a thousand feet long.

In 1860 a Royal party from Britain saw Blondin cross the tightrope on stilts, and again blindfolded. After that he stopped halfway and cooked and ate an omelette. Next he wheeled a wheelbarrow from one side to the other, and returned with a sack of potatoes in it.

Then Blondin approached the Royal party. He asked the Duke of Newcastle, “do you believe I could take a man across the tightrope in this wheelbarrow?”
“Yes, I do” , said the Duke.
“Hop in, then” , replied Blondin.

If we have had our trust abused, by someone who we should be able to trust, then we can find it very difficult to trust God no matter how safe he appears in scripture.
Or maybe we grew up with religion and religious practises, but no God. So we have assumed managerial responsibility for our life.

Only love restores trust. And the more we experience God’s unconditional love in our lives the more willing we become to risk everything on Jesus. To walk into the dark only holding his hand.
Prov 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding;  in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make your paths straight

And just like a child can never paint a bad finger painting, you can never pray a bad prayer. Whenever you express your heart to God he hears you.

3. Forgiveness

The parable of prodigal son reveals a father desperate for relationship and union with those who are away from him. When the younger son returned home, expecting punishment he received grace and forgiveness.

A rumour began to spread that a certain catholic woman was seeing visions of Jesus. The report reached the Arch bishop. He decided to check her out. There is a fine line between an authentic mystic and the lunatic fringe.
Is it true Jesus is appearing to you in visions and answering your questions?
Yes Sir?
I don’t believe you. Next time he appears, I want you to ask him to tell you the last sins I confessed.

10 days later she sent someone to tell him to come. She had had a vision.
He came, and said, did you do as I asked. Yes Bishop, Just as you asked. He lean’t forward toward her and his eyes narrowed, and what did he say?

She gazed into his eyes and she said. These were his exact words” I cant remember”.

No Matter what you have done, God, the loving father, will forgive you. Not only that, he will come into your life and empower you to live in way that you were purposed and designed