Join Colin Cook as he navigates through the complexities of understanding God’s true nature. By dispelling myths associated with the Father and highlighting the unity with Jesus, this episode fosters a deeper comprehension of divine love. Through personal anecdotes and scriptural references, gain insights into embracing faith during times of trouble and feeling God’s presence through passages like Psalm 139.
So yesterday we looked at the issue of if God is for us, who can be against us? And we reminded ourselves that it must be understood that if God is for us, then everything else is for us, because God is not only for us, but also in control. of the things that affect us, whether they are our enemies or disappointments or tragedies or losses. These are all under God’s control, and therefore even they can be for us and are for us. If God is for us, everything is for us, even those things that seem to be against us. But there’s another thing that we need to look at. If God is for us, Well, now, some people think that, yes, Jesus is for me, but I’m not sure about God. That is, I know it’s a very childish kind of thinking, but you may be entrapped by it. We tend to think… in our immature, childish religion that we might have been brought up with and haven’t had updated, that Jesus is very loving and kind, but God seems rather harsh and wrathful, and he’s the judge, and Jesus has to convince God to save us. Oh, my dear friends, that is such a messed-up, screwed-up theology, and it is very, very false. Jesus made it clear in the Gospels that all the words that he spoke to the world and to his disciples were from the Father. Philip said, Lord, show us the Father, and Jesus, with a sort of sad sound to his voice, said, O Philip, have I been so long with you, and you don’t know who I am, you don’t know me? He that has seen me has seen the Father. And so what we need to understand and take deep into our hearts is that Jesus is the express image of God. You remember what Hebrews said about that? Let me read it. God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in time past to the fathers by the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by his Son, whom he has appointed heir of all things, through whom also he made the worlds, who being in the brightness of his glory and the express image of his person and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had by himself purged our sins, sat down at the right hand of the majesty on high. Oh, my goodness, how much that is loaded with truth. But look what it says there regarding Jesus being the express image of his person. And so, you see, Jesus came to the world to represent the Father. In fact, he said, the Father is in me. Believe me and believe the Father is in me. He that has seen me has seen the Father, he said. And so, you see, when we say, if God is for us, rather, when we say that Jesus is our Savior, we are saying that God is our Savior because God sent Jesus. God so loved the world, John 3.16, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life. So when you get into doubt about your Heavenly Father, when you are overwhelmed by fears or guilt or your sins or all the problems that are coming to you in the world, and you feel that God does not love you, then what do you do? You look to Jesus Christ. You look at the heart of Christ. You read the Gospel of John or Mark or Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John, and you read all the love and the goodness that Jesus brought to the world, and you say to yourself, that is the love of the Father. Don’t fall trap to this idea that Jesus is nice and good and the Father is the judge and rather harsh. If Jesus is nice and good, the Father is nice and good. That’s how it is, because Jesus is the revelation of the Father. And so when we pray, we can lift up our hearts to Jesus, and we can lift up our hearts to our Father. I think I’ve told you, well, long ago, quite some many months ago, I think, that a certain woman would be listening to this program, and she met me later and said, you know, before I heard your program, I used to pray to Jesus only because I just couldn’t bear praying to this Father of ours that I believed was so harsh. And I think she had been abused as a child in regard to her father. Well, she said, once I listened to your program, I could at last pray to my Heavenly Father. How good that is! So if you’re in any doubt about the love and the kindness of God, then look at the heart of Jesus and you will see the heart of God. And then you will be able to say, along with Paul, if God is for us, who can be against us? the fact that Christ died for our sins and rose again, the fact that he is our righteousness, the fact that he has reconciled us to the heart of the Father, that’s Romans 5, he is our righteousness, Romans 6, Romans 7, the fact that he is our resurrection, all of that is a demonstration of God the Father’s love to us. Now Paul goes on to say this very thing that I’m trying to make the point of. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? Now, do you see, this is what we need to see. We must not divide the Trinity. There are many Christians who have done this. It stems from the medieval times. It also stems from the 19th century, the 20th century, the 1900s, where preachers used to preach about Jesus pleading with the Father to accept us. Now, it says that God, Jesus, is the intercessor. But it doesn’t mean that Jesus is pleading with God, who is reluctant to accept us. That is such nonsense. The gospel message does not divide God between Jesus and the Father. The gospel message at last unites our understanding of the Father and the Son. When we know that Jesus came for our sins, it’s as if God came for our sins. Remember that God, that Jesus, is presented in Scriptures as one with the Father, as the creator of the universe, as the upholder of all things. Jesus is all-knowing. Now, if God the Father is all-knowing and Jesus is all-knowing, then when Jesus went to the cross, the Father experienced everything that Jesus went through. God the Father must have suffered the full terror and horror of crucifixion just as much as God the Son did, because God the Father knows the full heart of the Son, and the Son knows the full heart of the Father. Don’t you see then that our Father is passionately in love with the world, passionately in love with you, so much so that He is determined that He will rescue you, determined that He will save you in His kingdom, bring you through out of all the troubles and out of all the darkness? He who did not spare His own Son. but delivered him up for us all. Do you see how God delivered him up to us? It wasn’t a mistake. It wasn’t a plan that went awry as if God had sent his son to rescue the world and, oops, human beings, wicked as they were, killed him and it was all a mess. No, it was God delivered his son. He gave his son for us, for you. This is God’s gift, and God’s Son is the gift of your eternal life. That’s the truth of it. He who did not spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, not just a few, all, everyone, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? And Paul here is stressing that God is present with you now, and present with all the troubles you’re going through. Remember Psalm 139, O LORD, you have searched me and known me, and this word LORD, you see, notice there it’s in capital letters, which means, which indicates, it’s a coded sort of way of telling us that this is the name Jehovah, Yahweh, O Jehovah. You have searched me and known me. You know my sitting down and my rising up. You understand my thought afar off. You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all my ways. For there is not a word on my tongue, but behold, O Lord, you know it altogether. You have hedged me behind and before and laid your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend into heaven, you are there. If I make my bed in the grave, behold, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me. If I say surely the darkness shall fall on me, even the night shall be light about me. Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from you, but the night shines as the day. The darkness and the light are both alike to you. Do you see, this is our intimate Heavenly Father. And Jesus is also referred to in the Scriptures as Jehovah. And so our intimate Heavenly Father is for us. You don’t look at these verses in Psalm 139 and say, oh my goodness, God knows every single thing I do. I feel so afraid and guilty as if he’s watching me and poking his finger at me and telling me I’m damned. That’s not the message. The message is that you are surrounded by the intimacy of our Heavenly Father who loves you so much and cares for you and has sacrificed his Son for you that he will protect you through high and low, through thick and thin, and darkness and light. That’s the truth of the gospel, you see. That’s what we need to embrace in our hearts. He who did not spare his own son, but delivered him up for us all. Look, do you think sometimes that this guy, Colin Cook, who teaches you this stuff, is having a good time of it all and has a good life. I have many, many sorrows in my life, many, many disappointments and troubles that hit me regularly, and I am sometimes overwhelmed and feel ashamed and guilty and feel that everything’s going wrong when things should go right. But, you see, my faith surmounts it, not because I have a strong faith stronger than yours, but because God is good, and Jesus has revealed the heart of God, and therefore we can trust him and exercise that faith and believe that all things work together for good, all the bad stuff. So this is what we need to embrace. He who did not spare his own son but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? God is going to attend to our hearts. He’s going to attend to our sorrows. He’s going to attend to the needs of our mind and our bodies when we’re ill or unhealthy and need to be straightened out and healed. Who shall bring a charge, Paul says, against God’s elect? My goodness, do you see what this says? We’ll talk more about it next time. God, the judge, okay, he’s a judge, but he’s our defender. Amen to that. Well, thank you for listening today. Colin Cook here and How It Happens, a broadcast you can hear on the radio at 10 in the evening in the Denver and Colorado and surrounding states areas, repeated at 4 o’clock in the morning if you get up at that time or if you can’t sleep, and that’s on AM670. You can also hear this program, though, on your smartphone. Download a free app, soundcloud.com or podbean.com, and key in how it happens with Colin Cook when you get there. If you’d like to make a donation to the broadcast, it would be so much appreciated. Send it to Faith Quest P.O. Box 366, Littleton, Colorado 80160, or make your donation online at faithquestradio.com. Thanks so much. I’ll see you next time. Cheerio and God bless.
Join Colin Cook as he navigates through the complexities of understanding God’s true nature. By dispelling myths associated with the Father and highlighting the unity with Jesus, this episode fosters a deeper comprehension of divine love. Through personal anecdotes and scriptural references, gain insights into embracing faith during times of trouble and feeling God’s presence through passages like Psalm 139.
