Preaching - Fatherhood of God

For Fathers Day this year, I travelled over to Peebles Baptist Church to share the Word in their service. This was a new location for me and a new denomination! It all came through their treasurer and rota coordinator being someone I used to work with 15 year ago! This just goes to show how important good relationships with colleagues can be.

Peebles Baptist are not in their own building due to building issues, and are instead renting the local Scout Hall which is a perfectly serviceable facility. They are also without a minister at the moment but are keeping things going themselves with external support as needed. They were really welcoming and encouraging, and I was impressed by their faithfulness and willingness to keep things going, serve God, and learn from him every day.

So being Fathers Day, I considered many different angles for the sermon. The Prodigal Son was a strong contender, but I wanted to go a little further than that. So I landed on the theme of the Fatherhood of God, leaning into the fact that God has provided the model for fathers and father figures for all time. The main text was John 14:5-14 with additional key reference to Ephesians 3:14-15. I also had the privilege of leading them in communion.

As always, you can either listen to, or read the full sermon below. And if you'd like me to come to your church to preach, please do get in touch. Peebles Baptist have already invited me back!!

Fatherhood of God 21 June 2026

24:22

Fatherhood of God – Peebles Baptist Church – Sunday 21 June 2026

John 14:5-14; Ephesians 3:14-15

As has hopefully been clear throughout the service, and partly because it is Fathers’ Day, I’m focusing on the theme of “Fatherhood”, looking to God as the Father of all, and how he provides a model for all of us – and not just Fathers of father figures.  All of us.  Sadly, this is actually a theme that has been somewhat neglected in many Christian circles and so whilst Fathers’ Day has drawn me to this theme, this is something that needs to be spoken about more often.  We maybe worry that by mentioning about fathers it might upset those who no longer have a relationship with their father, for those who never knew their father, or for those who are fathers but no longer have a relationship with their children.  None of what I say today will gloss over that, or the fact that yes, many people are hurting in the world today and a lot of that is down to broken family relationships.  But equally, I know many who struggle on Mothers’ Day for varying reasons and yet we still go pretty big on that.  That is an important moment to celebrate and rightly so, but so is Fathers’ Day because actually, to do so points us to God as the model for all fathers and father figures everywhere.  This is not about parenting as we know it. It’s not even a gender thing.  It’s about how God wants us to live in this world.

The fatherhood of God is the great fact behind the universe. There is a Father who is our God - a Father who created the universe as a Father. As such, He has left the imprint of His fatherhood on every aspect of the entire universe.  Throughout the Bible, God is described as a loving Father.  One who knows us, watches over us, and delights in our growth.  God’s fatherhood is marked by faithfulness, patience, compassion, and steadfast love.

As I’ve said, our own experiences of fathers and father figures are often imperfect.  Sometimes those imperfections are small and ordinary.  Sometimes they are deeply painful.  And just as we’re not going to gloss over that here today, neither does Scripture.  Instead, the Bible actually points us to a God whose love is perfect and unconditional, whose care never wavers, and whose presence is constant.

The Fatherhood of God shows us what love is meant to look like.  It is a commitment to see others flourish, to protect what is precious in life, and to walk patiently alongside those who are growing.  Surely that is how we want to see and to be in our community?  We can thank God for every glimpse of love we’ve received and trust in his healing comfort when it’s been absent or damaging.  We can also give thanks for the opportunities to love, care, and support others through good and bad experiences. 

Psalm 103:13

“As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him”. 

This is not fear as in being scared of.  This is about a position of reverence to God.  Holy fear of our awesome God.  A God who provides the best model of Fatherhood for us all to look towards.

In Ephesians 3:14-15, Paul prays one of his great and wonderful prayers. He says:

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. 

A quick bit of context.  The reason Paul refers to at the beginning of that reference is found in the preceding verses where he writes to the church in Ephesus about God’s marvellous plan for the Gentiles and for all of humanity.  And Paul is writing from a point of personal pain and suffering but encourages his readers to see through the sufferings to the glory of God whom, Paul writes, we can approach “with freedom and confidence”, just as we might approach our earthly fathers or father figures.

Now the version I read from the New International Version is pretty similar to most translations.  However, there is one word that isn’t quite right, and here I rely on clever linguists to explain this.  The word that is there translated “family” in v15 (…from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name) is the Greek word patria, that is derived directly from the Greek word for father.  It’s almost like the translators have tried to keep this as general and inclusive as possible, but have actually missed the key point here.  The most literal, straightforward translation of patria in this context would be “fatherhood.”  JB Phillips translation of those verses helps to bring out this fact of the connection between father and family, or fatherhood. He translates these verses in this way: “When I think of the greatness of this great plan I fall on my knees before the Father, from whom all fatherhood, earthly or heavenly, derives its name...”

So this is why it is believed that all concepts of fatherhood in the universe ultimately point us back to the fatherhood of God, and that fatherhood did not begin on earth, it began in heaven.  Author and Preacher Derek Prince says that “Fatherhood is eternal with God. It did not begin with time. It did not begin with human history. It began …  in eternity.  God is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ and He is so described in many parts of the Bible.”

There is so much within the Gospel of John specifically.  One of my fellow team members on a recent Alpha course that my church ran, was a big fan of John’s Gospel, to the point that pretty much everything we encountered through the 12 weeks could be met with a verse from that Gospel!  It jokingly pained me when I realised the verse that came to mind to help someone was from John.  But when you look closely, John shows why this is so, as he closes the Gospel by saying that “these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name”. Did you catch that in the middle there.  By acknowledging Jesus as the Son of God as a central theme for the Gospel, John immediately points us to God as a father.   And having ended in that way, he actually started right at the beginning, looping his opening monologue back to the beginning of Genesis and therefore the beginning of creation of this world as we know it.    “In the beginning... the Word was with God.” That was before creation ever took place. The divine Word, the eternal Son of God, was with the Father.  That intimate, personal relationship between God the Father and the Son existed there before creation ever began. This is an absolutely distinctive feature of Christian revelation. It makes Christianity unlike any other religious faith because it reveals something unique and particular about the nature of God, that in God eternally there is Fatherhood. There’s a relationship.

By way of example, I mentioned the Alpha course I was helping at recently.  One of the participants spoke about his parents who were Jehovah’s Witnesses, as was his sister, but he had never adopted their beliefs.  However, it was all he ever really experienced.  So for the first couple of weeks as things were being introduced, he was okay because he’d heard of this Jesus character and knew some of the history.  He was also Greek so he knew many of the places referred to.  But in week 3, the topic turned to having a relationship with Jesus.  His mind was blown and he has been forever changed.  Come session 9, he was fully there, embracing Jesus as his saviour and God as his father.  He recognised his adoption into God’s family and that he was a child of God.  And what a difference that has made to his life – for the better of course.

When Jesus came to earth, His ultimate purpose was to bring those who turn to Him to the Father.  He regularly says this, especially in our main reading for today, again in the Gospel of John, and chapter 14.  Context is important so let’s just set up where we are when Jesus is speaking the words we’ve heard again today.  We are approaching Passover, and specifically, the Passover at which Jesus will be crucified.  John devotes a large amount of his Gospel to the events of this week because they carry so much information and guidance for us even today.  In the preceding chapter, Jesus has just washed the disciples feet to “set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”  This is the servant heart of Jesus loud and clear, but again pointing us to the compassionate Father heart of God.    Jesus goes on to predict his betrayal, Judas leaves, and Jesus continues to say that Peter would deny him.  The disciples are beginning to understand what Jesus has been telling them in coded ways for some time, but still their humanity is stopping them fully grasping it.  Jesus sees this and at the start of chapter 14, he adopts that loving Father heart of God by comforting the disciples, saying “Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you?”  God the Father of Jesus and of all of us, has set the house up for us to live in for eternity.  He is the great home maker if you like.  And Jesus, having done the difficult bit of parenting by passing on some harsh realities of what was ahead, now echoes the Psalmist we heard from just now and has compassion on those who love him.  In response to Thomas who was bravely seeking clarification on a few things, Jesus says “I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him."

All the things that Jesus had just told them about why he must die are summed up in these loving verses.  This was all happening to bring us to God.  Jesus was not the end. He was the way, and is still the way, but the Father is the destination.  I don’t like to generalise, but I think many people in their Christian walk have missed the purpose of God. We talk a great deal about the Lord Jesus Christ as our Savior, our Intercessor, our Mediator, our provider, our protector etc, and rightly so.  But it stops short of God’s purpose. God’s purpose is not merely that we should come to the Son, but through the Son we should come to the Father.

We’ll loop back to John 14 in a moment, but I just want to quickly jump ahead a couple of chapters and to the next day in the week leading to Passover.  John 17 records Jesus praying and there is something beautiful and profound for us as we explore this fatherhood concept, as we look closely at the language of Jesus in this prayer.  He opens with the word “Father”, as many of us would maybe out of habit more than anything.  Jesus then goes on to use the word “father” six times in that prayer.  He speaks there about having made known the name of God to His disciples. In verse 6 He says: ‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word.”  Then in v11 he prays “Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one.” And at the end he prays “I have made your name known to them, and will continue to make you known in order that the love you have for me may be in them and that I myself may be in them.’

What name was it that Jesus made known? It was not the sacred name Jehovah. The Jewish people have known that name for fifteen centuries. What was the new and special revelation, the great purpose, the name that He wanted them to know? The name is Father. That’s the ultimate name of God. That describes the nature of God in His eternal character more perfectly than any other word that exists in human language. The ultimate revelation of God is the revelation of God as Father and the ultimate purpose of the New Testament.

Derek Prince again says “The reason why Jesus Himself came is to bring us to God. If we stop short of this revelation of God, we’ve stopped short of the full and final outworking of redemption’s purpose. But when we come into the fullness of this revelation of God and into that direct relationship to God as Father it supplies certain things which are conspicuously lacking in the emotional experience of perhaps … the majority of people in our culture today. The three things which come out of this revelation and this relationship are identity, self-worth, and security.”

Let’s recap on some of the verses we heard earlier.  John 14 from v10 “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me? The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority. Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work. Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the works themselves. Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

I need to quickly pick out a misconception here.  Some take that last verse as licence to say that as long as they pray in the name of Jesus then whatever we’ve prayed for will happen.  That isn’t what it says.  You can’t read out your wishlist, add “in Jesus Name” at the end and hey presto, everything happens and appears.  Look carefully at the verse again.  Jesus said “I will do whatever you ask in my name….so that the Father may be glorified in the Son”.  Our prayers in Jesus’ name should be to bring glory to the Father.  If God won’t be glorified in what we’re praying for, then our words are akin to those who don’t have love as referred to in Paul’s letter to the Corinthians – we’ll just be noise.  This is more than the old “What would Jesus do” adage.  This is “what will bring glory to God the Father – our Father.” 

Identity is a real problem for people today.  Men and women want to know where they came from, who’s behind them. How did it start? Who am I?  That last question is very difficult to fully answer without knowing our Father God, and our ultimate identity as a child of God.  Today human relationships between parents and children have been so greatly broken down that it has produced an identity crisis. Christianity’s answer to that identity crisis is to bring men and women into a direct personal relationship with God the Father through Jesus Christ the Son.  A person who truly knows God as Father no longer has an identity problem. They know who they are.  They are not guaranteed to be free of trouble but, as Jesus prayed for his disciples, even in a troublesome situation, we should not let our hearts be troubled.  There’s a big difference.  And it is made possible because we are a child of God. Our Father God created the universe. Our Father God loves us. Our Father God cares for us.

This leads us neatly into people’s need for self-worth.  So many people do not appreciate themselves as they should, either because they’ve put a negative label on themselves, or that someone else has labelled them.  This leads to people having a low image of themselves which has caused them many spiritual and emotional agonies.

We can turn again to John, but this time from his first letter, in which he wrote (3:1): “See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are!” You see, once we really comprehend that we are the children of God and God loves us intimately, personally, that He’s interested in us, He’s never too busy for us. He desires a direct and personal relationship with us, that gives us true and proper self-worth.

Once we’ve discovered that we are children of God, and found that true and proper self-worth, we then find security.  Behind the universe is not just some scientific force or some big bang, but a Father who loves us unconditionally.  In our darkest, even scariest moments, a prayer of “Father... Father... Father... Father” can and will bring security to you.  No matter what is around us, in those moments when we call out to our Father, we can discover that the situation is not what we thought.  Ultimate reality is not a cold, dark, empty space. Ultimate reality is the Father reaching out and gathering us as his own dear children through the grace of Jesus the Son.  In that moment we are reminded, with a spiritual hug, that we are children of God in the universe that He has created for us.

The Old Testament has little to say about the position of God as Father, instead mostly highlighting their view of a reverent distance to be kept from God in holy and awe-filled fear.  God is seen as someone that only the so-called chosen ones, the religious elite, could meet with, and then only under strict conditions.  We are given a picture of a God that is separate from us and beyond us, and he is seen less as intimate and close to us. This Old Testament view of God is not what we would lead with in our teaching in these days, but it is still true and wonderfully humbling for us. This is a picture of a God who deserves our reverence, and as such we should bow low before this powerful Creator and high King.

But in the New Testament, although God rightly remains holy and majestic in our eyes, Jesus, revealed as the son of God, adds a really clear emphasis on God as Father.  Not just his father, but the father of all creation.  Jesus then calls God “Abba, Father” which is such a beautiful piece of language.  Again, clever people information incoming.  “The word "Abba" is of Aramaic origin, the language spoken by Jesus and commonly used in first-century Judea.  It conveys a deep sense of intimacy, similar to a child’s affectionate and trusting cry to a parent, while still maintaining respect and reverence for authority.”  Wow.  Jesus here connects the understanding of people before he came to earth, with a new understanding of who God is.  And he uttered these words at his darkest moments in the Garden of Gethsemane, as his humanity and divinity collided.  He cried out to his Father as a child does for help when they’re in trouble, but also with reverence and awe.  More from the clever people:  "Abba is always paired with the Greek “ho patēr” (Father) emphasizing both the personal closeness and the divine authority of God.  This dual-language expression underscores the believer’s secure relationship with God as both loving parent and sovereign Lord.”  This is so good.  "Abba Father" is not a title; it is a profound expression of relationship, trust, and adoption. It allows us today to approach God with boldness and assurance, reflecting both the intimacy of a child and the reverence due to the Creator of the universe.  And not just in our darkest moments, but at all times. This phrase uniquely captures the heart of Christian faith: God as a loving, approachable Father who also reigns with ultimate authority.

The greatest glory of God, therefore, is not that he is separate and far beyond us, but that the One who is separate and far beyond us, who is high and lifted up, who created all things and needs nothing, also chose to become our Father, lovingly adopting us as his own children forever, and freely available.

This unparalleled access to the presence of our Father God is not a minor emphasis in the gospel. It is the heart of the message.  And yet as I said right at the start, this is a really important message that has been somewhat neglected in many Christian circles.  The evangelical theologian, author, and Anglican cleric J. I. Packer said, “To those who are Christ’s, the holy God is a loving Father; they belong to his family; they may approach him without fear and always be sure of his fatherly concern and care. This is the heart of the New Testament message.”

As we see in the parable of the prodigal son (you can read this for yourself in Luke 15:11-24), Jesus tells of a father who, filled with compassion, runs towards his returning son.  The father doesn’t wait for an apology to be completed or for shame to be resolved.  He moves first, restoring dignity, belonging, and relationship.  We see that compassion is not passive.  It is love that notices, moves closer, and acts for the good of another.  This is the compassion we see in God.  He is that Father.  He is running towards us ready to give us the best hug ever.

God the Father has made himself God ‘our Father’.  He is personally, emotionally, and even sacrificially involved with us.  In all things.  At all times.  Will you turn to him today and simply pray “Abba Father”.