Series: Sonship

Sun am 29 July 2018 – Riaan Sinden

Luke 11:1-13; Matt. 6:5-8, 10; (Col 1:15); John 1:11-14; (Heb. 2:10); (Prov. 23:7a); Gen. 1:26; Gen 2:1-3, 7; John 1:18-NKJ & AMP; Ps. 19:1; Eph. 2:19-22 –Passion Translation; (1 John 4:8); Rom. 8:29; Gal. 4:4-7; Luke 2:49; (Luke 23:46); Is. 42:8; Heb. 1:3-NASB

A lot of us know God and we know who God is, but many of us know God for the character He has and very few people really connect to God as Father. There is a deeper revelation, a deeper relationship that we can have that will open so many things for us! When the disciples came to Jesus and said, “Lord, teach us how to pray” (Luke 11:1), it was not because the disciples did not know how to pray. When they looked at Jesus, there was something different in the way He spoke to God. There was a deeper level and it was attractive. Before He started, He said that prayer was not about vain repetition or about boasting (Matt. 6:5-8). He said, “When you pray, pray in this manner.” Then He said, “Our Father in heaven.” This is one of the most mind-blowing statements Jesus made to His disciples: “Our Father.” It would not have been wrong for Jesus to say “My Father,” but when He said “Our Father,” He immediately included the disciples and they were restored to something that God did at the beginning of time. It connected the disciples to an eternal plan God had for His people. Jesus immediately revealed that He is not an only child and that He is part of a bigger family of sons, who have the exact same privileges and also the exact same responsibilities He has. If God is a Father, then there must be sons!

The fatherhood of God is a principle revelation that distinguishes us from any other religion. There is no other faith in the world that can say “our Father.” “Father” is not just a name we call God – it is a relationship. It implies a covenant. It speaks of a relationship, of love and inheritance. It speaks of destiny and a legacy. It speaks of a bloodline. It speaks of resemblance and of identification. It reveals that He is a Father, and then surely we are His sons. This is who God is, our Father! We need to come to that revelation.

For us to become sons, God had to become visible. So the invisible God became visible in His only begotten Son Jesus (Col 1:15). And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us(John 1:14). The primary purpose of Jesus was to reveal the Father and bring many sons to glory (Heb. 2:10). In revealing the Father, Jesus reconciled us back to God and we are not slaves anymore, but we are sons. Many Christians think that Jesus came to take us to heaven. The answer to that, of course, is, yes and no. Yes, but heaven is not a destination – heaven is not a location somewhere out there. Heaven is right here. Jesus came to restore that place – that Person who dwells in heaven to us. He came to restore to us a Person and that person is our Father.He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name(John 1:11-12). Sonship is something that we become after we receive. When you are in the world you are not a son. You need to receive Christ, and then you have the right to become sons. Sonship indicates that we have reached a place of maturity, a place of responsibility, a place of growth, a place where God can depend on us. Sonship has been the theme of the Bible since the beginning and to get to that place, we need to know and receive the pattern Son. He is the One who reveals the Father to us. When we received Christ, we were born into the family of God. We received the right to become children of God. We are not orphans anymore. We were born into the family of God – a God-kind. My children have a surname which connects them to me. Not only that: they bear my resemblance and there are similar mannerisms that they have. You can only dispense what is in you. If we are going to be dispensers of God, then we must have the revelation of Him as our Father.

We are sons of God because we were born of Him (John 1:13). We have the same nature, the same character, the same DNA as our Father. God is Spirit and to experience God we need to experience Him in our spirit. Being spirit is our primary being. We are first spirit – not the other way around – then soul, then flesh. The flesh is, of course, our body – the biological human being. The soul is our thinking – who we are, our character. But the spirit is God. The spirit is created in God’s image and likeness. That is why transformation begins in the spirit – it is when the spirit affects the soul and your soul starts to think like the spirit, then it manifests in the body.

God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness(Gen 1:26). Then it says everything was completed and God rested from His work (Gen 2:1-3). A little bit further it says God formed man(Gen 2:7). He created us, then He formed us, then breathed in us. He did not resuscitate us. He breathed Himself into us. So the spirit that was created was breathed in us, in this body. When the Word says Jesus came to bring life and life in abundance, He did not promise us a new house. He awakened our spirit to its true identity. That is why we have life in abundance now, because our spirit, the spirit man, the God in us was awakened. God who is Spirit became visible in his Son, so that the Son can break down the divides which kept us from coming into the fullness of a relationship to the Father.

Jesus came and declared God to us (John 1:18 NKJV & AMP). He brought Him to where He can be seen. Before that, the relationship was with God ‘up there’. We had this long-distance relationship and we all know that never works. Jesus came and revealed Him. Jesus changed the long-distance relationship so that instead of looking for God ‘up there in the heavens’, Jesus brought heavens to us. So where it says that the heavens declare the glory of God (Ps. 19:1) it is us – it is a people. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord!

When Jesus continued His prayer He said, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matt. 6:10) it is right here. If it is not in us, how can we be dispensers? God elected to live in us. We are His dwelling place. Heaven is within us. This is where God lives. So, you are not foreigners or guests, but rather you are the children of the city of the holy ones, with all the rights as family members of the household of God. You are rising like the perfectly fitted stones of the temple; and your lives are being built up together upon the ideal foundation laid by the apostles and prophets, and best of all, you are connected to the Head Cornerstone of the building, the Anointed One, Jesus Christ himself! This entire building is under construction and is continually growing under his supervision until it rises up completed as the holy temple of the Lord himself. This means that God is transforming each one of you into the Holy of Holies, his dwelling place, through the power of the Holy Spirit living in you! (Eph. 2:19-22 Passion Translation). We separate ourselves from God by the way we speak and the way we think but it is not God’s plan. He always wanted to be known as our Father. His desire is for us to be His sons – the exact expression of who He is. The plan was never for us to be foreigners or guests, but sons of God.

Parents want children because children are the expression of the parents’ desire and the expression of their love. Love desires to be identified, love desires to be multiplied; love desires to be revealed. Because God is love, He desires His sons to express love. The Bible says God is love – that is who He is (1 John 4:8). It is incorrect to say “I love you more than I love him”. There is no more or less in God. It is God. So if you love, you love completely or you do not love at all.

God, in His plan, did not just want one Son. The purpose of the first Son was to reveal God and to bring many sons to glory. That is the ultimate plan: for God to be revealed through the corporate son – that is who we are. This is the heart of God. He wants all of us to come to that revelation of Him as a Father. Our Father knew us before the foundation of the world and His desire is to conform us to the image of His Son (Rom. 8:29).

Our spirit cries out to be known as sons of God and to know that we have a Father. We cry out, “Abba, Father!” (Gal. 4:4-7). This is an amazing revelation. My children call me “daddy.” A million people can call me Riaan, but that is only because they do not have the relationship that my children have with me. It is the Father’s heart to hear His children have a revelation and call Him “Abba, Father!” because in saying those words, you connect yourself to Him in a way where you know, “Who You are is who I am.”Our Father – this is who God is. That is why Jesus taught His disciples to pray “Our Father.” It was the cry of His heart. He understood this better than anyone else. Jesus never called God anything else but Father. The first recorded words of Jesus in the Bible were when He said, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49-KJV). His last words on the cross were, “Father, into Your hands I commit my spirit” (Luke 23:46). It is the desire of God for us to come to the place where we can say, “Abba, Father.” It is not a name; it is a relationship that we have with Him. I now know that I am not just a human that needs God, I am not just a sinner saved by grace, but I am a son of God. I have the identity as a Son because He chose me. A son does not address His father by name, but by relationship. Father is not His name – it is our inheritance.

The evidence of this revelation of God as our Father is seen in the fruit of our lives. When people look at us, they see that this is not an orphan but a person with identity, a person with purpose and with responsibility. We do not treat the kingdom like it is an add-on. We treat the kingdom as our Father’s business. God’s kingdom can now be entrusted to us because we are sons. Slaves get specific tasks to do but a son carries the weight and the power of this revelation of the kingdom. If you have seen the Son, you must see the Father (John 14:8-11). If people look at this corporate son, and they do not see the resemblance, then it is not there. I am not a secret agent in this world so that nobody knows that I am a son of God. This is the ultimate picture the Father is looking for: a corporate son that can say, “If you have seen me, then you have seen the Father” – a corporate son that will reflect the Father in word and in deed. I am the Lord, that is My name; and My glory I will not give to another(Is. 42:8). And He is the radiance of His glory and the exact representation of His nature(Heb. 1:3 NASB). He will share His glory with none other, but Jesus is His glory – the radiance of His glory. “I will not share my glory with another,” we are not another – we are sons of God!We need to start walking in the revelation that we are sons and He is our Father. We are the radiance of His glory. We are the exact representation of His nature. Once we have the revelation of God as our Father, then becoming dispensers of God makes so much more sense.