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DAD LIKED THE SPEECH

Three days after the World Trade Center attack, President #43 gave a speech. Presidents #38, 39, 41, and 42 were there to hear it. And when it was over, #41, also known as “Dad,” leaned over to quietly give his approval. The Oval Office is an awesome responsibility to inherit.

It had been a dark week for the world. Three days earlier, fully loaded planes had plowed into the World Trade Center buildings in New York City. They had crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. A fourth plane, thwarted in its evil flight plan, had crashed in Pennsylvania. And citizens of many nations around the world had perished in the flames and the rubble.

Now, in Washington, D.C.’s National Cathedral, people had gathered to remember and pray. Every living President except Reagan was there. Pastor Billy Graham spoke, and did his usual magnificent job. Then President George W. Bush got up to speak. To no one’s surprise, it was a speech viewed all around the globe; after all, this was a global catastrophe. The nations of the world were grieving and anxious. Months later, it was easy for us to access that speech on the Internet, because web sites from many, many countries have it recorded for posterity.

We’ve been studying this week the idea of adoption, of God actually being a Father, a Dad, to us all. For the person who believes, the Bible teaches, we truly do have — in a literal sense — a loving Parent up in heaven. And President Bush immediately invoked the presence of God during this time of worldwide grief.

“We are here in the middle hour of our grief,” he said. “So many have suffered so great a loss, and today we express our nation’s sorrow. We come before God to pray for the missing and the dead, and for those who loved them. . . . At St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday [the day of the attacks] a woman said, ‘I pray to God to give us a sign that He’s still here.’ . . . God’s signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that His purposes are not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether in our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood. . . . The world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds all who die and all who mourn.”

Then right at the end, this powerful world leader seemed to sense his own vulnerability, the realization that he, too, is just a man, just mortal flesh and bones. Even the President wanted God to be a Dad to us all.

“On this national day of prayer and remembrance,” he concluded, “we ask almighty God to watch over our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come. As we’ve been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate us from God’s love. May He bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always guide our country.”

After closing with the traditional “God bless America,” the President of the United States, George W. Bush, left the podium and walked back to his seat. He sat down next to his wife, Laura. And if you were watching, you saw the 41st President of the United States, who happens to also be named George Bush, quietly reach over and give his boy a pat on the arm. As in: “Good job, Son. I’m proud of you.”

I guess everyone who saw that poignant moment, that pat on the arm, decided later that it just spoke volumes. Only a President can know what another President is going through; only a man who has sat behind the desk of the Oval Office can know the awesome responsibility, which Harry Truman described as a bale of hay landing on him – plus the moon, stars, and all the planets – when FDR suddenly died. And here President Bush the elder had to know that his own son’s life had just been turned upside-down. No longer would his boy be simply trying to lower tax rates and jockey with Tom Daschle and Dick Gephardt for legislative superiority and get conservative Supreme Court justices onto the bench. Now his son was facing a global challenge that would define not only his presidency, but perhaps the nation for decades to come.

For just a moment today, let’s ask the question this way: What does it mean to be the 43rd President of the United States, and know that your own dad sat in that chair eight years earlier? What does it imply for how you do things, how you conduct your affairs? What does this whole father-son combination thing actually mean for the country?

As we’ve been seeing how God’s Word encourages us with the idea that we, too, have a famous Father sitting on a throne, we find that the ultimate expression of the “Fatherhood” of God has to be in His relationship with His own Son, Jesus. Author J. I. Packer, in the book, Knowing God, points this out immediately:

“God intends the lives of believers,” he writes, “to be a reflection and reproduction of Jesus’ own fellowship with Himself.”

He goes on to point out that we learn this truth powerfully in the Gospel of John. We’ve already quoted John 1:12, but here it is again:

“To all who received Him [Jesus], to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to BECOME children of God.”

That’s adoption right there. And at the end of Jesus’ ministry, after the three-and-a-half years of calling the disciples His brothers, after His resurrection on Sunday morning, Jesus tells Mary:

“Go . . . to My brothers and tell them, ‘I am returning to MY Father and YOUR Father, to My God and your God.’”

Now, friend, let’s get practical. What can we learn about our Dad in heaven as we read and explore the relationship Jesus and God had? Dr. Packer takes us to four discoveries.

First of all, he points out, FATHERHOOD IMPLIED AUTHORITY. Interestingly, this is one area where George Bush #43 has to make it clear that George Bush #41 is NOT in authority; Dad is not running a stealth White House from Kennebunkport using his son as a puppet. That has been a key issue ever since Election 2000; Dad may approve and advise, but he doesn’t wield the veto pen or have the keys to the nuclear football. His son does. But in the Christian world, if we have God as our Father, then that Father has authority over us, and Jesus Christ, who called God “Abba, Father,” absolutely submitted to the authority of His Dad. John 6:38:

“I have come down from heaven not to do My will but to do the will of Him who sent Me.” Over in chapter four He adds: “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to finish His work.”

John 17:4:
“I have brought You [Father] glory on earth by completing the work You gave Me to do.”

John 5:19:
“I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can only do what He sees His Father doing.”

So friend, if we want to have this most wonderful Dad in the world, if we truly want to be adopted and have an eternal home with Dad, then Dad has got to be in authority over us. It can be no other way.

Number two in Packer’s list: FATHERHOOD IMPLIED AFFECTION. Many times in the book of John, and elsewhere, Jesus speaks glowingly of how much His Father loves Him.

“For the Father loves the Son and shows Him all He does.” In chapter 15 He tells His disciples: “As the Father has loved Me, so have I loved you.”

Would you like to know, absolutely know, that you are loved and adored and treasured? The Bible teaches us that God loves you the same way He loves His own Son Jesus. That is huge! And it’s 100% real. This isn’t just theological poetry. It’s love you can take to the bank of Calvary.

Number three: FATHERHOOD IMPLIED FELLOWSHIP.
“I am not alone,” Jesus quietly said once, in John 16, even though Dad was billions of miles away, “for My Father is with Me.”

And if Jesus, isolated on this lonely world so far from the kingdom, could say, “Dad is with Me,” can we say it too? Yes! Because we learn about our Father-Child relationship with God by seeing how it was for Jesus. That’s the whole point.

Finally, FATHERHOOD IMPLIED HONOR. President George W. Bush knows that he has to live up to the integrity his father bequeathed to him with that presidential seal. After some of the White House scandals of recent years, it was an unstated campaign promise of the Bush campaign: “We will treat the Oval Office with the honor and respect it deserves.”

As adopted children, we live to honor God . . . and we also discover that He honors US! Isn’t that incredible? John 17:1:

“Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed: ‘Father, the time has come. Glorify Your Son, that Your Son may glorify YOU.’”

And Dr. Packer concludes:

“All this extends to God’s adopted children. In, through, and under Jesus Christ their Lord, they are ruled, loved, companied with and honored by their heavenly Father.”

Whether you’re living in the White House, or at YOUR house, friend, having a Dad like that is the best thing in the world.