See, it's so much easier to say that when there's actually people in the room to echo back. I have to confess. I know it's Stanley Cup playoff season, and I must confess that I don't care. All it means is that there's now more things to try to get past on social media when I try to find the things I actually want to find.
But this past week something struck me as I was quickly trying to get past the things I didn't really care about. And I saw something pop up that said the sombre rendition of O Canada sung at the first Jets Canadian's game. And of course that immediately caught my attention, the sombre rendition of O Canada. So I immediately went to YouTube and I watched it and it was quite striking.
And then I wanted to know more about it. So then I did a little research and heard the story and that it was of course first game and between the Winnipeg Jets and the Montreal Kennedians. And the Winnipeg Jets had planned to honor the lives of the 215 residential school children whose remains had recently been discovered with a moment of silence. And then they were going to sing O Canada.
And apparently there was a whole lot of discussion about whether O Canada should be sung after a moment of silence for something that was part of our national history. And so the Winnipeg Jets reached out to an indigenous singer and asked him if he would be willing to sing O Canada. And he said, I really need to think about that. Because there were those in the indigenous community and outside who were saying no, if you're going to have a moment of silence for these children, then you don't follow it up by having a rousing singing of the country's anthem.
And there are others that say, no, that's what we do. We sing the anthem. So we began to reflect on it and think about it. And some came to him and said, well, you're singing it, but you're going to need to take some lines out.
It needs to be an abbreviated version. Particularly, you need to remove the line, God keep our land. Because they said the people who say that they were the servants of God were the perpetrators of the deaths. And he said that he wrestled with it for hours and hours and hours.
And he came to the realization that he could not remove the line. Because he said to him, I don't know where this person stands in his faith, but he said to him, that line has always been a prayer. It's not a proclamation. It's a prayer.
God keep our land. And he said, because I know this, that those who did the acts that took place in residential schools, whatever they said they were, they were not following God. Whatever was in their heart, God was not present. And so he would still sing that line as a prayer that we would cry out to God for our land, for our reconciliation.
And then that article linked to another article, and it was an indigenous woman talking about her coming to faith in Christ and how at first when she did that, she was rejected by many in her family and her community because of the association they made with the Gospel of Christ and the residential school experience. And she said, when I first told my family that I had come to the saving knowledge of Christ, my grandmother told me I had betrayed their entire people. She said, but I continued. And they said, over time, said my grandmother came to faith in Christ.
And she said, my grandmother has often said, if only the people who set up the residential schools had brought us Christ, the entire nation would be different. And I think on that as we, as the body of Christ, pray for our nation as we pray for these hurts, because ultimately the only thing that's going to bring reconciliation in our nation and our communities is the saving knowledge of Christ because lives have to be transformed first before they can find peace with each other. That's not the sermon. That's the pre-sermon.
The sermon this morning, our focus, it's Father's Day. Yes, that day. Where we look at, oh, where's the scripture passage? It's equivalent to those wonderful scripture passages about moms.
And we were even talking about this week at home, we're like talking about, well, who could you, what Bible character could you look at? And we were naming off ones and we could do this one. No. We could do this one.
No. We could do this one. Oh, absolutely not. They're all cautionary tales.
They're all, and this is how they messed up. And it's like, oh, okay. So what am I going to do? Because David gave me Father's Day and I've got to come up with something.
And I was praying about it and yes you did. Yes you did. You were very straight up about it. You were very straight up about it.
And this week I was working on a Bible study that I've been doing going through the book of Exodus and I was struck in Exodus chapter four, and this is where we can start this morning. In Exodus chapter four, of course, it's the account that we have of God preparing to redeem his people out of Egypt. And we have, of course, the encounter that the Lord has with Moses and eventually Moses goes back to Egypt and he meets with the people in captivity. In Exodus chapter 31 it says, and they believed, and when they heard that the Lord was concerned about them and had seen their misery, they bowed down and worshiped.
And one of the other contemporary versions it says, and when they knew that the Lord had come to them and had witnessed their suffering, they bowed down and worshiped. And as I was preparing and working through the passage, that verse just stuck in my head. Before they were rescued, before they saw God's hand of deliverance, just knowing that their God had come down and had seen them and knew their situation was acquainted with what was happening to them. Before anything else had happened, brought them to worship.
A study was done some years ago asking what was the thing about fathers that children most valued. And there were all kinds of aspects that looked at, you know, fathers, mechanical ability, fathers, physical prowess, all these different things. And in the end, the by far number one thing, most prized by children, both children who were still children and those who were now adults, was the presence of their fathers, above everything else, the presence of their fathers. And a number of them were, what about your father who wasn't around but provided you all these things.
And they said, number one, our fathers who were present with us was the most value. And as I was thinking about that study and as I was thinking and exodus, the Lord laid on my mind the beauty and power of the presence of God as we see through the Word of God. There is something about that and we're going to take some time and look at that this morning. And I pray it is an encouragement to you, administers to your soul as we look at the beauty and the power of the presence of God.
Let's pray. Father, this morning we begin, as we always do, recognizing who you are. Lord, we thank you that you are indeed the God of heaven and earth, that you have no equal, that nothing stands against you and prevails. Lord, we praise you, that you are the creator and sustainer of all things.
We praise you, that you are holy and just, that you are loving and merciful, and none of your character traits are in conflict with one another. Lord, we praise you, that you would not allow us to remain in our sin, but you sent a Savior, that you sent your one and only Son, the Son whom you loved to be the propitiation for our sin. Lord, we praise you for so great a salvation offered freely to all who believe. Lord, we praise you for your spirit, the seal of our inheritance.
We praise you for your church, whether in person or virtually your church has stood for 2,000 years and wraps the globe and is made up of every believer in Christ. And your church that your Son is the head of still stands, and the gates of hell still don't prevail against it. Lord, we praise you for your word, that we have, that you have given to us and preserved for us. And Lord, I pray that you would use your word and your spirit to speak to us this morning.
Minister to our hearts and minds, I pray, do your work for your glory in Jesus Christ. Amen. So, we think about the idea of the presence of God. And when we think about it, we can start right back to the very beginning.
Because even in God's description of his creation of the universe, he is active and personal. There were those in the deist movement that proposed that if the universe was created by God, it was created as in the idea of the watchmaker or the clockmaker who set up the mechanism of the universe, got it all running, wound it up and walked away. And the universe is simply spinning and doing its thing slowly running down. And that's what we're all apart of.
We are simply going through the motions, living through this existence. But then we look at the actual account given to us in the Word of God and we see something very different. We see a God who is active in his creation, who spoke each part of his creation into existence in Genesis 1. We see his desire to create us, to create humanity, to be in his image and likeness.
We see his intentionality. We see his concern for us in the creation of a help-meat. We see the purpose that he gives us in telling us what we are to do in creation. And then even as we read in Genesis 3, of course, we come to the story of our fall.
And I'm always struck by Genesis 3, verse 8. Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the Lord God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And they hid from the Lord God among the trees of the garden. I don't know if you've ever camped out on that image before.
But that's where we started. We started where the presence of God was active and intimate with us. You ever think of that? You ever think of the Lord of heaven and earth, the creator of everything seen and unseen, coming to spend the evening with his creation?
That's an incredible image if you think about it. The one who holds all things together by the Word of his power wanted to spend the evening with his creation. That shows us an aspect of the character of God. In the midst of all the power and majesty, there is this intimacy of presence, on coming to be with you.
And the sense that we get is that it was a regular occurrence. This was the relationship God intended to have in creation with us, which because of our disobedience we damaged. So we are the ones hiding from God from his presence. And he is the one present with us.
And then as we move forward through the story, we see it continually, the aspect of the power and the beauty of the presence of God with his creation, even in our fall as we see it in his plan of redemption. You come, of course, to the next chapter and you have, of course, the story of Cain and Abel. And we're looking at the story of Cain and Abel and we talk about it and evaluate it and look at their gifts and we talk about the attitudes of their hearts and that's all important for us to consider. But I'm also struck again in the account in chapter four.
So Cain was very angry and his face was downcast. Then the Lord said to Cain, why are you angry? Why is your face downcast? If you do what is right, will you not be accepted?
And if you do not do what is right, sin is croaching out your door. It desires to have you, but you must master it. And again, I look at that and go, wait a minute. So Cain is in a bad direction here.
And the Lord of heaven and earth sits down to counsel him, to talk to him, to say, Cain, do you see where you are? This is God. He knows all things. He knows the end from the beginning.
Yet he brings himself to encounter Cain and continues to. Cain acts out in his sin, nature, and God encounters him again. We see the image continue. We come to Noah and God talks to him and explains to him what he's about to do and tells him and walks with him.
And then we have this powerful picture. Here they are. Here's Noah and his family in the ark, the animals in the ark and God's physical judgment is about to come on the earth and what does God do? God.
He closes their door again. This picture of the presence of God. Who is there? Here we are.
We're in this moment. It's probably incredibly terrifying. It's starting to rain. We've been thinking about this for 120 years and now it's happening and we're in this big wooden box and we're full of animals.
I don't know. Humanly speaking, maybe it's just my brain, but there'd be a thousand. What are we going to do with this going through my brain? And suddenly the hand of God closes your door for you because God is present with him.
The imagery continues as we follow the story. We have Abram. God calls him. I remember being struck once and watching a film about the life of Abram and you always get apprehensive as soon as you see somebody says, oh look I found a movie about an Old Testament character and you're like, oh dear.
This could go really badly. After all, I saw the movie Noah. It went really badly. But I'm watching it and I was struck at one point.
I mean this is the screenwriter's dialogue, but at one point after Abram's first encounter with God speaking to him and he's going and he said I've got to go and some of his family members are going, what do you mean you got to go? What do you mean you're going to leave? Do you even know who this God is? And the dialogue went like this.
Abram goes, well all I know is he's the only God who's ever spoken to me. And they're in the image of all these idols and statues around in their community. Only one God talked to him, the God who was present. And then we follow his journey from his call in verse 12 and chapter 12 in Genesis.
Then we see the laying out of the covenant in 13 and we have that incredible picture as he walks that through. And then into 15 where of course we have the whole image of the path of blood that's laid out and God in a physical image comes down and walks through this path with him. And Genesis 15. And again I'm struck by the fact here is the Lord of the universe who should have had all authority to say look we're making a deal.
I'm going to keep my part. Any questions? But he doesn't. He meets this frail human being and says here, let's follow custom, let's kill the animals, let's spread out their bodies, let's make the trail the path of blood and now I'm going to come down and I'll walk it for you to say I would rather die than break covenant with you.
This is the God of the universe. And yet he walks the path to give assurance to a frail sinful human being that he is going to be there and he's going to keep what he promised. This of course continues. We have the encounter where God meets with Abraham about Sodom and Gomorrah.
And we have this theophany likely a pre-incarnation appearance of Christ as he has this conversation with God and what that is doing to his faith, to Abraham's faith that God is talking with him. We see this as we follow through the patriarchs, Jacob and his wrestle in the night. Again, you look at it, why? But the presence of God is there working in the life of this man.
Then we come to Moses. I mean Moses, he and the Lord, they had some times together from the burning bush experience. Again, here is a human being basically having an argument back and forth with the God of the universe. And God allows that conversation to happen because what he is doing in building the relationship with Moses is of supreme importance.
Because you know one thing that Moses learns very early on is that God hears him. God hears him. Moses goes, I can't do this. These people won't even know who you are, Moses.
Tell them I am that I am, sent you. But I am going to a kingdom filled with a pantheon of gods and how are they going to believe, oh yeah, you just picked this god out of the thin air. Okay. Moses, throw your staff down.
Yes, it just became a big, scary snake. Now grab it by the tail. I know you are not supposed to do that. Just grab it by the tail.
And now it is a staff again. Now take your hand and put it in your robe there. Oh yeah, now it is leperous. Now put it back in again.
Now it is healed again. You can take those and I will demonstrate that when you go to show that I am the Lord. And of course, as we all know that conversation continues, it is to having Moses going, I don't talk well. Now personally, I don't believe he had a speech impediment.
I believe he just didn't think he could talk well enough to make it work. And God says to him, okay, who makes physical mouths, who makes people speak or be mute or whatever, I am going to give you the words. I will be with you. We see this carried out.
Each time things are going and not going the way Moses expected and Moses goes to God. And God, okay, you said this was going to happen even though God did tell him that it wasn't going to go well at first, but Moses seemed to forget that and comes out and goes, okay, now everything is worth and you haven't delivered anybody. And what does God do? He talks to him and reminds him of what he had said and what he is planning to do because of his presence with Moses, Moses walks out the journey.
Then we see the children of Israel as they are delivered and they take their first step out into freedom and then they see their adversaries coming and what does God do? We see the pillar of cloud and a fire, a physical representation of the presence of God in their midst. You see that enemy? I will stand in the way.
And the children of Israel see this, the presence of God in their midst. And this develops with the children of Israel as God institutes the tabernacle and sets up the formation that whenever they were encamped, their encampment would always be centered around the tabernacle where you would see the presence of the glory of God in their midst. God is present with his people. He would say that to them, you are my people and I am your God and I will be with you.
The picture continues through the Word of God. We come to the Book of Daniel, to our favorite Sunday school stories. Shat rack me, shat, and a bed to go. Standing there before the king, king, this is not hard for us to answer.
We are going to tell you that our God is big enough that he is able to save us from your hand, but if he chooses not to, we are still not going to bow down. We all go mic drop moment. And then they are thrown into the furnace and who goes to the furnace with them? Did we not throw three men into the furnace?
And yet now I look into the furnace and I see four men walking around free and one of them is like a son of the gods. That the presence of the Lord is with them in the midst of the flames. Daniel, in the lion's den. Next morning, Daniel, okay, yes.
My God sent an angel down and he closed the lion's mouths because he cares for him. And then of course, all of this is all leading to increase our understanding of what is to come to the arrival of the Lord. Profecide in Isaiah repeated in the Gospels and you will call his name Emmanuel, which means we can even have audience participation at this. God with us.
What Christ is going to accomplish on the cross is going to make finally, totally possible God with us. What was intended in creation? What was hampered by sin? God is going to make again possible.
Jesus Christ is God with us because God's desire is that his presence is with the people that he loves. God is the ultimate picture of relationship for he desires to love his people. And so Christ comes into the world and he physically comes into the world. He walks on the ground as we do.
I have a certain degree of, and I'm dealing with it, of envy for those like John who have been to Israel who can actually say I've stood in places where the Lord has stood. I've walked along roads, the Lord probably walked along. I've been the places where he preached, where he taught, where he laid down his life as a sacrifice for sin. Rose again triumphantly over the grave that we have this.
And I do not think that it is without intention that in order to pay for our salvation he was also physically present with us. Not simply so that we could see it and so we could talk about it, but he was present with us as he did what was necessary to win our redemption. And because of that he then can say in Matthew 2820 now because I have paid the penalty for human sin because I have risen from the dead triumphant over the grave. If you accept what has been accomplished for you and believe in me you can know that I am with you always, even until the end of the age.
And that becomes that repetition over and over again. I will be with you. I will never leave you or forsake you. He is our high priest.
We're told in Hebrews 4 who understands what we have gone through because he is present with us. We're told in the Gospel of John that the Holy Spirit has been given to us as believers in Christ. He is our, what is he according to Gospel John? Come on, gentlemen, we've been studying it.
What is the Holy Spirit according to the Gospel of John? He's several things. He's our comforter, our advocate, our helper, all these things. And in order to do that he needs to be present with us because a comforter who is a long ways off is not much of a comfort, but the comforter who is with us, comforts us.
Our advocate stands before us. Our helper is alongside us. We're told that he is indwelling us as believers in Christ as the seal of our inheritance, that presence with us. And then we have our promise.
In our promise as we look forward we have his spirit with us now because of what Christ has accomplished. So we feel his presence. We know he is with us. We know whether we feel it or not.
But we also have this hope because we're told in 1 Thessalonians that a day is coming when we will be forever with the Lord. We read in the book of the Revelation, we read how we will be with the Lord. And if you'll turn to that passage, Revelation chapter 21, starting at verse 1, then I saw a new heaven and a new earth. For the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea.
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, Now the dwelling of God is with men, and he will dwell with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes.
There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain for the old order of things has passed away. He who was seated on the throne said, I am making everything new. Then he said, write this down for these words are trustworthy and true. There is a great beauty in the knowledge of the presence of God.
For we who know Jesus Christ, who have experienced his salvation, we walk daily in the presence of the God of the universe because of his spirit that is in us. That it doesn't matter how dark our circumstances may be, how challenging our surrounding reality may be, we know this to be true. We know it when we sense it and we know it when we don't. I've shared it before.
A friend of mine who's from Brazil was talking about being at this big conference and they were in a soccer stadium and there were thousands of evangelicals would gather together and the worship team was up and the worship team was doing really good like here on Sunday morning and people really into it. They were really rousing songs and anthems and at one point the worship leader says, I feel that the spirit of God is here with us. Don't you feel it and people were clapping and so on and so forth. Then the speaker went to speak and he was an older brother in the Lord well in his years and he went up to the platform and he stood there for a moment and he said, I do not feel the spirit of God present.
And people are all like, okay, who got this guy? Why is he speaking? But then he said, but I know he is present because the word of God tells me so that we're two or more gathered in his name, he is present in the midst of them. And I know he is present because his spirit is dwelling within every believer, whether I feel it or not.
One brother used to say with a bit of an Irish accent said too often we get things mixed up. We think about the presence of God and things like that said, we go by our feelings and then we let our feelings influence our faith and the facts. And he said, this is the way it needs to go. He said, you need to start.
He said, you start with the facts and we take the facts from the word of God, which is true. And he said, our facts then direct our faith and then our faith from our facts shapes our feelings. But too often in this current climate we find ourselves, we let our feelings shape our faith and then we use that to believe or not believe the facts. So we have the presence of God.
The power of his presence at work in our lives fulfilling what he desires for us, at work in us fulfilling his promises, conforming us to the image of his son. We have the beauty of that, of knowing that he is with us. When maybe every other presence is removed. And there has been times in the last year and a half where on the human plane it has been kind of lonely.
Sometimes it has been really lonely. Where is everybody? But his presence has not left us. And it will not leave us.
He will be present. The same one who walked faithfully with Moses and talked to him as a friend. His presence is with us. Because of what Christ has done.
If we do not have Christ, then we do not have his presence. We may have his presence in the sense that he is pursuing us. And we hear stories of those who have been influenced. I recently taught my students in our English class, who went through the book on Broken, the story of Louis Zamperini and his experience in the Second World War in the Pacific where he crashed in his bomber and bobbed around for 47 days in a tiny rubber raft in the Pacific Ocean and then was rescued, rescued by the Japanese who then put him through a series of prison camps where he was tortured and abused.
And he said a number of times he felt the presence of God in miraculous ways. But he did not know Christ. He knew a little bit of religion but did not know Christ. But eventually two years after the war suffering from terrible PTSD and guilt and shame, eventually he ended up at a Billy Graham crusade and heard the gospel of Jesus Christ and was transformed by the power of the gospel.
And then he said, I knew something of the presence of God and that God was pursuing me. But then I knew the full presence of God through Christ. And that is what we have as a believer, but we do not have if we are not. If we are outside Jesus Christ, that loneliness is real.
Because only the presence of God. Only our heavenly Father gives us a presence that never leaves us or forsakes us. We can rejoice in that. We can take comfort in that even if circumstances should change and wave number five rolls by and someone's like, okay, lock yourselves down again.
But God is with me still. Let's pray. Father, we thank you for your presence that you, the Holy One, has gained to be present with your people. Well, thank you.
That was your intention that we would enjoy fellowship with you in the beginning. And that is why you have redeemed us to bring glory to your name but also so that we could again enjoy your presence as your people, to experience your love and full measure. Well, thank you for Jesus Christ, who was present with us, who walked this earth, who willingly and intentionally went to the cross to pay our penalty. Thank you that though he is making intercession for us, before the throne, he's given us your spirit, who is present with us, indwelling us.
Well, thank you for this. Lord, I do pray that you would help us in those moments when we allow our feelings to dictate our truth to us instead of your word. I want to open our eyes to see that. To remember that you have not left us and you have not forsaken us and you never will.
That we would cling to these promises, be encouraged by them, to go through whatever you have, and of us, knowing that you are with us. Lord, we ask this in Jesus' name. Amen.