Dennis Tuuri

# Sermon Transcript: Doing Justice by Honoring the Father

The sermon text is Psalm 96. And to read it in context, verse 8 is what I want to talk about at some point in today’s sermon, but to read it in context I’ll read what I think is the second of the three stanzas in Psalm 96, broken out by these three or four-fold declarations of praising God and singing to him at the beginning of three separate stanzas. So I’ll begin reading in verse 7.

Psalm 96, verses 7 through verse 10. Please stand for the reading of God’s word.

Our talk today—our sermon is going to be on doing justice by honoring the Father, first person of the Trinity.

**Psalm 96:**

Give to the Lord, O families of the peoples. Give to the Lord glory and strength. Give to the Lord the glory due his name. Bring an offering and come into his courts. Oh worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. Tremble before him all the earth. Say among the nations, “The Lord reigns. The world also is firmly established. It shall not be moved. He shall judge the peoples righteously.”

**Let’s pray.**

Lord God, we thank you for this psalm. We thank you for its structure that moves from praise and ascription of all glory, honor, and strength to you and then calls on your people. Three different sections of this psalm home to speak of your great glories to the earth and then how that in the last section is found the Gentiles coming together with the Jews, all people praising your holy name.

And so at the center of this, in this second stanza that we read, help us, Father, to understand what it means to come into your courts with praise, bringing an offering and worshiping you in the beauty of holiness. May we honor you today. May you change our lives by the work of your Holy Spirit to make us more fit images of the Lord Jesus Christ. In his name we ask it. Amen.

**Please be seated.**

Well, it’s been quite a week. Quite a week, and the long slide of our country, from my perspective, continues. How could it be other than that? I thought it was ironic that on the same day—I think on the same day the Supreme Court rewrote the statute to make it a tax and not a penalty, which means they never should have heard it. By the way, if it’s a tax, the Supreme Court can’t hear it until somebody’s actually been taxed and been damaged by the tax.

And of course, if it was a tax, it should have initiated in the House of Representatives. And if it’s a tax, it has to meet the standard of taxation found in our Constitution, which limits the federal government’s right to tax. And Justice Roberts, by really a decision of one person that will hold precedent now for years to come, has now given our government—he doesn’t want to protect us from them—he’s given them the right to tax any inactivity of ours they like, anything we don’t do. I thought of the Beatles song, right? “Taxman.” I’m not sure they envisioned a time when they would tax nothing, an inactivity you’re doing. But in any case, and this is all based upon this idea that, oh no, it’s not a fee, it’s a tax—a restatement, a rewriting of the law from my perspective.

And I thought it was ironic that on the same day they overturned a statute that made it a crime to claim you have a Congressional Medal of Honor, or knowingly lie about your medals. I was going to get up and say, I’ve got two Purple Hearts and a Congressional Medal of Honor. And the Supreme Court says, well, that’s just fine. People can tell you’re a liar, but they can’t. The civil government cannot punish you for that.

So in both cases it seems that lies, deception, weasel words, playing with the language is what this country is now about. And it’s just cool. And so why is that? Well, we get upset about the Constitution. I heard this morning on the radio, well, the fathers of our country are turning over in their graves. But you know, we’ve been saying for 30 years at this church it is a little idolatrous and stupid to think that our foundational document, the Constitution, will be held as it was written when the Church of Jesus Christ in America has, for the most part, rewritten the Bible and changed the meaning of the Bible.

If we’re not going to hold to God’s word, he’s going to destroy all of our other attempts to build cultures on other formative words. So don’t worry about the Constitution. Worry about: are we restoring a knowledge and commitment to the Bible? Okay? And in the same way, I don’t know why in a country that dishonors our heavenly Father so much, I don’t know why we would expect—wouldn’t it be bad if we could actually honor our nation’s fathers, the fathers of our country, if we’re not going to honor the Father of creation?

I mean, there’s something not right about that. So these things are big signs that are pointing us back to more fundamental issues. And as we said last week, there’s a certain way to accumulate capital in response to what’s happening in our country. There’s a certain way to approach the fundamental issues here. And this sermon is one of those ways. My goal with this sermon is to change some of your behavior when you pray. And my goal is to maybe think of you changing your behavior in terms of how you worship, specifically.

Now, those two issues have been on my mind for a long time, and I’ve been kind of looking for an opportunity when it would seem right in the context of our flow of sermons. We’re continuing—I’m continuing to do sermons on doing justice, putting the world to rights. And doing justice has as one of its most foundational matters honoring the heavenly Father.

Right now, this is a difficult thing to do in our day and age for lots of reasons, and in our particular culture, in general, it’s hard to do because as the country has moved away from Christianity, it’s moved away from biblical patterns of fatherhood and motherhood. And of course, dads and moms both kind of represent the authority of the Father in the family, but dads particularly—you know, I did a brief look on the internet. I think there’s four times as many transgender operations going from male to female than female to male. Males aren’t really in the ascendancy in terms of respect in our country. And there’s a good reason for that because apart from Jesus, men turn into brutish pigs who want to control other people’s lives, and when it doesn’t work, they get very angry and yell.

Now, we’ve had, you know, a whole couple of generations now raised with some pretty pagan father figures. You know, if I had AV capability, this may be one of those sermons when I’d like to play the video for Everclear’s “Father of Mine,” right? About you gave me a name and you walked away. And in the song, he talks about how messed up he is because of a father who abandoned him. He’s never going to be safe. He’s never going to feel sane, right? That’s what he’s saying. Now, in the grace of God, that can change. But without Jesus Christ, that’s true.

We’re walking around in a culture where people have really messed up attitudes primarily about fathers because fathers have been so messed up in the way they raise kids. So when we talk about Christianity and when we try to include in this aspect that really what we should be doing is honoring the Father—not just Jesus or the Holy Spirit, but the Father—there’s a reticence to that. You may not think of it, but I think it exists in our heads because we haven’t seen fathers we really want to honor. And increasingly we haven’t seen fathers on the Supreme Court or fathers in whatever form of government that are particularly acting all that honorably either.

So it’s a hard topic to get us to honor the Father generally in our culture today. I think—you know, some people say—I didn’t know this till I started doing research for this sermon—that charismatic churches stress the Holy Spirit, evangelical churches stress the Son, and liberal churches tend to stress the Father. So we’re kind of evangelical, so we’re stressing the Son, and then with this season we’re stressing the work of the Holy Spirit. But if that saying is true, if that old saying is true, it means that coming out of evangelicalism we’re being tied to it. We’re probably going to tend to focus on the Son and maybe the Spirit more than the Father. So it’s a particular problem for us.

Another problem for us is the way we sing songs—exclusive or not exclusive, preponderant psalmody. We try to have a lot of songs we sing. Well, the doctrine of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, the doctrine of the Trinity, is not really spelled out much in the Old Testament. The fact that there is plurality in the Trinity—you can go to some verses for that—but there’s no verses about the Father as opposed to the Son and as opposed to the Spirit. We’ve got this term Yahweh or Lord, and is it Jesus? Is it the Father? Well, it’s not articulated out. So when we sing psalms, mostly we’re never going to be singing about the Father, you know, as the Father.

Some of our older hymns do, you know. The song we sang earlier, “Come to the Father through Jesus the Son”—those are the sort of hymns, you know. They’re not psalms. So do we sing, or should we not sing them? What’s the effect of some of that stuff? And we worry about their theology, but you know there’s a truth that we have to worry about: the absence of Trinitarian theology with an overemphasis on psalmody. If we did that exclusively, it would mean you’re never singing praise to the Father as the Father. Now maybe you could in terms of your mind, and preparing people for all that, but I’m saying just in terms of the words—when you sing, “Oh come to the Father through Jesus the Son,” you’re reinforcing basic Trinitarian doctrine, and you’re learning correctly how to honor the Father in the context of your Christian life.

But we don’t sing hymns like that all that much. And so for us particularly—and maybe we should—but for us particularly, we have another problem in trying to achieve honoring the Father. So you know, it’s kind of a difficult time because of the social situations that are going on—in the country’s hatred of, or at least studied distance from, fathers—and then in our particular setting I think we have some difficulties ourselves just because of who we are and the way the Lord has made us.

One final thing is that we live in the context—you know, there are practical implications for this, and one of the practical implications is: if we focus on Jesus and never focus on honoring the Father, then we’re going to get all horizontal, primarily, and not think of the vertical. I think there’s a relationship between an absence of honoring fathers—honoring the heavenly Father—and a church, an evangelical church in America, that no longer practices discipline.

You know, the Father. One of the pedagogies of a father is fear—a proper fear, but fear nonetheless. And when we jettison the Father, we jettison that sense of the vertical relationship we have with God the Father. Yeah, we think of Jesus as our King, but he’s like us, right? He’s elder brother too. And I just think it tends to produce kind of a disdain for authority.

In our country, of course, that’s what we have—all rulers, home, church, state, business—they’re all representations of the Father and his rule. And so if we don’t work hard at trying to honor the heavenly Father, our attitudes toward other intermediate authorities will diminish. Those are the things that cause us not to think of the Father. But then not thinking about the Father and honoring him causes us to even have worse attitudes toward authority. I think there’s very practical, deeply psychological stuff that happens when the Church of Jesus Christ fails to properly honor the heavenly Father.

And so I want to take some time to correct that today.

Let me just start with one verse. 1 Corinthians 15:24 says this. Paul says, “Then comes the end when he—that is Jesus—delivers the kingdom to God the Father. When he puts an end to all rule and authority and power.” Do you know that Jesus shall reign till all his enemies become his footstool? But that ain’t the end. The end, Paul tells us, is that Jesus hands it over to the Father. You see, eschatology ultimately is about the Father receiving a purified kingdom from the Son. So the Father has tremendous significance.

I want to talk about prayer. I want to talk about money. I want to talk about worship. But I want to talk first of all about intending to get you to agree that we should intend to honor the Father.

Let me read some verses.

**Romans 15:6:** That you may with one mind and one mouth glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul instructs us that we’re supposed to glorify the Father.

**John 12:28:** Jesus says, “Glorify your name.” And a voice comes forth from heaven saying, “I have both glorified it and will glorify it again.” Now, Jesus is glorified by the Father. But Jesus calls on the Father to glorify his name—the Father’s name.

**John 14:13:** “Whatever you ask in my name, that I will do that the Father may be glorified in the Son.” We’re to pray in the Son’s name, and I’ll make this point later, to the Father. And Jesus says he’ll do those things for this reason: that the Father may be glorified in the Son. So the Son sees himself as being a vehicle to glorify the Father. He’s pointing beyond himself, and he does this over and over and over.

**John 15:8:** “By this my Father is glorified, that you bear much fruit. So you’ll be my disciples.” Personal sanctification, the new creation working itself out in your life. Jesus says being a disciple of his—the purpose is so that you would end up glorifying the Father.

**John 17:1:** Jesus spoke these words, lifted up his eyes to heaven and said, “Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son that your Son also may glorify you.” The eschatology is the glorification. The end result of the Son’s work is the glorification of the Father. And if we’re in the Son, the end result of what we do, the purpose and motivation, should be to glorify our Father in heaven.

So I hope you have an intent. If nothing else today—here’s first application point: Walk away with a commitment, an intent in your heart that you make right now to honor and glorify not Jesus. You’re doing that. That’s great. But ultimately your Father in heaven, because that’s what Jesus tells you to do. He says you’re supposed to be doing these things to honor and glorify your Father. So intend to honor the Father.

Now, we honor the Father by doing his will. Simple statement, but this is what Jesus says, right?

**Matthew 7:21:** Jesus says this: “Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall enter the kingdom of heaven.” And you think, well, yeah, the ones that do these things. But see, what he says specifically is, “but he who does the will of my Father in heaven.” The dividing point is not words but action—action that is an attempt to fulfill the will not of Jesus even, but the will of the Father in heaven. That’s what we’re supposed to do. We honor the Father by self-consciously doing the will of the Father in heaven.

**Matthew 12:50:** “Whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother.” The definition of whether you’re part of the family of Jesus Christ is whether you do the will of the Dad. And Jesus identifies that as the Father in heaven.

Now, if this is all review for you, great. I’m glad you got that. But I know for me at least, and I think for many people here, it’s important that we hear this and get back on track in terms of giving honor and glory to the Father.

**John 5:23:** He says that all should honor the Son just as they honor the Father. “He who does not honor the Son does not honor the Father who sent him.” To the extent that we do honor the Son—again, Jesus says the purpose of that is to honor the Father that sent the Son. We see the Son as a reflection of the will of the Father. And when we honor the Son, we honor the Father. If we say we’re honoring the Father and don’t honor the Son, we’re lying. But if we say we’re honoring the Son and that it ends there, that’s wrong. We honor the Son as a way to honor the Father.

**John 5:19:** “Jesus answered and said to him, Most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do. For whatever he does, the Son does in like manner.” You know, Jesus makes these statements throughout the gospel of John: Hey, I’m not doing this. This is not my idea. The Father, he does these things. I see what the Father does and I do them. I exegete the Father to you.

Now, if Jesus says in the Gospel of John he’s come to exegete the Father so that the Father would receive glory, and if our response to that is just simply to see and to see Jesus—who Jesus is—and never see it as the exegetical statement of who the Father is, you see, we’ve just messed up. We’ve missed kind of the goal, the eschatology of the whole thing. Jesus says, “Hey, I’m pointing you to the Father.”

**John 5:19:** “Jesus answered and said, Most assuredly I say to you, the Son can do nothing of himself, but what he sees the Father do. For whatever he does, the Son also does in like manner.” Same thing. The Son is doing the will of the Father, and that’s how he’s honoring him. And so when you wake up tomorrow morning and you commit yourself to follow God tomorrow, commit to do the will of your Father in heaven as understood and demonstrated by Jesus. Yes. But commit to doing the will of your Father as a way of honoring him.

**John 5:30:** “I can of myself do nothing. As I hear, I judge. My judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will, but the will of the Father who sent me.” I don’t seek my own will. Jesus says, “I seek the will of the Father who sent me.” Shouldn’t that be in our mouths? Isn’t that who we are? United to Christ? Isn’t that what we say? We’re not seeking our own will. We’re seeking the will of the Father who sent Jesus—that we’re united to now. Doing the will of the Father. The Father. The Father.

**John 6:38:** “I have come down from heaven not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me.” I mean, it’s just, you know, repeated over and over and over.

**John 8:28:** “Jesus said to them, When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as my Father taught me, I speak these things.”

**John 12:49:** “I have not spoken on my own authority, but the Father who sent me gave me a command what I should say and what I should speak.” Not just doing things, but what he says is in obedience to doing the Father’s will.

**John 14:10:** “Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you, I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does the works.” So it’s even so far as to Jesus not just doing the work of the Father, but the Father is doing works through the Son. And what the Son does are indicators—they’re exegeting, they’re explaining, who the Father is.

So doing his will is one of the means in which we honor the Father. So you know, commit ourselves: number one, to honor the Father in our lives from this day forward. Number two, to honor him by seeing ourselves as doing the will of our Father in heaven.

Number three: prayer. And this gets down to very practical deal here. And I’m going to step on a few toes. And maybe you know, if you already know all this stuff, great. But I think it’s important.

Of course—well, let’s see.

**Matthew 18:19:** Jesus says, “I say to you that if two of you agree on earth concerning anything that they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven.” So prayer is directed to the Father so that the Father would answer that prayer, so that he would do what we’re asking.

**Luke 11:13:** “If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Again, prayer is asking God—in this particular instance for the Holy Spirit—and the Father is the one who answers that prayer.

Jesus taught us to pray, right? And he taught us to pray using a formula that we recite every Lord’s day, every Father’s day, when we come into the Father’s courts with praise. This is one of the things we do: we use the prayer that Jesus said should instruct us about how to pray. And of course, what we think is that what we do in Lord’s day sort of sets up the rest of the week. So that prayer that Jesus taught us is a model for how to pray throughout our lives. That prayer does not direct itself to the Son or to the Holy Spirit.

Jesus explicitly tells us that the prayer is to be directed to our heavenly Father and that the heavenly Father’s name would be hallowed. Right? So Jesus teaches us to pray to the Father. That’s how we’re supposed to pray. It’s that simple. Okay? That’s what Jesus says. We’re supposed to pray to the Father. And Scripture tells us that whatever we ask the Father—like the verses we just read, certainly imply that our prayers are going directed to the Father—but Jesus explicitly tells us in this formula of prayer that we’re supposed to pray to the Father.

The Spirit moves us to pray, right? Jesus is the authority by which we bring those requests to God. But the end result of our prayer, what we’re directing it to, is not Jesus or the Holy Spirit. It is the Father. Now, that doesn’t mean it’s wrong to talk to Jesus or wrong to talk to the Holy Spirit. That’s just fine. But I’m saying here that your prayer life, your normative prayer life, should be found on the basis of this pattern that Jesus lays out for us. And it has this Trinitarian understanding to it, right? The Spirit is motivating us to do particular things. The Son is providing a vehicle that we can then get to the Father, and the Father is the one we’re addressing these prayers to and the Father then answers those prayers.

Do you get that? Doug Wilson uses an illustration where, you know, the Father is the destination, the place you’re driving to. Jesus is the way. He’s the road. He provides the paved road that you can go on to get to the Father. And the Holy Spirit is the car that motivates you to get that trip moving. Okay? And so that’s the idea: you’re to pray toward the Father through the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his authority. He’s provided the means of access now to the Father’s throne room. And the Holy Spirit motivates us in these prayers.

So the Spirit moves, Jesus makes acceptable to the Father, but our prayers are to be directed to the Father. Okay.

**Ephesians 2:18:** “Through Jesus we both—he’s talking about Jews and Gentiles here—have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Well, there it is. See? So through Jesus, by the Spirit, we have access to the Father. So the direction, what we’re praying to, who we’re praying to is the Father. And we can get to the Father because of the work of the Holy Spirit and Jesus. We pray through Jesus and the Spirit motivates us to that. But we’re praying to the Father, to the Father.

So the Father is where our prayers should be directed. They’re directed to the Father in the name of Jesus, empowered by the Holy Spirit. Okay. The Spirit causes our hearts to cry out in these prayers, “Abba, Father.” The Spirit motivates us to direct our prayers to the Father. And if you’re not praying to the Father regularly, and if your prayers are normally to Jesus or the Holy Spirit, I just think that there’s a problem. Sorry, but I just think that’s a problem.

And I’m not alone on this. You know, look at John Piper’s videos on this subject or Doug Wilson’s. Everybody says, “Well, well, of course it’s okay to talk to Jesus and the Holy Spirit sometimes.” But prayer is to be made to the Father. And I think we need to restate that these days. As obvious as it is in the Scriptures, Jesus actually teaches us that. Here’s how you’re supposed to pray: Pray to the heavenly Father. But because I think our culture, our lives—we have some reticence in terms of accessing the Father.

Now, the end result of praying this way are blessings from the Father.

**Matthew 6:** Says, “Take heed that you do not do your charitable deeds before men to be seen by them. Otherwise, you have no reward from your Father in heaven.” The Father is the one dishing out blessings. Okay? Those come to us through the merits of Christ, but they’re coming from the Father.

**Matthew 6:14:** “If you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.”

**Matthew 7:11:** “If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him?” So again, prayers to the Father, and normally speaking, blessings are seen as coming forth from the hand of the Father. Okay?

So we intend to honor the Father. We honor the Father by explicitly attempting to do the will of our Father in heaven. And part of that will is directing our prayers to the Father through the authority of Jesus, motivated by the Spirit. So we pray differently.

And now I want to talk about worship. When we come to worship, who are we worshiping? You know, it’s interesting. When we had that Pentecost river thing coming down—Rand and Brian Hangartner were here—and we were joking. We kind of thought to throw them off. The Ascension is what we were kind of wanted to focus on. So we kidded around about getting one of those little kitty chairs and putting it up at the top of that round window to represent Jesus ascended.

But you know, the problem with that imagery is that it puts Jesus on that throne at the center of heaven. But of course, he’s not right. He’s at the right hand of God the Father. Okay? There’s a distinction made there in the Scriptures.

And our worship is in many places specifically said—like our prayers—to be directed not to Jesus but to the Father. Let me read a few references.

**John 4:23:** “The hour is coming and now is when true worshippers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. For the Father is seeking such to worship him.” So the Father is seeking people. The reason why we want to get out there to the neighborhoods and bring people into the worship of God is because God’s will is—he’s seeking people to worship him, him the Father.

Now, you know, obviously these are Trinitarian terminology and so we can’t press these things too far in one direction or another. But what I’m doing today is showing you an emphasis of the Father as being the recipient of your prayers. The Father’s will informing what you do. You’re trying to honor the Father. And worship—we’re told here that the Father is seeking people to worship him. And so worship is directed, at least according to John 4:23, toward God the Father.

And so worship is this time when it should help us to focus on the fact—I mean, I think normally it’s easy to fall into a deal where you come into this courts with praise and you’re praising Jesus, and that’s what you think about, and that’s fine. We worship Jesus. We worship the Holy Spirit. But ultimately John 4 says that the Father is seeking people to worship him. He is this destination for our worship, just as he’s the destination for our prayers.

Now, if that’s true—and I think John 4 says it is true—I think that there are very practical ways that can happen. Let me read one other text first though.

**Revelation 5.**

Okay. And we’ve read this recently several times. You know, this is where the Lion—or the Lamb, the Lion, the Lamb appears in heaven, takes the sevenfold book, opens up the book of history, and begins to control history through it. And so it’s that scene, and this scene is happening in the throne room.

Verse 1 begins it: “I saw in the right hand of him who sat on the throne.” Okay, so as the vision is being given to John, there’s someone on a throne and in his right hand he has this sevenfold scroll. Okay? And John is sad because nobody can open it. But lo and behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah arrives in heaven and he is able to open the seals and to unlock history and to cause history to move forward in the way that it will.

Verse 7 says that this Lion—the Lamb came and took the scroll out of the right hand of him who sat on the throne. So Jesus appears in heaven at the right hand of one who sits on the throne and he takes the scroll from him. What’s happening? Well, clearly this is the Father in heaven. He’s sitting on the throne. The one sitting on the throne in heaven is the Father. Jesus is coming and receiving at the Father’s right hand the scroll that will rule history.

And Jesus’s enthronement is at the right hand of God the Father, which means that center stage—the center stage in the heavenly throne room where our worship is directed—center stage is occupied by the Father, the Father. Isn’t that what it means?

Now they sing songs to the Lamb. “You’ve redeemed us.” Right? This is what goes on in the rest of the chapter. This is great. We sing praises to the Lamb.

So the Lamb’s being worshiped, of course.

**Verse 12:** “Worthy is the Lamb who is slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength, glory and honor and blessing. And every creature which is in heaven and on the earth and under the earth and such as are in the sea and all that are in them I heard saying, Blessing and honor and glory and power be to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb forever and ever.”

Okay. If this is the picture of post-cross, post-resurrection, post-Ascension worship, what it tells us is that the recipient of our worship, the central recipient, the central person, the center—the guy on the throne—is God the Father. Now our worship is also received by the Son. We know that. Nothing wrong with that. But blessing, glory, and honor to him who sits on the throne and to the Lamb. You see? To the Father and to the Son.

Now, what that means is that when we want to honor the Father, we honor him through worship by acknowledging that the focal point of our worship is the Triune God, but that the one who sits on the throne is the Father, and the Father desires us to bring more people here to worship the Father. Right?

Now, what does that mean to you? Does it mean anything to you? Of course it does. You know, if we’re going to honor the Father, if we don’t honor the Father in worship, is there any hope of doing it anywhere else? Probably not. What do you do to prepare for worship? How’s your sleep pattern the night before? How do you kind of strive and endeavor to enter into the worship? Is this a time of comfort, of just kind of relaxing? And yes, there’s certainly a sense of ease and relaxation. God accepts us. But if this is the time that we have the most focal approach with our prayers and our worship to the heavenly Father—that we’re supposed to be doing everything for, all of our wills bent to his will in the Son and by the power of the Spirit, and he’s here now with us and we’re in his throne room—doesn’t that mean a sense of attentiveness? A sense of really working yourself hard, endeavoring to do something about it? Not just saying, “Well, I like it. I don’t like it. Well, that song, I don’t know.” Entering into that worship of the Father is, I think, critical—absolutely critical—to how or if you’re going to honor the Father with the rest of your life. I think this is it in many ways.

Now, we’re under—we had a worship team meeting last Wednesday night. The elders are always trying to think of ways to make this worship service easier—not easier—better for you in terms of worshiping the Father. You know, we don’t want to get you to punch through all the impediments we might set up. So we want to dialogue about that. But you know, that’s what we’re doing. We think that what we do during this hour and a half, two hours, whatever it is, of worship—this is it. This sets the pattern, and this sets the pattern for honoring the Father. Okay? Honoring the Father in worship.

Now, this leads to another aspect of our worship, and that’s giving tribute. Right? And this goes back to Psalm 96 and the reading we had at the beginning of the text.

You know, Psalm 96 is kind of cool. There are three stanzas. If you look at it and get home, you’ll see: praise, praise, praise, let you know, give, give, give, or whatever. Give, give, give, then let, let. There are three obvious stanzas. The first two stanzas begin with praise and then it moves to evangelization, telling the nations that God reigns. And then it moves to ascriptions of his heavenly realities. The third stanza—the praise—is actually entered into by the Gentile nations, as pictured by the sea. They enter into that praise. So the evangelism has become effective by the end of Psalm 96.

But that middle stanza is kind of central. And in the context of that middle stanza, you know what’s being said there is: come before him with an offering. Bring tribute as you come into his courts with praise. Okay. Now that word “offering” is the same word—it’s minha. It means tribute. It’s the tribute offering found in Leviticus chapter 2. It’s money given to us or a thing given to someone who is sovereign over you as tribute to him—loving tribute to bring to someone.

Now my point is: we honor the Father by bringing tribute to him. Our confessional statement actually requires this of members. What does it say? Give me just a minute. I’m sure I have the quote here. Yeah, maybe I don’t. But our confessional statement actually requires—when people become members, they agree to lovingly bring tribute to God by means of the tithe and worship.

Okay. So tribute shows the product of our labors, right? It’s usually called the cereal offering in some translations. That’s just because it was grain, but it was grain that had to be processed. And so we’re to bring our tribute to the Father in worship.

Now, over and over again, we read that we’re not supposed to come empty-handed, right?

**Exodus 34:20:** “None shall appear before me empty-handed.”

**Deuteronomy 16:16:** Talking about the three times a year they had to go up to Jerusalem, “They shall not appear before the Lord empty-handed.”

**Exodus 23:15:** “You shall keep the feast of Unleavened Bread. And again, at the end of the verse, none shall appear before me empty-handed.”

Now, God says when you come into his courts to honor the Father, Psalm 96 says you’re supposed to bring an offering, a tribute. And various other texts tell us you’re not supposed to come empty-handed. I think—and I’m, you know, I’m not going to—nobody’s enforcing this, okay? I’m offering this by way of my understanding of what the Scriptures teach to me.

When you come into God’s house and he feeds you, right, and he teaches you and he does these things for you, you’re supposed to give him tribute. You’re not supposed to mail it in. You’re not supposed to, you know, EFT it in. I mean, you can do that with much of it, but I believe that every last person in the worship service of the church should come forward in response to God’s word, offering themselves to apply that word in their lives, bringing something, not coming empty-handed here today, but having something to put into the offering—either the alms offering or the other offerings of the church.

I don’t care if it’s a penny. And God, I don’t think, cares that much either—I mean, unless you could afford a lot more, unless your tithe is much bigger. But the point is not the amount. The point is honoring the Father by recognizing we owe him tribute. We owe him everything we have. And we want to respond to him and demonstrate in some small way that we’re responding to the heavenly Father by not deigning to appear before him empty-handed.

I think that’s important. Now, I could be wrong, but from my understanding of how to apply these Old Testament texts, I believe one of the significant ways we honor the Father is by honoring him with our money, our tithe. That’s certainly true. And maybe what that means is coming forward in response to the preached word every Lord’s day. You know, whether well or poorly it’s preached, it’s God’s word that’s at least been read to you, and you should respond to that with your songs but also with full hands by bringing something as tribute to him, tribute to God. When he comes, he wants us to do that.

Now, it’s interesting because this empty-handed thing—you know, when Ruth gleans, they, you know, Boaz says, “Make sure she doesn’t go home empty-handed.” You’re not going to leave here empty-handed. Okay? You’re going to leave here with God’s gifts on you: the assurance of your forgiveness of sins, the empowerment for ministry, knowing a little bit better how you’re supposed to pray and honor the heavenly Father. You’re going to have some knowledge, right? You’re going to go away from here with rejoicing, life in community. God’s going to fill your hand.

But the exchange that happens in that is: he wants you to have your hand not empty as you bring it to him. And then he won’t send you home empty-handed. He wants to put stuff in your hands. And I think that one of the ways that occurs—that blessing of God—is as we honor him, he blesses us and he fills our hands: the hands that have not been brought to him empty.

So the sixth way of honoring the Father is honoring him with our money, with our tribute.

The final way to honor God the Father is by being a finisher. And this is really sort of tied up to what we talked about earlier: doing the will of our Father in heaven.

Again, in **John 4:34**, what did he say? He said, “My food—my, you know, the stuff that’s supposed to be my very existence. My food. Hey, you haven’t eaten,” the disciples said. “Well, my food,” he says, “is to do the will of him who sent me. To do the will of the Father.” He doesn’t end it there. “And to finish his work. To finish his work.”

It’s a lot. One of the last things Jesus says from the cross: “It is finished.” He did his work. He finished his work. He honored his Father—not just by doing the will of his Father and leaving it at that, but doing the will and being a finisher of the tasks that God had given him to do.

Now, when Jesus dies on the cross, after he says “It is finished,” the Bible says he gave up his Spirit. People think, well, he just breathed his last. But really, the Greek there is a little different than that. And it seems to have an implication that he gave over his Spirit. He gave his Spirit to his disciples. He took the Spirit and put it upon them. And of course in his Resurrection we know he does that very explicitly: he breathes on them, says, “Receive the Holy Spirit.” And then the Spirit comes in the day of Pentecost and flows out of the center of who we are.

But at the cross, that sort of starts. And I think it’s interesting that turning over that gift of the Holy Spirit—given to his people—is in the context of Jesus finishing the will of his Father in heaven. You know, we’re talking: what does it mean to live in the new creation? What does it mean to be Spirit-filled? Well, in this case, in this sermon, what it means is you’ve received the Spirit of finishing. You’ve received the Spirit that motivates you to finish tasks, to finish the work of the Father in heaven, which is to occupy all of your lives.

God has called you to be like Jesus: a finisher of the heavenly Father’s work. And he has equipped you by giving you that same Spirit, tied directly to the words of our Savior: “It is finished.” And he gives us the Holy Spirit, which really is seen as empowering him to finish his work.

Life in the new creation is doing justice. Doing justice begins with a correct understanding of our relationship to the heavenly Father. Understanding he’s the focal point of our prayers, our worship, our tribute, our time. This—you know, every Lord’s day is Father’s Day, right? It’s not one day out of the year. Every Lord’s day is Father’s Day as well.

And doing justice is honoring that Father in very practical and yet very significant ways that I think affect our basic psychology in terms of human relationships one way or the other. And ultimately the Spirit who regenerates us and gives us new creation, gives us new creation life, so that we would honor the Father and finish the work that the Father has given us to do.

**Let’s pray.**

Father, we thank you for today. We thank you, Lord God, that we come into your courts with praise. We thank you that we can bring you tribute. Bless us, Lord God, as we do that now: a representation of all of our lives and work. Send us forth in this place not empty-handed, but full of good gifts from you: an understanding of how we’re to honor you in practical ways that works itself out in our prayers, in our offerings, and in the focus of our worship.

Father, we pray that you would bless us by your Holy Spirit. Make us those new creation saints. Increasingly mature us so that we would do your will on earth as your Son did. In Jesus’s name we ask it. Amen.