(b): Seek to Immitate Our Heavenly Father

Introduction: The Second Duty of Adopted Sons – Imitating Our Heavenly Father

0:00 Now may I urge you to turn with me in your Bibles to the Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5. The Gospel of Matthew and chapter 5, and I shall read from verses 43 to 48.

0:24 Here in the midst of what we commonly designate the Sermon on the Mount, our Lord says, You have heard that it was said, For if you love those that love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the publicans the same? And if you salute or greet your brethren only, what do you more than others? Do not even the Gentiles the same? You therefore shall be perfect as your heavenly Father, is perfect.

1:33 Well, let's pray and ask God to help us to understand His Word as we come to it this morning.

1:42 Our Father, we acknowledge afresh that left to ourselves, our minds and our hearts are shrouded in a darkness that keeps us from understanding Your truth. And though the words may be very simple and clear in the Scriptures, we know that unless the same Spirit, who moved the Gospel writers to give them to us, is present illuminating our minds, instructing our hearts, we hear in vain. So we pray that You would come upon Your Servant that He may speak not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit. And upon every farer, that we may not traffic in mere notions and ideas and evaluate those that we hear of Michael chapter 3. whether or not we think the preacher said it well or not so well. Lord, deliver us from all fruitless hearing of your word and come to every listener with power and deal with our hearts at the deepest level. We look to you to do this for our good and for your glory.

2:55 In Jesus' name, amen. All of the blessings of our salvation have been procured for us by the life, the death, the resurrection of our Lord Jesus and His ongoing intercession for us. We come this morning to our eleventh message concerning one such blessing of that salvation that rests down firmly upon Christ's work on our behalf, namely, the blessing of adoption into the family of God. Having demonstrated the centrality of the blessing of adoption in the plan of salvation, having opened up the substance of that wonderful blessing of redemptive grace, both its nature and its sevenfold privileges, I began last Lord's Day to consider with you what I am calling the duties and the responsibilities of the adopted sons of God. As we began to consider this theme, I reminded you of the pattern within which the duty of believers

4:21 is set before them in the New Testament. It is the pattern in which the indicatives of grace undergird the imperatives of grace and shape the very contours of grace. In other words, what we are to be and to do rests upon who we are and what we possess in Jesus Christ. And furthermore, with respect to the responsibility of adoption, we must understand that the rightful King of the universe who has become our loving Heavenly Father, when He could have been the King of the universe, when He could have been the King of the universe, when He could have been the King of the universe, when He could have executed us as rebel subjects in His kingdom, He loses nothing of His authority as King because He has given us the privilege of being His children and is our Father. He gives up nothing as a King when He takes on the likes of you and me as His sons and as His daughters. And so within that framework of gratitude for His love for us, for all that He has done, and in the light of what the Scripture says

5:43 we are and what we possess as adopted children, God lays before us the duties and the responsibilities of the adopted children of God. And so last Lord's Day, I set before you the first category of our duties and responsibilities as the children of God in these words. You and I are seriously to seek to please our Heavenly Father in all things. That's the first and foundational duty of the adopted ones.

6:24 This truth was established from several clear texts of Scripture and then I answered the critical question, how do we know how to please Him? We know how to please Him, not by following the impulse of our hearts, not by following what we are natively inclined to do, thinking, well, surely this will please God, but the Scriptures are both clear and simple in telling us that we please the Father by living a life of meticulous obedience to the Father's commands as revealed in the Bible. It's just that simple. We please the Father by doing the will of the Father as revealed in the commands of the Father for that is exactly the pattern of the Son, our Lord Jesus, who did always the things that pleased His Father and He said to His own disciples that you may know that I love the Father as the Father has given me commandment. Even so, I do arise, let's go hence. Hence to what? To Gethsemane, to the cup that He had no desire to drink in terms of His human nature.

7:49 Oh, my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass. Nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done. Your will revealed in Your commandments to me that I must drink. The cup of Your wrath against the sins of my people.

8:12 Now then, we come this morning to the second major duty and responsibility of all those who are graciously adopted into the family of God through a spirit-engendered faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. And what is that second line of duty? Just this. All of us, each, each of us who names the name of Christ and claims to be adopted into the family of God is to seriously seek to be like our Heavenly Father in every way appropriate to us as creatures made in the image of God.

8:57 Just as surely as we have the duty and responsibility to please the Father in everything, I wish I could have written, for a nice parallelism, seek seriously to be like our Heavenly Father in everything that would have been inaccurate biblically. We are to seriously seek to be like our Heavenly Father in every way appropriate to us as creatures made in the image of God. Now in opening up this truth, two headings this morning. First, the biblical basis for affirming this duty.

Biblical Basis for Affirming This Duty: Matthew 5

9:39 And secondly, the biblical framework for the performing of this duty. First of all then, the biblical basis for affirming this duty. On what grounds do I stand in this pulpit and say to everyone who claims to be adopted into the family of God through a spirit-wrought faith in Jesus Christ, it is your duty, it is your responsibility, to seriously seek to be like your Heavenly Father in every way appropriate to you as a creature made in the image of God. What is the biblical basis for that assertion?

10:23 Well, I read in your hearing Matthew chapter 5, and I ask you to turn there again if you've closed your Bible.

10:34 The context of this passage is that section of the Sermon on the Mount where our Lord is exposing the truncated and twisted understanding of the law of God as propagated by the religious leaders of that day. You have heard that it was said, but I say unto you. You have heard that it was said, but I say unto you. He began in verse 21, and he completes it in this section read in your hearing.

11:04 Now then, notice in this passage, in verse 43, he identifies the erroneous saying.

11:12 You have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy. Well, in Leviticus 19.18, God says love your neighbor, but nowhere in all of the Old Covenant law does God say hate your enemy. This was an extrapolation by the scribes and the Pharisees and the rabbis that if God commands us to love, then our neighbor, then anyone who's not our neighbor, we ought to hate them.

11:44 Jesus said, you have heard that it was said, love your neighbor, hate your enemy. That was not what God had said. God had said love your neighbor. God had nowhere said hate your enemy.

11:57 So in verse 44, our Lord corrects that. But, I say unto you, love your enemies, pray for them that persecute you. This is the revealed will of God that those within the community of the people of God in the kingdom of God, the sons of God will be marked by this attitude and action. They will love their enemies and pray for them that persecute them.

12:28 Now, what reason does Jesus give for that injunction? Verse 45, that you may be sons of your father, who is in heaven. Now, He is not saying, do this, that you may become sons of your father. That would contradict the whole teaching of Scripture.

12:50 We become sons and daughters of God by receiving Christ as Savior and Lord. As many as received Him, to them gave He the right to become the children of God. What He is saying is, do this, that you may be, that is, that you may manifest in your life the family likeness of your heavenly Father. By doing this, you will be like your Father.

13:19 And how do we know that's the meaning? Verse 46, I'm sorry, verse 45, that you may be the sons of your Father who is in heaven, for He makes His Son to rise on the evil and the good and sends rain on the just and the unjust. How does your Father deal with those with whom He has an active righteous controversy? There are those in the world who are evil.

13:53 There are those who are unjust. Some of you sit here this morning. You are evil, men and women. Evil, boys and girls.

14:04 You have no saving relationship to the God of heaven. You trample His law. You trample His law under your foot. You are indifferent to His glory, to His praise.

14:14 The purpose for which He made you to live to His glory is off the charts with you. You are evil to the core. You are unjust to the core. But what does God do to you?

14:27 You sit here today. You go out of this auditorium, out of the foyer, into the parking lot, the same sunshine that comes upon the head of the righteous, upon the head of the righteous, upon those who have repented of sin and through Christ now have God as their Father. God's sun shines on you. His sun shines on the evil and upon the unjust.

14:53 When it rained this past week, the rain fell on the backyard of that Christian man or woman. It also fell on the backyard of that unjust, evil neighbor who this day is in no house of God with no concern for sin. Your heavenly Father is a loving Father who manifests love to His enemies,

15:19 His Son, the rain upon just and unjust, upon the righteous and the unrighteous. Now Jesus said, you must love your enemies and pray for them that you may show yourself to be in the family of that God who shows kindness and graciousness to the unjust and to the evil. Do this that you may be sons of your Father who, and then He mentions those two incidents. Then He asked a couple of searching questions.

15:59 For if you love those that love you, what reward do you have? Do not even publicans, these people who are outcasts, from the synagogue, who are in cahoots with Rome, who are often known for their horrible ethics in dealing with money and Paris. Do not even publicans, those whom you regard the epitome of wickedness, don't they do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you more than others?

16:33 Do not even the Gentiles, the pagan hordes who have no connection with God, God's revelation in the Scripture, do not they do the same? He's searching out their hearts and saying, if you only love your neighbors, those with whom you have an intimate, close relationship, and show hatred and indifference and distance from all others, what are you doing more than others? And then the summary statement in verse 48, you therefore shall be perfect, complete, in what? In the way you manifest your love, you shall be perfect, not in degree, but in kind, as your what?

17:18 Heavenly Father is perfect. What is Jesus saying? He's saying to His disciples, you are to be like your Father. You are seriously to seek to be like your Heavenly Father in every way appropriate to you as creatures made in the image of God.

17:40 And here in this passage, our Lord clearly establishes that this is indeed the responsibility of all of the sons and daughters of the living God. In a parallel passage in chapter 6 of the Gospel of Luke, Jesus even goes further in Luke 6 and verse 33, 32. If you love them that love you, what thankfulness have you? Even sinners love those that love them.

18:13 And if you do good to them that do good to you, what thank have you? Even sinners do the same. If you lend to them of whom you hope to receive, what thank have you? Even sinners lend to sinners and receive again.

18:28 But, this is what sinners do not do. Love your enemies, do them good, and lend never despairing, and your reward shall be great. Now notice, and you shall be sons of the Most High. He's not saying by this you will earn the status of sons.

18:48 You will show yourself to be what you claim to be. You shall indeed manifest that you are sons of the Most High by showing the family likeness for He is kind toward the unthankful and the evil. You sit here this morning unthankful and evil. Why are you alive?

19:12 Why are you breathing God's air? Why is your stomach full of food? Why do you have clothes on your back? Because God is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.

19:25 That's why. No other reason. If God gave you what you deserve, He would cut you off, stretch His finger forth, touch your heart. It would stop feeding and you'd drop into hell.

19:37 But He's kind to you. His hands, His hands are stretched out in mercy and in tenderness. He is kind. He is kind.

19:47 That's who your Heavenly Father is. He's kind to the unthankful and evil. Be merciful as your Father is merciful. You see what He's doing?

19:59 He's pressing the issue. You who are the sons of the Kingdom, you who are children of God, you are to manifest that by being like your Heavenly Father in every way appropriate to you as creatures made in the image of God. Now consider with me a second significant text. Remember what I'm doing.

Biblical Basis for Affirming This Duty: Ephesians 5 and Colossians 3

20:28 I'm simply trying to establish out of the Bible why it is that I've asserted the second great duty and responsibility of the adopted is to be a man. It is to seek to be like their Heavenly Father. Turn now please to Ephesians chapter 5.

20:52 The text is Ephesians 5.1. We'll spend a few minutes to show the flow of thought and then to expound it. Be therefore imitators of God as beloved children.

21:08 You see how He's tying together their condition, their status, their individuality, their predicative. They are beloved of God. They are the object of His special, eternal, electing love. And they have become His children.

21:27 In the first chapter He said, the God who chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world in love predestined us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto Himself according to the riches of His grace. He says, now that's who you are. You are beloved children. Through Christ you have come into the status of the sons of God.

21:54 Now then, as beloved children, imitate God. We get the word mimic from the verb that the Apostle uses. Be continually imitating God. Your Heavenly Father is the template of the Son of God.

22:14 Of what your life is to be like. You are to be imitators of God. Now in what setting did the Apostle give that exhortation? Well, starting in chapter 4 in verse 17, he's calling the people of God to a lifestyle that is in direct contrast to what it was before they became the children of God.

22:39 This I say therefore and testify in the Lord that you no longer walk as the Gentiles walk. And then he describes what that walk is in the vanity of the mind, darkened in their understanding, etc. And he says, look, you've been taken out of that lifestyle. How were they taken out of it?

23:03 Look at verse 20. You did not so learn Christ, if so be that you heard Him and were taught in Him. Every true Christ Christian has learned Christ, has heard Christ, and has been taught in Christ. He assumes that of all the Ephesians.

23:23 He said you've heard, you've been taught Christ. You did not so learn, not of Christ, you did not so learn Christ. When the Gospel comes in power, Christ is no longer someone we hear about, we learn about, we get some facts about, we learn Christ Himself. We are brought into a vital, living relationship to Christ.

23:50 And he says, if so be that you heard Him. When did these Ephesians hear Christ? Christ was dead, buried, raised, ascended, when Paul went to Ephesus to preach the Gospel. But in the person of His representatives, they heard the voice of Christ.

24:09 Christ's voice broke through and laid hold of them. That's what it is to become a Christian. When the voice of Christ in the Gospel penetrates and lays hold of the human heart and draws that heart into union with Christ. And if that's true, if you've learned Christ, heard Christ, you've been taught in Christ.

24:32 And what were they taught in Christ? Verse 22, that you put away as concerning your former manner of life, the old man that waxes corrupt, after the lust of deceit, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, now notice, that after God has been created in righteousness and holiness of truth. He says, when you learned Christ, heard Christ, were taught in Christ, this is what you learned of Him and did. You put off the old man.

25:13 You put on, the new man. And that new man is fashioned after God. You put on the new man that after God has been created in righteousness and in holiness. Your new birth, your emergence into the new life is after the very pattern of God Himself.

25:42 And what God did in the beginning of your Christian life is to be carried on in the continuance of that life, so that when He comes to the fifth of these exhortations from verse 25 to verse 32, notice what He does. Be kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other, even as God in Christ forgave you. Be therefore, imitators of God. Your new life was birthed and created after the pattern of God in righteousness and holiness.

26:26 Now then, as the children of God, you must seriously seek to be like God in every area appropriate to you as a creature not only originally made in the image of God, but recreated in Jesus Christ after that image. Do you see that in your Bibles, folks? Not just hear it from the preacher. Do you see it with your own eyes in your Bible?

26:57 So then, what does the Apostle do? He goes on then in chapter 5 to demonstrate from verses 2 to 7, walk in love, and then verses 8 to 14, walk in light, verses 15 to 21, walk in wisdom, and I'm indebted to Sinclair Ferguson for this insight in one of his books, I think the one on adoption or maybe on Ephesians. What are more dominant characteristics of God than love, light, and wisdom? So he no sooner tells them be imitators of God, but he fleshes it out.

27:41 Live a life of love. Live a life in the light. Live a life of wisdom. Why?

27:50 Because you are to be imitators of God as beloved children. I can remember as a boy back in Stamford, Connecticut, when my dad would come home, we were six, seven years during the war when we had no car, and my dad would walk down Soundview Avenue in Stamford, Connecticut, there was a place where the street had a bend in it, and once he came around that bend you could see him about 200 yards away, and my dad had a funny movement where when he walked his right leg kind of swung out a little bit. As a son, you know what I used to practice? How am I going to mimic my dad? And so I'd practice swinging my right leg as I walked, because it was natural formation and it was natural for me as a son to want to be like my dad. What's true in the natural realm?

28:55 Here Paul fastens upon it in the spiritual realm, the imitators of God. Behold how God walks! He walks in love. He walks in light.

29:08 He walks in wisdom. Be an imitator of God in the ways appropriate to you as a mere creature, and a creature both made and then recreated in the image of God. That's our responsibility. Now look at the parallel passage in Colossians 3 as I try to establish this assertion in the Scriptures.

29:38 Notice what the Apostle says starting in verse 5. Put to death your members upon the earth, and he mentions them, and he says you once lived in these things, now put them all away. Now verse 9. Lie not one to another, seeing you have put off the old man with his doings, have put on the new man that is being renewed unto knowledge, now notice, after the image of him that created him.

30:13 Who has created the new man? It is God. Now he says, that this new man is not a perfect new man. He needs renewal.

30:25 He needs increase in knowledge. But what's the template? What is the pattern of the new man's growth and emergence into ever increasing knowledge and experience of grace? It's very clear.

30:40 You've put on the new man that is being renewed unto knowledge after the image of him that created him. God himself is the pattern of the new man. Now let me say, before we move to heading number 2, the biblical framework to perform this duty, I want to say a few things by way of application. Man was made in the image of God originally.

The Image of God: Original Creation, The Fall, and Restoration in Christ

31:11 You know that from your Bible. Genesis 1, 26 and 7. And God said, let us make man after our image and after our likeness. And God created them male and female.

31:23 Created he them in his own image. They mirrored God in every way possible by a created being. Get that straight in your mind. They were not made little gods.

31:38 You can't make gods. God is in what he is. He always has been. There is no secondary God.

31:45 The Jehovah's Witness with their God who is a little God but a big God is sheer nonsense. God is God. And when he makes man male and female in his image, he stamps upon them his likeness in every way consistent with a created, dependent being. Sin entered when Adam and Eve sought to be like God in a way inappropriate to a sinless creature.

32:18 Remember what the temptation of the tempter was? You shall be as what? You shall be as God knowing good and evil. So when Adam and Eve reached upward to be like God in an illicit and forbidden way, they became like the devil.

32:39 And all of us fell in Adam. All of us were conceived and born as defaced marred, distorted images of God. Adam and Eve were perfect images of God, perfect for creatures independent upon God. Sin marred and twisted and defaced the image.

33:02 You and I are conceived and born defaced, marred, distorted images of God. But in infinite love and grace, God determined before that horrible thing happened in the garden that He would have a family of restored image bearers. So Paul can say in Ephesians 1, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and without blemish before Him in love having predestined us unto adoption as sons unto Himself according to the riches of His grace. So before the mess in Eden God purposed that He would have a multitude whom no man can number out of every kindred, tribe and tongue and nation who would again perfectly reflect His image. So what did He do? Galatians 4, 4 In the fullness of the times God sent forth His Son.

34:18 Why? He sent forth His Son made of a woman, made under the law that He might redeem them that were under the law that we might receive adoption as sons. Our adoption rests down upon the redemptive work of Christ. And when through the preaching of the Gospel we hear of that redemptive work and the Spirit opens our blinded eyes and we behold the glory of God in the face of Christ and there is an unrestricted, unrestrained, uninhibited throwing open of the whole being to embrace Christ.

34:55 What happens? We become sons of God. And then verse 6 of Galatians 4 Because you are sons He sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts enabling us to cry Abba Father and that Spirit who attests to our sonship is the Spirit of holiness and sanctification the Spirit who enables us to turn from sin to embrace Christ and the graces that are in Him. So then, that work of restored image bearing begins in our conversion is carried on in our sanctification and it will be complete in our glorification for we shall be like Him for we shall see Him as He is. That's what ties all of this together dear people. And if you sit here this morning saying yes, I am a child of God through faith in Christ I have received the Spirit of adoption God is saying to you as His child you are under a solemn responsibility and duty not only to seek seriously to please the Father in everything by a life of meticulous obedience

36:22 but you are to seriously seek to be like your Father in every single way appropriate to a dependent image bearer of the living God. Have I persuaded your conscience from the Bible? If I haven't done that then point number two is useless. I don't know how to do it any better than what I've tried to do to get you to see this is my duty my responsibility my great privilege, yes but privilege and duty are not contradictory one to another.

Framework for Performing the Duty: Beholding God's Works in Providence

37:01 Well then the question is how do you go about doing it? What is the biblical framework for performing this duty? In specific and concrete terms how are you? How am I as children of God to go about imitating our Father in ways appropriate to us as creatures made and remade in the image of God?

37:29 Well let me give you three suggestions. Number one we can imitate the Father by carefully beholding His works in providence and reproducing those works in the sphere of our assigned place. Let me repeat that. We can imitate the Father by beholding His works in providence and reproducing them in the sphere of our assigned place in life.

38:00 Isn't that what Jesus did in Matthew 5 and Luke 6? He said the next time it rains look at your unjust ungodly evil neighbor and ask yourself if the rain stopped at the fence on your property line. Is God providentially giving Him rain when He gives you rain? When the sun arose this morning and you went out and it shone on your head did it shine on your neighbor who went out to get his Sunday Bible his Sunday paper kick his feet up watch his paper all morning watch the March Madness and the NCAA playoffs this afternoon have a few beers and plop himself into bed at 9 o'clock tonight. Does God's sun shine on him when he went out to get his paper? Look at God's works in providence and then you imitate Him. You see I can't make the sun shine on his head I can't make rain fall on his garden or on his lawn but he has this need or that need I can respond to that and I can mirror God by showing kindness.

39:10 and mercy and beneficence to my unconverted neighbor. You look at what God does and you imitate Him that's what Jesus said. You look at God's works in providence and you imitate them. Secondly, we can imitate the Father by considering His works of grace and reproducing them in our relationship to our brethren.

Framework for Performing the Duty: Considering God's Works of Grace

39:35 What does God do in grace? We can imitate God by reproducing that. Isn't that what we have in Ephesians? In the passage we looked at?

39:47 Let's go back to it. Be kind one to another. Verse 32 Tenderhearted, forgiving each other even as God in Christ forgave you. How does God forgive me?

40:03 Freely, fully, unreservedly every time I come sometimes for sins I've committed times without number and I say oh my Father I am ashamed I am grieved will you not forgive me on the basis of the fact your son died for that sin that I'm even ashamed to confess I've fallen into it again but oh my Father forgive me. As God freely forgives for Christ's sake behold God's works in grace and mirror them. You be quick to forgive. When your husband has wronged you and comes broken and says dear forgive me you don't give him that look of a pouting petulant well I don't know. You wrap your arms around and say dear I never feel more God-like than when I can forgive you. I've had the privilege of saying that times without number is a pastor through the years. People have come and said oh pastor I did this I am so sorry will you forgive me.

41:15 Where appropriate wrap my arms and say oh I counted a privilege I never feel more like God than when I can forgive. You behold God's works in grace like as a father pities his children so the Lord pities them that fear him. He knows our frame He remembers we are dust. He is patient with us.

41:43 He is long suffering with us. Behold God's works of grace to his children and be like God to one another. Be patient with one another. Be long suffering with one another.

41:59 Don't be drawing lines and saying thus far no further will I forgive. That's why the Lord Jesus was able to say if you forgive not men their trespasses neither will your heavenly Father forgive you your trespasses. If you don't mirror God's forgiving disposition in your dealings with one another don't expect God to forgive you. What does God do in our needs?

42:30 He responds to them. Now God says if we see a brother in need don't shut up the bowels of your compassion. Mirror God. Be like God.

Framework for Performing the Duty: Meditating on God's Character Traits

42:41 Generous. Open handed. Freely giving. Then thirdly we can imitate the Father by meditating upon and praying in those character traits of God we see when we read our Bibles.

42:56 When we are reading and we see the Psalmist celebrating God is just and righteous in all his ways we pause and say Oh God make me like your son. Make me just and righteous in all my ways. And when we see attributes of God revealed in other portions of the word of God then we pause and focus upon them and say Oh God make those things true of me. I give you those three very simple suggestions in answer to the question how can I actually work at being an imitator of God?

43:37 Imitate the Father by beholding his works in providence. Reproduce them in your sphere of assigned place. Imitate the Father by considering his works of grace. And imitate the Father by meditating upon and praying in his character traits as revealed in the scripture.

The Ultimate Avenue of Imitation: Our Lord Jesus Christ

43:57 But now above all and beyond these three things important as helpful as I trust they will be to you if you are still if you are seriously seeking to imitate our Father there is another avenue of that imitation and what is it? Some of you have already anticipated it. It is the imitation of our Lord Jesus Christ the perfect representation of the Father. Consider these texts John 1.18 No man has seen God at any time the only begotten God that's the best textual variant the only begotten God who is in the bosom of the Father he has exegeted him. Professor Donald Carson writes on that verse from this Greek term he has exegeted him he has revealed him. We derive our English word exegesis. We might almost say Jesus is the exegesis of God.

45:07 Other scholars say that the verb means to tell a narrative or to narrate Luke 24.35 Acts 10.15 and Acts 21 in that sense we may say Jesus is the narration of God. Jesus is the exegesis of God.

45:28 No man has seen God at any time the only begotten God in the bosom of the Father he has exegeted him he has revealed him. Now we are under an obligation to imitate the Father. I say we imitate the Father by focusing our attention upon him who perfectly exegetes the Father who narrates the Father. John 14.8 and 9 remember Philip said Lord show us the Father and we will be satisfied. And what did Jesus say? He that hath seen me hath seen the Father. He that hath seen me in my enfleshed person as the theanthropic person the God-man in one person he that hath seen me hath seen the Father.

46:22 And then in Hebrews 1.3 he is called the radiance of his glory and the exact representation of his being. That's who our Lord Jesus is the radiance of the glory of God. If God is the burning sun upon which we cannot look without being consumed Jesus is the rays of the sun coming out and down upon our minds and our hearts.

46:50 He is the radiance of the glory of God the exact representation of his being. And just as surely as the command you shall be holy for God is holy you shall be perfect as your Father is perfect. When we read we should be imitators of God it's a call to be imitators of our Lord Jesus Christ. Imitators of God is walking as Christ walked as the perfect representation of God.

47:31 So without in any way weakening and certainly not cancelling the other three spiritual disciplines which fulfill our duty to imitate the Father imitating his works in providence considering his works in grace meditating upon his character traits revealed throughout the scriptures. We have a text like this 1 John 2.6 He that says he abides in him ought himself so to walk even as he walked. 1 John 3 Every man that hath this hope in him purifies himself even as he is pure. 1 Peter 2.22 Christ suffered for us leaving us an example to follow his steps. Or in Romans 15.2 and 3

48:29 where Paul is concluding his treatment of the subject of Christian liberty. He says we that are strong ought to bear with the infirmities of the weak and not to please ourselves. Let each one of us please his neighbor for that which is good for Christ also please not himself. There's the call to be like God as he is revealed in the person and life of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Conclusion and Application: A Solemn Duty for God's Children

49:02 That's what we're called to. That's our calling as the sons of the living God. So let me say then in bringing all of this to a conclusion and final application are you a child of God? Sitting here this morning do you say yes I have embraced Jesus Christ as offered in the gospel and my Bible says as many as received him to them gave he the right to become children of God even to them that believe on his name.

49:35 I have received the spirit of adoption enabling me to draw near to God with the filial affection and the sense of the barrier of his judgment and his wrath removed the Holy Spirit as the spirit of adoption enables me to cry Abba Father. If you're saying that then this duty this responsibility is laid upon you by that gracious God the responsibility of imitating your heavenly Father in every way that is appropriate to you as a dependent creature made in the image of God originally recreated after that image in grace. Yes you're to do it in the consciousness of your privileges as a child of God those seven privileges that I sought to expound over a period of weeks remembering them rehearsing them all that I have and all that I shall be as a child of God my heart percolating with the indicatives of grace it's my duty still to imitate him. Yes with a heart percolating with the privileges of being an adopted child of God yes but it's my duty

51:02 and God help us when we get to the place where we have a knee jerk reaction to the word duty. There's something sick with a Christianity that looks upon the word duty as dirty. It is our duty our responsibility laid upon us in these imperatives of our Lord. Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.

Warning to Unbelievers and Final Prayer

51:29 Be imitators of God as beloved children. Those are divine imperatives with a heart percolating with the privileges of grace independence upon Christ and the virtue of our union with Christ. Yes but seriously to set myself to be an imitator of God to do it along the lines that I've tried to open up from the scriptures and to apply myself to growing more and more into His likeness. There's some of you sit here this morning and you say I am no more interested in being like God than flying to the moon under my own power. Well if you're an unbeliever that doesn't surprise me. These things don't touch you because of where you are out there in the wasteland of your unconverted state with the wrath of Almighty God hanging over you and yet you're living proof that God is merciful. You haven't dropped into hell yet.

52:50 That God is kind to the evil. He hasn't brought His wrath down upon you yet. But how long? How long?

53:05 How long? How long? What proof do you have? That your day of mercy will not end today, tomorrow, a week from now?

53:16 No proof whatsoever. Because this God who is merciful is also a God of perfect justice and in His own time and in His own way He deals with everyone that rebels against His law and treats His gospel with indifference. I plead with you this morning come into the clear refreshing air of being reconciled to God. What a wonderful thing to know that the God of heaven is no longer my enemy but more than my friend He's my Father.

53:54 He's my Father committed in His fatherly love to care for me provide for me to care in all of the circumstances of life for His beloved children. Yes, He's going to whoop me when I need it. Whom the Father loves He chastises every son whom He receives. He's going to whoop me when I need it.

54:19 But all to the end that I might be partaker of what? His holiness. You see, we're back to becoming like God. And while from the heart we turn away from everything that is devilish and demonic about wanting to be like God in illicit ways for the holy passion we pray that God will make us like Him as He is revealed in His beloved Son and that we may grow ever increasingly like our Lord Jesus Christ.

54:54 Let's pray together. Holy Father we thank You for all that You are in Yourself and we pray that You would take Your word and make it effectual in all of our hearts that we who know You as our Father would have by Your grace this commitment seriously to pursue becoming more and more like You. Forgive us where we are so unlike You our impatience our lack of kindness one to another our lack of active benevolence to those who are outside the sphere of Your mercy. Lord forgive us cleanse us empower us by the Holy Spirit that we may pursue being perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect. Seal then Your word we pray in Jesus name Amen.