God The Liberator

God, The Liberator

Mother’s Day 5/11/2014 Genesis 3:1-15 and John 14:1-10

Today is a day of celebration for the women that God has placed upon this earth. We call them friends, teachers, mentors, cousins, nieces, aunts, mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers, great-great grandmothers and on that rare occasion even, great-great-great grandmothers. God’s final act in creation at the end of the creation in Genesis was the creation of the woman. Ladies you have been placed on this earth to help right what has gone wrong in this world today.

As we celebrate today, let us all take a moment to remember that not only are the girls and women who are precious to our lives are gifts from God, but girls and women everywhere on this planet are created in the image of God and deserve to be so treated as such.

Each month we support an orphanage in Nigeria called the Rotolu home under Rev. Julius and Mary Lawal in Nigeria. Most of the children educated in the home are young girls who are given an education and a family they would not have had, because Julius and Mary believe in making sacrifices for the silent voices of young African girls.

No doubt Rev. Julius and Mary are in deep sorrow with their brothers and sisters in Nigeria over the abduction of 276 teenage girls by the group Boko Haran. Less than a week later 11 more girls ages 12 to 15 were kidnapped and dragged into the forest by men carrying AK-47 weapons. I can’t be imagine the fear and the horror they must all be experiencing.

As believers in Christ, we are called to demand action for these young girls, and for women throughout this world who are being treated as objects, as toys, as slaves and as punching bags. We are called to do this because the God we serve is a liberating God.

Jesus himself said in Luke 4:18-19 (NIV) 18 "The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to release the oppressed, 19 to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor."

In this passage, Jesus is not only a spiritual liberator he is a physical and psychological liberator as well. In our New Testament Scripture, the passage was familiar because it is often read at funerals. Jesus speaks of going away to prepare a place for us in one of the many rooms in his Father’s house.

He tells the disciples that they know the way, to the place where he is going. Thomas said to him, we do not know the way to where you are going. Jesus says that I am the way the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.

Jesus goes on to say, if you really know me, you would know my Father as well. From now on you do him and have seen Him. Phillip joins the conversation, and says “show us the Father and that will be enough.” Jesus counters with, “Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father. Don’t you believe that I am in the Father and that the Father is in me.”

We all know that Jesus came to save us from our sin. But we should recognize also that Jesus came to show us what God the Father is like. Most of us have a bad image of God the Father because of our own fathers or because of the men that have been in our lives. We project back to God the Father, the frailties, the abuse, and the failings of our earthly fathers and men, and think God is just a slightly better view of our fathers on earth or of men.

Some women have no problem with Jesus, but do have problems with God the Father. Yet Jesus says, if you want to know the Father, you have got to know me, because I am showing you what the Father is really like. You don’t get an understanding of who God is, by looking at your father. You get an understanding of who the Father is by looking at Jesus.

Jesus is a great liberator of women, only because the Father is a great liberator of women. Jesus says, I don’t do anything that the Father is not already doing. Ladies, Jesus came into this world to show you, your true value to God The Father.

God’s liberation movement began the moment that we as human beings fell into sin. Adam and Eve had a choice to obey God or not. God gave them the freedom and the liberality to enjoy the fruit of every tree in the garden except for one. They were warned in advance that to eat from the tree would lead to death.