Father Revealed in Jesus

The Character and Personality of the Father Revealed in Jesus

Jesus said when you have seen me you have seen the father.

So Christ is the Revelation of the Who, the Why, the When, the What, the Where, of the heavenly father. What do I mean by this? Well, first we look at the quiet years of Christ. Here he is the Messiah, the King of Israel, Emmanuelle which is God in the flesh upon the earth for 30 years. During those 30 years, just a small handful of people knew that he was on the earth.

Is not this just like God the father? God is OMNIPRESENT, and yet just a very small portion of the population of the earth knows he is here. Jesus did not display in any radical way who he was until the proper time. Do not get me wrong, I'm absolutely convinced he was watching and praying.

When Jesus finally was manifested, it is revealed to us in the four Gospels his deep and personal prayer life. Many times he went into the mountain at night to pray all night alone.

Matthew 14:23And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

Mark 6:46And when he had sent them away, he departed into a mountain to pray.

Luke 6:12And it came to pass in those days, that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

Luke 9:28And it came to pass about an eight days after these sayings, he took Peter and John and James, and went up into a mountain to pray.

During those years where Jesus was not taking the center stage, he was in deep intimate prayer to the father. We will not know all of the results of his prayers until we get to heaven. We know in heaven he still praying for us.

What was he praying? That's a whole another book. Suffice it to say that even though Jesus was not taking center stage, yet his prayers were powerfully effective until his 30th birthday when he was manifested. So God himself is operating in the same way.

There is what the Jewish theologians call the 400 hundred years of silence. The 400 years of silence refers to the time between the Old Testament and the New Testament, during which God did not speak to the Jewish people in a dramatic or self-evident way.

We can see this in the parable of the father and the prodigal son. The father gave the son what he wanted, without saying a word. He let the son choose his own destiny even to his own detriment. Let us not think for a moment that the father was not praying for his son. What do you think he was doing every day as he looked in the direction that his son had left him.

He was crying out to God every day for his son. Yet he did not chase him down. I believe the prayers of the father was the gentle knocking upon the door of his son's heart, to repent, to get up, to come back home in order to acknowledge and receive his father's abundant mercy and goodness. Many times it may look like God is not working, but he is working behind the scenes. Even all of nature declares God's goodness, long-suffering, and kindness towards men.

Finally, at 12 years old Jesus reveals himself to some extent as the father wills. For three days he spoke with the religious leaders. What do you think he was saying? He was trying to reveal the will, plan, and purposes of his father. When Joseph and Mary showed up, asking him why he had done to them what he had done he responds with: Know Ye Not That I Must Be About My Father's Business!

This was not just for the benefit of Mary and Joseph, but for the benefit of those who had been listening to him for the last three days. Then he stepped back into a time of silence once again for the next 18 years. To me, this is simply amazing.