Fatherhood of God: Knowing Who He Is, Not Only What He Does

The fatherhood of God, this message teaches, is the most important subject in the whole Bible. Jesus spoke about the Father 167 times, and the religious leaders hated Him for it, because they related to God by function and law rather than as sons. The pastor shows that the purpose of Jesus’ death was to bring us back into a right relationship with God, even better than what Adam had, and that knowing who God is, not only what He does, changes us from the inside out.

The message follows a series on becoming worshipers. Below you will find the full video, a structured summary of the sermon, the Scripture behind each point (linked to the New King James Version on Bible Gateway), a timestamped outline, and practical steps for living as a son or daughter of the Father this week.

Sermon at a Glance

This message from NTC Ministries was posted on March 1, 2023. The pastor had just finished teaching on becoming worshipers and moved into the fatherhood of God, opening with a review of the previous week before going further. He prays that everyone would be open to the Father’s kindness and goodness.

The teaching moves from Ephesians and Job, through Genesis and the Gospel of John, to Paul’s teaching on resurrection and sonship. It ends with communion, which he frames as relationship rather than ritual: Jesus is Lord and also our brother, the Holy Spirit lives in us, and God is our Father.

The Fatherhood of God: Every Fatherhood Named After Him

The review begins with Paul’s prayer in Ephesians 3:13–15: “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” The pastor explains that the word for family is the Greek patria, derived from the word for father, and he reads the Phillips rendering: every fatherhood in heaven and earth is named after Him.

The fatherhood of God, he says, is what every father needs to be showing and displaying in his family.

Last week’s message had looked at Job, in whom the pastor sees the functions of a prophet, a priest and a king. As a prophet he declares the word of God, as a priest he makes sacrifice, and as a king he gives an inheritance. After Job’s terrible losses, the Lord restored everything and gave him double. At the end, Job gave an inheritance to his daughters (Job 42:10–15), which was unheard of, because only sons inherited.

For the pastor, Job’s choice displays the relationship God has with all people, whoever they are. God says He will pour out His Spirit on all flesh, and sons and daughters will prophesy (Joel 2:28–29). He teaches that even in the Old Testament, Psalm 68:11 shows the Lord using women to proclaim the good news. He also points to Anna in the temple (Luke 2:36–38), whom he calls the first herald of Jesus other than the angels.

The fatherhood of God is now open to us so that we can experience everything God has. If God did not spare His own Son, how will He not with Him also freely give us all things (Romans 8:32)? Without a revelation of the Father, the pastor warns, we limit ourselves. “There’s a liberating power that comes to our life when we embrace God as our father,” he says.

From Elohim to Yahweh: Knowing Who He Is

In Genesis 1, the pastor notes, the word for God is Elohim: Elohim said, Elohim saw, Elohim made. The name points to the triune God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, unified as one. But in Genesis 2, when God forms man, the name changes to Yahweh, from which we get Jehovah. He teaches that it means covenant keeper, grace giver, the one who dwells with His people.

The Old Testament reveals many names, including seven redemptive names, and each describes what God does: the Lord of hosts, the Lord our righteousness, the Lord is there, the Lord our peace, the Lord who provides and heals. We praise Him for all of that. But there is something beyond what He does, and that is who He is. Moses kept seeking God’s presence, while the people only wanted what He did.

The pastor sums it up with Psalm 103:7: God made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel. Abram simply followed when God told him to leave his country (Genesis 12:1). Worship, he says, is wanting to obey and listen to God because of who He is.

Worship also happens at work. If you agreed to give your employer a certain number of hours for a certain wage, keeping your part without bickering is worship. If you believe you deserve more, do not complain; go and respectfully ask for an increase, because complaining about what you agreed to amounts to saying you lied. Worship means being in accord, like a heartbeat that sets one rhythm through the whole body.

Without God’s presence, our rhythm is set by our own whims, and we become rebels who know better than everyone. The table below follows the pastor’s contrast between praise and worship.

Function, Law and the Father Jesus Revealed

In the New Testament, the pastor says, the fatherhood of God comes into full view. We meet the greatest name we know, because it does not describe a function. It is Father, Daddy. Many people call him pastor, but his children call him Dad. They relate to him according to who he is, not according to what he does.

This is what Jesus came to tell people, and the more He spoke about the Father, the more the religious leaders hated Him. They were all about function. The law was holy and given by God, but it was about justice, not mercy. The pastor recalls the man who gathered sticks on the Sabbath to warm himself on a cold desert night and was put to death (Numbers 15:32–36).

The law came through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ (John 1:17). Jesus showed what God does, but He wanted people to know who God is so they could enter a relationship. God can heal, deliver and provide, yet something is greater: worship that comes from knowing Him.

Many people get something from God and then disappear until their next need. “My kids just want to come and talk to me,” he says, while most people come to him only when they need something a pastor can give. God wants children who simply enjoy being with Him.

The sharpest example is John 8:37–47. The religious leaders claimed Abraham, and then God, as their father. Jesus answered that if God were their Father they would love Him, and then said, “You are of your father the devil.” He who is of God hears God’s words. They believed they knew best, so they refused to hear God.

Seeds, the Curse and Believing Who You Are

The pastor turns to Genesis 3:14–19, where God speaks to the serpent, the woman and Adam after the fall. It can feel like a constant battle with the devil, yet the devil, who walks about like a roaring lion (1 Peter 5:8), is to the pastor a lion with no claws and no teeth, all roar.

Even theologians say God cursed man, but the pastor sees it differently. God was showing Adam a packet of seed: this is what you sowed, and this is what will come up. Plant watermelon seeds and you get watermelons. “Whatever a man sows, that he will also reap” (Galatians 6:7). God did not do it to Adam; Adam’s choice produced its harvest.

From there he makes one of the central claims of the message. Most people believe they fail because of who they are, but that is not quite true. “You don’t succeed and you fail because of who you believe you’re not,” he says. If you do not believe you are His son or daughter, you will not achieve what He planned.

That is why Jesus kept saying, “Do not fear, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom” (Luke 12:32). If He feeds the birds and clothes the lilies, how much more will your Father take care of you? Satan’s lie to Adam was that God was withholding something. Adam then obeyed the voice of fear and hid. “Who told you that you were naked?” God asked (Genesis 3:10–11).

The disciples in the storm show the same thing (Mark 4:35–41). Jesus slept while they panicked, because they still held an image of what they were not, while He was trying to give them an image of what God made them to be. The pastor adds that the Hebrew name Adam comes from adamah, ground. Like a tilled field, whatever God sows in you will grow.

The Second Adam and the Incorruptible Seed

The pastor reads 1 Corinthians 15:35–49. When we are born again, our spirit is brand new. Our mind is renewed over time by the word of God (Romans 12:2), and our body will put on incorruption at the resurrection. What is sown in corruption is raised in incorruption, sown in weakness and raised in power. The first Adam became a living being; the last Adam became a life-giving spirit.

Notice too, he says, that after the Gospels the word disciple fades and the word son takes over, and all creation waits for the revealing of the sons of God (Romans 8:19). As was the man of dust, so are those made of dust; as is the heavenly Man, so are those who are heavenly. If you cannot believe you are a son of God, you live like Adam, condemned and unfulfilled.

He reads Psalm 116:15, “Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of His saints,” not as a funeral verse but as a picture of dying to self. God told Moses no one could see His face and live, yet later tells us to seek His face. You will die, he says, but only to the parts of you holding you back from His purpose, and the resurrected life will take their place.

The way into the fatherhood of God is new birth by the word. 1 Peter 1:22–25 says we have been “born again, not of corruptible seed but incorruptible, through the word of God which lives and abides forever.” Going to church or knowing Bible stories does not make anyone born again. John the Baptist said the axe is laid to the root of the trees (Matthew 3:10), calling for real change, not religious appearance.

He illustrates with herb seeds he planted under a grow light. A seed has to die to bring up life, and what he reaps is not the seed but its fruit. So he urges everyone to read the Bible daily, because the word is the seed that will spring to life. Someone still has to be sent to preach the word (Romans 10:14–15).

Sons, Not Slaves: The Spirit of Sonship

The heart of the fatherhood of God teaching is Romans 8:15–17: “You did not receive the spirit of bondage again to fear, but you received the Spirit of adoption by whom we cry out, ‘Abba, Father.'” The law was a bondage of fear: pick up sticks on the Sabbath and you die. The fear God wants is reverence, like a small child who trusts that whatever Dad says is true.

Many believers, the pastor says, act like teenagers who know everything, treating God like Santa Claus. But He says, “I want you to know me as your dad.” The word translated adoption, he teaches, comes from huios. Of the Greek words for children, teknon describes the newborn infant, while huios describes the mature son, armed and ready for battle, who listens to his father.

So, he says, it is really the Spirit of sonship. When you are born again you are not adopted from outside; you are birthed by His Spirit through an incorruptible seed. 1 John 3:1–2 agrees: “Beloved, now we are children of God,” and when He appears we shall be like Him. If we confess with our mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in our heart that God raised Him from the dead, we shall be saved (Romans 10:9).

The purpose of redemption, he stresses, is to open the fatherhood of God to us. It is not only to destroy the curse and give us a good life but to bring us to the Father. Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me” (John 14:6–7). Jesus saved him and the Holy Spirit empowers him, he says, but his destination is the Father. Through Him we have access by one Spirit to the Father and are members of the household of God (Ephesians 2:18–19).

That changes the direction of life. People who relate to God by performance live from the outside in, always asking Him to fix what is happening. Those who build a relationship with the Father live from the inside out, as Jesus did when He healed and fed the crowds. When correction comes, he adds, immature people hunt for a father’s flaws, as the Pharisees did with Jesus, instead of receiving the fatherhood of God through that word.

Living in the Fatherhood of God This Week

The pastor closes by saying that knowing who God is gives more strength than anything He does for us, even a healing. Here are practical steps drawn from this fatherhood of God message:

• Come to Him without a request. Spend time with the Father just to be with Him, the way his own children come to talk.
• Get quiet in worship. After praising Him for what He does, stop talking and let His presence change you.
• Keep your agreements. Give your work your full effort, and if you need a raise, ask respectfully rather than complain.
• Read the word daily. Plant the incorruptible seed even when you do not understand it all, and expect fruit.
• Reject the voice of fear. When you hear that you are not enough, answer with who God says you are: His son or daughter.
• Receive a father’s correction. When correction comes, resist the urge to find fault and ask what God is saying.

Timestamped Outline

• 0:00 The most important subject in the Bible
• 1:32 Opening prayer and Ephesians 3:13–15
• 2:44 Every fatherhood named after God; Job as prophet, priest and king
• 3:55 Job’s inheritance for his daughters
• 6:17 Elohim and Yahweh in Genesis 1 and 2
• 7:38 What He does versus who He is
• 9:54 Worship at work: keeping your agreement
• 11:58 Worship as rhythm with God
• 14:16 Pastor or Dad: function versus relationship
• 15:46 The law, justice and the man who gathered sticks
• 19:19 John 8: whose children are you?
• 23:02 Genesis 3: the serpent, the seed and the fall
• 26:49 You fail because of who you believe you’re not
• 29:19 Seeds don’t lie: whatever a man sows
• 30:55 1 Corinthians 15: the first and last Adam
• 35:53 Precious is the death of His saints
• 41:29 John 17:26 and the voice of fear
• 44:15 Adam and adamah: the potential of good ground
• 48:32 1 Peter 1: born of incorruptible seed
• 54:40 A seed must die to bear fruit
• 57:06 Romans 8:15–17: the Spirit of adoption
• 1:00:40 Teknon and huios: sonship, not adoption
• 1:06:04 The Father is our destination
• 1:09:58 Receiving the word of a father; communion

Fatherhood of God Series

This message opens a four-part teaching series at NTC Ministries. Continue with the next message:

• You are here: Fatherhood of God: Knowing Who He Is, Not Only What He Does
• Next: Fatherhood of God, Part 2: Born Again as Sons, Not Foster Children

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does the pastor say God did not curse Adam?

He reads Genesis 3 as God explaining a harvest rather than imposing a punishment. Using a packet of seed as his picture, he says God was showing Adam that what he had sown would now come up, just as planting watermelon seeds produces watermelons. Galatians 6:7 states the same principle: whatever a man sows, he will reap. The good news is that a new seed, the word of God, can be planted.

What does it mean that the Father is our destination?

The pastor loves Jesus, who saved him, and the Holy Spirit, who empowers him, but he teaches that the goal of redemption is to bring us to the Father. Jesus called Himself the way, and a way leads somewhere. Through Him we have access by one Spirit to the Father, so a believer’s life is meant to grow into a relationship with God as Father, not stop at forgiveness or blessing.

Why does this message end with communion?

Communion remembers the body and blood of Jesus, given on the night He was betrayed. The pastor uses it to draw the message together: Jesus is Lord and also our brother, the Holy Spirit lives in us, and God is our Father, and each wants us to live with Him in relationship rather than function. He invites everyone who wants to be changed by God’s presence to take part.

Scripture References

All passages open in the New King James Version on Bible Gateway:

• Ephesians 3:13–15 — every family named after the Father
• Psalm 103:7 — His ways and His acts
• John 8:37–47 — whose children are you?
• Genesis 3:14–19 — the fall and its harvest
• 1 Corinthians 15:35–49 — the first and last Adam
• 1 Peter 1:22–25 — born of incorruptible seed
• Romans 8:15–17 — the Spirit of adoption
• John 14:6–7 — the way to the Father

How this summary was made: written with AI assistance from the sermon’s own transcript and checked against the Scriptures listed above.

Watch More Messages

If this message opened your eyes to the Father’s heart, there are hundreds more teachings from NTC Ministries to help you know Him better. Browse the full sermon archive and keep growing as His son or daughter.