Our Father :: The Protecting Father God

From the prayer that Jesus taught His disciples we can learn of many characteristics of the kind of God, Our Father, is. In this prayer, Jesus teaches us to request God to keep us from being tested/tempted and to deliver us from the evil one (the devil). This establishes the fact that God our Father is a Protecting Father. In the prayer of Jabez, one of the requests that Jabez made of God was that He be kept from evil and the Lord granted him his request (1 Chronicles 4:10). In other words, Jabez recognized that he needed God’s protection, because the evil one is like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8). Just as David fought the lion and the bear that tried to snatch a single sheep away from his fold (1 Samuel 17:34-35), God the chief and Good Shepherd (1 Peter 5:4, John 10:11) would not allow any of us, not even one, who have believed in His Son, and put ourselves into the safety of his protecting hands, from being snatched away by the evil one. Jesus assured us of this when he said, no one can pluck those who are in Christ from the Father’s hand (John 10:29). To pray for God’s protection so that we do not succumb to temptation and to be delivered from the evil one is in a sense, uttering the same prayer of Jesus from the Cross, “Father, into your hands, I commend my spirit.” (Luke 23:46)

Point(s) to ponder:

Have you/I surrendered our lives to God and placed our trust in Jesus to save us?
Have you/I asked God to keep us from being tempted and t0 rescue us from the evil one?
Have you/I committed our lives/spirit into the safety of God’s hand; for Our Father is a Protecting Father God.

Matthew 6:13 (NLT)
¹³ And don’t let us yield to temptation, but rescue us from the evil one: …

The sheep’s cry

When a sheep is lost, you would hear it bleat (cry) as it seeks to be found by the shepherd. The Psalmist expresses that this should be the cry of all who have gotten lost as stated in Psalm 119:176 which reads “I have  gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.”

Though we are like sheep gone astray and lost, the good news is that when we cry, Jesus Christ is not only a shepherd who seeks those who are lost (Luke 15) but that He is the good shepherd, one who is willing to give it all for us (His sheep), who will listen and respond. What should be the cry? Answer: Seek thy servant.

Is that your cry today? Is that my cry today?

Psalm 119:176 (KJV)
¹⁷⁶ I have gone astray like a lost sheep; seek thy servant; for I do not forget thy commandments.

John 10:11 (KJV)
¹¹ I am the good shepherd: the good shepherd giveth his life for the sheep.

Jesus in the OT :: 1st Samuel

The book of 1st and 2nd Samuel (originally written as one book) gives us a glimpse of who Jesus is in the Old Testament (O.T).

1 Samuel is mostly about the life of David, who was a shepherd boy that God took and made Him ruler of His people. This is what God has to tell of David. Now therefore so shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus saith the LORD of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel: (2 Samuel 7:8)

1 Peter 2:25 says that we are like Sheep that have gone astray, but the good news is that Jesus said in John 10:11 and John 10:14, I AM the good shepherd that will

1. Give my life for my sheep
2. Care for my sheep
3. Knows my sheep
4. Lay down my life for my sheep and
5. Bring other sheeps into my sheepfold

And 1 Corinthians 15:24 says that God made Him (Jesus Christ) to be, ruler over ALL men

David, was a king who was elected, established and enlarged
In 1st Samuel, Jesus, The king is God’s elect, who was established by man (in birth, he was sought as the King of the Jews and even in His death He lived up to his name, INRI – The Rex Iudaeorum – king of the Jews) and God (as King of kings) and His kingdom is being enlarged today by the sheep that returns to his fold and is a kingdom forever indestructible and forever established.