God the Father and Israel His Son

As we continue our story through Exodus 4:18-7:7, while Moses is about to leave Midian toward Egypt, God says to Moses:

"'When you go back to Egypt, see that you perform before Pharaoh all the wonders that I have put in your power; but I will harden his heart, so that he will not let the people go. Then you shall say to Pharaoh, 'Thus says the Lord: ISRAEL IS MY FIRSTBORN SON. I said to you, 'Let MY SON go that he may worship me.' But you refused to let him go; now I will kill your firstborn son.'" (Exodus 4:21-23).

This little paragraph communicates a VERY IMPORTANT truth about God and Israel using the form of a METAPHOR. Yahweh declares: Israel is my SON; and thus, naturally, Yahweh is Israel's FATHER.

The Bible repeatedly and consistently portrays Yahweh [God] as FATHER and his people Israel as God's SON. Sometimes, this is "collective"--"son" singular for the whole people [as in Deuteronomy 1:31; 32:6; Hosea 11:1; etc.]; sometimes, this is "distributive"--"sons" and "daughters" for individual Israelites [as in Isaiah 1:2-4; Jeremiah 3:14, 22; etc.].

We will return to this theme, because it keeps coming up throughout the Bible. Here, I think of a few important observations.

1. Jesus capitalized and focused on the metaphor of God as Father, but Jesus did not originate this idea. Jesus promotes and enhances this idea. The "Model Prayer" is one good example of this--Matthew 6:9-13.

2. "Father" is a METAPHOR. It is a major mistake to think of God as a sexual being--God is not sexual. God is NOT MALE. The Bible also presents God using the METAPHOR of MOTHER--see Exodus 19:4 [a mother eagle]; Numbers 11:12; Isaiah 49:14-15; 66:13; Luke 13:34 [God through Jesus is LIKE a "hen," NOT a "rooster"]; etc. But God is NOT FEMALE. These are METAPHORS!!!

3. Like Israel [the Israelites], the New Testament church [Christians] is like God's "son" or [plural] God's "sons and daughters"--see Romans 8:15-17; 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1; 1 John 5:1-2; and often.

4. The Bible also uses this same METAPHOR to communicate other ideas. For example, in 2 Samuel 7:14; 1 Chronicles 17:13; 22:10; 28:6; Psalms 2:6-9; 89:25-27, God is like a FATHER and the earthly king [David, Solomon, or some other king of Israel] is God's SON.

In teaching in my classes, I enjoy emphasizing the figure of God as FATHER. But I have learned that this metaphor offends some students--because some human fathers are abusive, corrupt, domineering, rude, and overbearing. BUT the Bible does not describe God as abusive. Rather, our God is gentle, caring, patient, loving, and faithful.

How does this metaphor strike you? Give me some thoughts.

John Willis