We Magnify Our Father God by David George Ball

Gregory: 00:00




Gregory: 00:07

Oddly enough today, the hymn that we are covering is one that I could not find any biographical information about the author of it. We're talking about We Magnify Our Father God by David George Ball. I'll have to do some more research later for you, but I'm opting out of relying on Wikipedia so we're just going to cover the song itself because all I know about the author from the hymn book that I'm pulling this from is that he was born in 1936. 


Gregory: 00:35

It's a beautiful song though, that highlights some very important things about the very nature of God. And so we're just going to dig right into that. 


Gregory: 00:43

The song says "we magnify our Father God with songs of thoughtful praise. As grateful children, we confess how perfect are his ways. We worship Jesus Christ, our Lord, who saw our sin and pain, and with the great physician's skill, restored our health again. We glorify the Holy Ghost for fellowship and aid. In changing Times, we find ourselves secure and unafraid. The love of God will never change throughout eternity in reverence and thankfulness. We bless the Trinity." 


Gregory: 01:18

At the end of the song, there's this emphasis on the love of God. "The love of God will never change throughout eternity." I will have all of the Bible references in the show notes for you with some extra verses as well for your own personal study. But God says, "I am the Lord, I change not." "every good and every perfect gift is from above and cometh down from the Father of lights with whom is no variableness." Speaking of Jesus, it says He's "the same yesterday, and today, and forever." God does not change. Who He is does not change. 


Gregory: 01:59

The Bible says, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Nay, in all these things, we are more than conquerors through Him that loved us. For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers Nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord." 


Gregory: 02:35

The Bible tells us "love is of God, and everyone that loveth is born of God and knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God, for God is love. In this was manifested the love of God toward us because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world that we might live through him. And we have seen and do testify that the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God dwelleth in him, and he in God. God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God. And God in him." 


Gregory: 03:18

Well, if God is love and God cannot change, then it stands to reason that God's love will last throughout eternity. 


Gregory: 03:26

The very end of the song says, "in reverence and thankfulness, we bless the Trinity." So let's break down: what is the Trinity? The word trinity is one that we have made up to describe this nature about God, but the truth supporting the Trinity is found all throughout the Bible. 


Gregory: 03:46

The concept is this, there is only one God. Philosophically and logically there can only be one truly almighty being, and that is the creator God. But as that one being, God exists eternally as three persons. There's the Father, who is equally God as the Son, Jesus, who is equally God as the Holy Spirit. Each of them have several different names that are ascribed to them and they have different roles, but they are all equally God, and they are all equally important. They just have a difference of role and authoritative hierarchy. 


Gregory: 04:28

From the very beginning as God is creating our universe, He says, "let us make man in our image after our likeness." Well, there's plurality there. He's talking to himself, but he says, us. " So God created man in his own image." He's not talking to the angels: God is speaking to himself within the Trinity. 


Gregory: 04:53

1 John 5:7 says "there are three that bear record in heaven. The Father, The Word," " and the Holy Ghost, and these three are one." There is only one God, but he is three persons. "Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." You see all three, but they can only be one. God will not give his glory to another. So there is no reason for Jesus to teach people to go and baptize, not just in the name of the Father God, but in the name of the Son and the Holy Ghost, unless they were all equal in importance and divinity. The Bible says, "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." There is only one God. 


Gregory: 05:47

That's difficult for us to wrap our brains around to a certain degree, but let me do my best to explain it to you. God is one being. The being is what you are. So we are human beings. God is a spirit. He's the almighty being. The person is who you are. So you are one person living as one being, a human. God is three persons living in one being. 


Gregory: 06:17

Some people get confused because Jesus said "my father is greater than I." but they're not separate levels of how much they are God. There's an authoritative structure. Just like a king is greater than the common person, so, the Father is greater than the Son. However, just as a king is no more human than his subjects, so the Father is not more God than Jesus Christ the Son. They're not different levels of divinity, but they choose to operate with this different level of authority. The Father directs the Son who directs the Spirit. 


Gregory: 06:59

Let's break these three down even further. Going back to the song, the first line is "we magnify our Father God." Bible says, "Oh Lord, thou art our Father. We are the clay and thou our potter, and we are all the work of thy hand." I don't know that any that believe in God would dispute the existence of the Father God, so I won't dwell there. 


Gregory: 07:23

The song goes on to say, "With songs of thoughtful praise, As grateful children we confess, How perfect are his ways." The Bible says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, In all wisdom, Teaching and admonishing one another, In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, Singing with grace in your hearts to the Lord, And whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him." 


Gregory: 07:55

We're to sing with grace in our hearts to God. And the Bible tells us, "as many as received him," that's Jesus, "to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name, which were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God." So after receiving Jesus and trusting him for eternal life, we become God's children. 


Gregory: 08:24

Oh, how perfect are God's ways. Deuteronomy says, "Because I will publish the name of the Lord, ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the rock. His work is perfect. For all his ways are judgment, a God of truth, and without iniquity, just and right is he." 


Gregory: 08:45

The next portion of the song says, "We worship Jesus Christ our Lord." We've covered this many different times already, but Jesus is God. During his time on the earth, the high priest asked him and "said unto him, Art thou the Christ, the son of the Blessed? And Jesus said, I am. And ye shall see the son of man sitting on the right hand of power and coming in the clouds of heaven." And notice the reaction here. "Then the high priest rent his clothes and saith, What need we any further witnesses? Ye have heard the blasphemy, what think ye? And they all condemned him to be guilty of death." Well, blasphemy is the sin of claiming divine rights for yourself that do not belong to you. Jesus was not guilty of this sin but notice they clearly understood that he was claiming to be God. Jesus is making a reference to Daniel chapter 7, in which the Son of Man comes in the clouds of heaven to God the Father, the Ancient of Days, and the Son of Man is given an everlasting dominion. He's receiving glory that only God is worthy of. And Jesus is claiming to be that Son of Man. He is clearly claiming to be God. 


Gregory: 10:08

The next part of the song says, "Who saw our sin and pain." Well when was that? It's not that God has to be updated in real time about our suffering and the things that we go through and our sin that we put ourselves through. No, he was slain from the foundation of the world. Scripture says, "For as much as ye know that you were not redeemed with corruptible things as silver and gold, but with the precious blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world but was manifest in these last times for you who by him do believe in God that raised him up from the dead and gave him glory that your faith and hope might be in God." 


Gregory: 10:59

I love Jesus's description of being the great physician: with the skill that only he has, he has restored our health. This is not physical health and sickness, though God does heal us physically at different times, but Jesus said "for judgment I am come into this world that they which see not might see and that they which see might be made blind" And the point that he's making there is that for those who think they already have everything figured out and they believe they're self sufficient or they've made their own way to God, God allows them to be blind, but for those who don't see who recognize that Notice, we don't have to pay a fee and sit through a waiting room. We just have to see our need and come to Jesus, the healer, in faith. 


Gregory: 11:57

The second verse of the song says we glorify the Holy Ghost. During an interaction with the early church, Peter is speaking to this man, Ananias, and he says, "Why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost?" And then he goes on to say, "Thou hast not lied unto men, But unto God." He equivocates the two. As Paul writes to the church at Corinth, he says, "the Lord is that Spirit. And where the spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." 


Gregory: 12:29

The Holy Spirit provides us "fellowship and aid," as the song says. "Likewise, the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities. For we know not what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered." Picture this because this is truth. If you are a saved child of God, then the Holy Spirit is going to God the Father on your behalf. That is unfathomable . 


Gregory: 13:04

Jesus taught the disciples, "ye shall receive power after that the Holy Ghost has come upon you and you shall be witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem and in all Judea and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the earth." 


Gregory: 13:20

The next line of the song says "in changing times we find ourselves secure and unafraid." Could I tell you this? In changing times you are secure by trusting the unchanging God. 


Gregory: 13:34

The Bible tells us "we have not received the spirit of bondage again to fear, but ye have received the spirit of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, Father." We have a Father- son or Father-daughter relationship with God when we receive the Holy Spirit by trusting Jesus. 


Gregory: 13:54

Scripture says, "What time I am afraid, I will trust in thee. In God I will praise his word, in God I have put my trust, I will not fear what flesh can do unto me." " In changing times we find ourselves secure and unafraid." Amen. 


Gregory: 14:14

Your right relationship with God begins with recognizing who he is, the almighty creator: one almighty God existing as three persons. 


Gregory: 14:28

More specifically, you need to see that Jesus is God and that He entered this world as a physical man to die, be buried, and rise again for the sake of offering you eternal life as a gift. If you do, Then the Holy Spirit comes to live inside you, to teach you and guide you through the rest of your time on this earth, and to help you gain closeness in your relationship to God. 


Gregory: 14:58

Do not forget that our God is three in one. If he were only a single person, Then before creation, he could not exist as love. After all, he was all that existed before he made the universe, so there would have been no one to love if he is but one person . But if he is multiple persons, then he can exist as eternal love because within the Trinity, the Father loves the Son and the Spirit. And the Son loves the Father and the Spirit. And the Spirit loves the Father and the Son. All equal in love and power in eternity past. 


Gregory: 15:39

God is love, and He wants you to feel His love. Would you open your heart to Him? 


Gregory: 15:47

On a different note, let me say a quick word about the Holy Spirit. Many Christians think that he is some kind of power source that needs to be tapped into. He does provide power in the Christian's life, but he's not an inanimate spiritual outlet. He's a person. He is God! 


Gregory: 16:06

Imagine if you had a friend that was always trying to be nice to you in strange artificial ways, So one day you finally ask him: "why are you acting so odd? What are you doing all these random things for?" And he responds, "look man I'm, just trying to figure out how to tap into your wallet." what kind of a friend is that? 


Gregory: 16:27

So why do we do the same thing to God? We ignore his personhood while trying to tap into his power. What a mistake! It is through a right relationship with him, through his personhood, that we get to fully understand and appreciate his power. 


Gregory: 16:49

Stop treating God like a cosmic vending machine and start drawing close to him as the wonderful, personal creator that he is. You cannot but be blessed for seeking this kind of relationship with him. 


Gregory: 17:06

Christ is the foundation of the church, and we must learn to lovingly respond to him as Lord if we're to enjoy the relationship potential that he has provided for us. I hope you will not only know him as Savior, but that you will truly come to fully obey him as your master. 


Gregory: 17:28

See you next week.