"Dadly" Stewardship Series

Sermon Brief

Date Written: June 13, 2013

Date Preached: June16, 2013

Where Preached: OPBC (AM)

Sermon Details:

Series Title: Giving Our All

Sermon Title: "Dadly" Stewardship

Sermon Text: Eph 5:1 [NLT]

Introduction:

1Imitate God, therefore in everything you do, because you are His dear children!

Over the past two weeks we have looked at stewardship and learned that true biblical stewardship revolves around a very basic foundational truth of -- God Owns it All!

ALSO we have learned that we are ALL stewards… and caretakers of all the resources God provides for His glory and for His kingdom... they are NOT for our own personal gain/pleasure, but for svc to Him...

Today we are also celebrating our Fathers! Today we celebrate who our Dads are & what our Dads mean to us…

But this morning I also want to CHALLENGE to each and EVERY dad sitting in this room… so if you are a dad/granddad sitting here & you have a son who is a dad… I challenge you to pass on this challenge to them as well!

Our passage this morning is Eph 5 with a slight peak into Eph 6 and when we look at this passage today we find Paul laying out an overall template for living the Christian life! He tells us to be imitators of God which is a very general and vague command!

Let me explain what I mean by that… Think about the phrase ‘imitators of God’ and how impossible that really is… After all, we cannot speak ANYTHING into existence! ALSO, we do NOT have power over life and death! We cannot do ANYTHING God has done from His divine and holy throne…yet we are to imitate Him?

Let me share what Paul was speaking about here in this passage… It is that we must imitate God in His holiness…

God has called us ALL to be holy witnesses for Him! We must remember that the word ‘holy’ means to be set apart for God’s purposes!

So in ch5 we find that Paul lays out the most general guidelines for serving God and only THEN does he begin to narrow down that template and see it through the lens of Christ… Paul begins to describe some very specific roles within the Christian family...

So with that in mind, what we can basically learn from what Paul says here is that there is a definite order of things in how we live our lives as believers.

Basically what we can see here is Paul saying that being a good Christian will always point a man to becoming a good husband, but it doesn’t guarantee you will become a good husband!

Also that being a good Christian & husband will always point a man toward good and godly fatherhood… being the dad God desires you to be, but once again, that in and of itself cannot ever guarantee you will become a good husband!

We also cannot overlook the contextual approach Paul uses here in that he is pointing out very a specific order on what God expects and how these things play out in the lives of believing fathers!

In reading these verses from Paul the conclusion is that to be a good Christian father, a man must be a good Christian husband and for a man to be a good Christian husband... that man has to be a good & faithful Christian!

When it comes to the word ‘good’ the world sees things quite different than God does! With the world, ‘good’ is doing what looks good in the eyes of humanity and what is relative to each situation…

In other words, my good may not be your good… or your good may not be MY good! Many in the world believe that a man can be a good dad & husband & a good person without God!

But for those of us who know God's Word, we know that you don't 'clean up' and come to God... we are TOTALLY unable to clean up enough to come to God pure...

For God to clean us and wash us clean, we must FIRST surrender our sinful hearts thru confession and repentance! It is THEN that God will begin the process of 'cleaning' our hearts and using us for His kingdom!

As Dads we are called by God as stewards of some of the most precious resources that God provides… our wives and our children! So what do I mean when I say "Dadly" Stewardship?

Stand Sure – v2-20:

Dad you must be consistent in who you are in Christ!

Have you ever come across into someone who was NOT consistent in their actions!

Not long ago a poll was taken and it revealed that MANY Americans held beliefs that were very inconsistent!