Heal My Home Series

Today, I want to speak to you on this subject “Heal My Home.” Find Malachi 4 with me if you will [page 955 in your pew Bibles]. I have been challenged by Malachi, the Minor Prophet and I hope you have been challenged as well. As close out the last book in the Bible, the prophet Malachi directs our attention to our homes.

Today’s Scripture

“Remember the law of my servant Moses, the statutes and rules that I commanded him at Horeb for all Israel.

5 “Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. 6 And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:4-6).

Isn’t it fascinating that the last thing the Hebrew Bible says is to turn the father’s heart to his children and vice versa? After Malachi, it will be 400 plus years before any prophet speaks again in Israel. God wants the last words to be devoted to the home.

This past week, we did a five-question survey about our church’s teenagers' relationship with their fathers. We asked our church’s middle school and high school students five questions and one bonus question about their relationship with their father this week. We asked fathers to answer the same five questions as well. While moms are super important, the text of Scripture mentions fathers specifically. Again, we simply asked the students and their parents involved in our church’s student ministry group to respond.

And here’s what we found: When we asked about a teenager’s relationship with their father, this is what we discovered. 83% said they were very close to each other. 13% said they were somewhat close to each other.

When we asked the father about his relationship with his teen, we discovered this. 66% of fathers said they were very close to each other. 31% of fathers said they were somewhat close to each other.

We also asked about the father’s faith, and we’ll share more about this in just a minute. We even asked teens how often their father hugged them, and here’s what we found: 63% of our church’s teens said their dad hugs them often, and around another ¼ of them said he occasionally does. I couldn’t remember the last time I hugged my kids, so I made sure I did so ahead of this message ?. Now, these survey numbers and percentages are excellent. So good that it made me wonder if only the people who have good relationships with their kids responded and those that did not did not respond.

The truth be told: Our nation is missing the adhesive to the family, our Heavenly Father, and our early fathers.

1. Turning Hearts Toward Home

“And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction” (Malachi 4:6).

The last verse in your Old Testament wants to bridge the generation gap. Families break down in many ways, but Malachi focuses his laser on the relationship between fathers and children. Literally, the Hebrew says, “I will bring back the hearts of parents on top of children.”

1.1 What This Isn’t

The Bible doesn’t just want families to be closely connected. The Bible wants the family to be closely tied together, obeying God. The close ties of the family are to be centered around the supremacy of God in everything the generations do. So this isn’t, “I like Johnny Cash and you like Luke Combs,” but let’s still be close no matter how much your music stinks ?. The Bible doesn’t want simply generational closeness around the dinner table. No, this is every generation united in obeying the will of the Lord in every matter of life. Again, God seeks to turn the hearts of fathers back to their children. And children’s hearts back to the fathers. Again, the missing adhesive to the family is our Heavenly Father and our earthly father.

1.2 Fathers

The Bible calls on you to hand the faith down from one generation to the next: “Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord” (Ephesians 6:4).

Dad, we need you. Unfortunately, we live in a day when our children are over-mothered or under-fathered. When you think of it, there are nine months in a woman's womb, and they spend most of their time after they are born in the early years with their mothers. If they go to a nursery, it’s probably a woman taking care of them in the nursery; in elementary school, it’s probably a woman. If you have to get a babysitter to watch the kids while you go somewhere, it’s probably a woman. Again, we are over-mothered, and we are under-fathered.