A Fabulous Father (Father’s Day Sermon On Joshua)

Illus: The TV show "60 Minutes" did a segment that revealed some disturbing news about elephants.

The story was about some park Rangers at a South African wildlife preserve who were concerned about the slaughter of 39 rare white rhinos.

It turned out that the rhinos were not killed by hunters, but rather by juvenile delinquent elephants.

The story began a decade ago, when the park could no longer sustain the increasing population of elephants.

They removed a lot of the large male elephants to solve this problem.

As a result, many of the young elephants grew up without the presence of male leadership.

As time went on, researchers observed that many of these young elephants began roaming together in packs and began to do things elephants do not normally do in nature.

• They took their trunks and threw sticks and water at the rhinos and acted like neighborhood bullies.

• They knocked down trees, threatening the females and basically raising the noise level and anxiety in the park.

• Without dominant males in the tribe, the young bulls became sexually active, producing excessive testosterone and exhibiting overly aggressive behavior.

• A few young males grew especially violent, attacking non-aggressive rhinos and stepping or kneeling on them, crushing the life out of them.

Park rangers theorized that these young teenage elephants were acting badly because they lacked a dominant male role model.

They eventually devised a solution and brought in a large dominant male to lead them and to counteract the abnormal behavior.

After a few years of the new male leadership, the young bulls returned to their natural role in the tribe.

The killings stopped and the wildlife preserve was saved.

The devil is doing his paramount to destroy the dominant MALE role in the home today.

He knows he can cause major chaos in the home if the dominant MALE role is removed.

Men today are being push aside in many ways.

Let me illustrate…

Illus: For example, today we hear a great deal about abortion.

And to hear some talk today about abortion, ALL YOU HEAR IS ABOUT A WOMAN’S RIGHT!

She is the one to decide if she is going to abort the fetus!

What about a MAN’S RIGHT?

She cannot have a child without him. If it was not for him there would not even be a child.

• When it comes to childbirth HE IS JUST AS IMPORTANT AS SHE IS?

• When it comes to childbirth IT TAKES TWO TO TANGO!!!

But today’s father is being pushed aside that he is no more than a MALE DONOR!!!

Today we celebrate Father’s Day, and I want to do something that is contrary to the society in which we live.

The society in which we live today does everything it can to make the man seem like the idiot in the family.

• The Woman’s lib movement has done this

• The Hollywood crowd has done this

• The cartoonist has done this

But I am afraid that even our churches have done their share also.

For example, many churches exalt motherhood on Mother’s Day and Fatherhood is not as important as Mother’s Day.

Illus: One little boy defined Father’s Day best, when he said that Father’s Day was just like Mother’s Day. But on Father’s Day you don’t spend as much money on the gift.

Most of us men would join me when I ask, “What gift?”

After years and years of this type of treatment, it is no wonder there is a lack of MALE attendance in churches today.

Listen, if men feel they have been beat-up all week, the last thing they want to do is come to church and have some preacher beat them up from the pulpit.

WHAT IS FATHER’S DAY?

I read a statistic that said:

• The greatest numbers of long-distance phone calls are made on Mother’s Day.

• The largest number of collect calls are made on Father’s Day.

Dads are very important to the health of the home.

WHY ARE THEY IMPORTANT TO THE HOME?

Illus: Someone remembered how things were when the:

• 3 years old - My Daddy can do anything

• 4 years old - My Daddy knows everything

• 5 years old - My Dad is smarter than your dad

• 6 years old - My Dad doesn’t exactly know everything.

• 7 years old - My Dad grew up in the olden days when things were sure different.

• 8 years old - My Dad doesn’t know anything about that, he’s too old to remember.

• 12 years old - My Dad knows about that, but he should, because he’s been around so long.

• 22 years old - Maybe we should ask Dad?

• 28 years old - I won’t do anything about that until I talk to Dad.