Father's Day - The Priest Of The Family

Today as we honor our fathers, we must realize what the world is telling us. A father and mother is no long the norm. Homes with two moms or two dads is just as viable as the traditional home with one mother and one father. The fact is, credible studies show the opposite.

To hear some feminists speak, the only thing men are needed for is procreation. But the facts show otherwise. Children raised without a father are more likely to live in poverty, have emotional or behavioral problems, commit suicide, be sexually active before marriage, engage in delinquent behavior and get a divorce when they are grown. [1]

The presence of a Father in the home makes a tremendous difference in a child’s future. Did you know that children from a fatherless home are:

5 times more likely to commit suicide;

32 times more likely to run away;

20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders;

14 times more likely to commit rape;

9 times more likely to drop out of high school;

10 times more likely to abuse chemical substances;

and 9 times more likely to end up in state-operated institutions? [2]

We are going to look at one father today. One father who God even bragged about. The man named Job.

Job 1:1–5

We know the story of Job. Of how God allowed Satan to take everything from Job but His life and how job maintained his integrity. This morning I want to look at Job’s character that enable him to endure the trials he was put through. And I want to consider his family.

Job 1:1 (NKJV) There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was blameless and upright, and one who feared God and shunned evil.

We see first of all, as a Father, that Job:

1. Job set a good example before his children.

God called Job a blameless and upright man, one who feared God and shuns evil. We read that in verse 1. But God pointed this out to Satan, these virtues of Job:

Job 1:8 (NKJV) Then the LORD said to Satan, “Have you considered My servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, one who fears God and shuns evil?”

This begs the question, how would God characterize you? The question is not how would the world characterize you, but how would God characterize you?

Job set the example for his children. How could Job expect his children to be godly unless he himself was godly and lived a life of godliness to show them what godly living looked like?

The story is told a of a little boy that a father was watching him pray. The little boy prayed before going to bed, “God make me a good man like my daddy.” The Father later prayed,

“God make me the man the son thinks that I am.”

Job was that man. God even said that Job was blameless and upright. The HCSB and CSB says Job was a man of “perfect integrity.” In the KJV, the word used for blameless is perfect. another word for being perfect and being complete. Jesus tells us to be perfect:

Matthew 5:48 (NKJV) Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.

Job was complete, and there was not a dishonest bone within him. That did not mean he was sinless. Romans 3:23 tells us that all have sinned, but Job strived to live for the Lord every day. At the end of the book of Job, we find Job repenting before God when he realized how far from God he truly was. (Job 42:6).

Job’s life involved not only in doing right, but He feared God. To fear the Lord means to respect who He is, what He says, and what He does. It is not the cringing fear of a slave before a master but the loving reverence of a child before a father, a respect that leads to obedience. “The remarkable thing about fearing God,” said Oswald Chambers, “is that when you fear God you fear nothing else, whereas if you do not fear God you fear everything else.” [3]

Job feared God and shunned evil. Job turned away from Evil in both of its forms: the evil that confronts us from the world, and the evil that confronts us from within. Job worked at being morally upright.

Job 31:1 (NKJV) “I have made a covenant with my eyes; Why then should I look upon a young woman?

Jesus said in Matthew 5:27-28 that to lust after a woman is to commit adultery in your heart. Job was not that man. Job set a good example for his family.

2. Job was a good provider and steward of all that he had.