Father's Day Thoughts

Father’s Day Thoughts

Open your Bibles to Deuteronomy Chapter 6.

First, let’s begin by considering some of the Offices that Jesus has.

Jesus: Came to us to show God to us and as such He is our Prophet.

Jesus: Seated at the right hand of the Father, He intercedes as our Priest

Jesus: King of kings and Lord of lords - as head of the Church, He is certainly our King.

These three great offices were delegated to Him by God the Father. To the Church, Jesus is Prophet, Priest and King.

Since this is Father’s Day and fathers and families certainly are related items, then how can we apply this truth to the family and specifically to the role of the father in the family?

In the family, as well as in all of life, Jesus serves not only as our power to do “the right thing,” but also as our pattern of “what to do.”

We are familiar with the passage from Ephesians 5:25 where Paul admonishes husbands to love your wife as Christ loved the church and gave Himself for her.

In this we see a parallel relation with Christ for the role of the husband.

Is there a parallel relationship for the role of the father? My conviction is “Yes!” The Christian father, in the home, stands in a parallel relationship to his home and family as Jesus does to the Church: Prophet, Priest, and King.

Prophet: What is the role of a prophet?

The standard answer that we typically hear is that a prophet is a “fore-teller” and a “forth-teller.” The implication is that a prophet will tell two things: what is going to happen and he will declarer “what is” - or be a declarer of truth.

Let first look at this role of “fore-telling.” Should fathers be in the fore-telling business? Can you prognosticate and tell me what is going to happen? Yes, you can!

I am NOT talking about seeing the unknown and knowing the unknowable. Some times fore-telling is simply stating the obvious.

It is the ability to see what will happen because you have “been there - done that” or you know what has happened to others. It is the ability to apply mature judgment and predict the outcome before it happens and in doing so can save your children and yourself from a world of grief.

I’ll give you an example: The father says to the teenager: If you get drunk or high on drugs and drive your car under such a condition, you can kill yourself or someone else and you will cause unimaginable grief to yourself, to us and to the family of the person you run into. Parents may say: If you run around with the wrong crowd you will eventually regret it - it may even ruin your life. It is a father’s responsibility to warn his children by way of predicting what will happen if certain practices are followed. Much of the book of Proverbs is predicting probable outcomes from certain behaviors. Reading Proverbs to your children as a way to fulfill your role as a fore-telling prophet. If you have ever learned a lesson the hard way, then you are in a good position to prophesy to your children. However, you don’t have to experience everything in order to know what is right and what is wrong based on the probable outcomes. If you don’t pass on what you have learned and teach your children to think through the likely outcomes then you ensure that they will have to relearn what you and your parents have already learned.

Besides fore-telling, there is forth-telling. In the church the prophet declares God’s message to the church. In doing this, the prophet is a representative of God. How does such a role impact what the father does in the family?

Representative of God:

The use of the term “Father” as applied to the Creator of all things creates a word-association relationship between God and earthly fathers, at least in the minds of young children. People involved in counseling with children tell us that many children form their initial basic impression of God from ideas related to their earthly father or a father figure in their lives. This impression can be either positive or negative. In a real sense, we are all representatives of God.

"Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God." (2Cor 5:20)

Therefore, an expected outcome of the role of “representative of God” for the father is that those in his family would come to a saving knowledge of God through Jesus Christ. If we want to be successful in accomplishing what is expected, then we need to be involved in the whatever it takes to achieve the end result. One way to be involved in the process by which members of our family will be reconciled to God is in the role of “forth-teller” or proclaimer of God message. This would be a role of not REPRESENTING but one of PRESENTING God’s ways and God’s character to our families.