The Godly-Father; 1 Kings 2:1-4
In his book “Fatherhood”, Bill Cosby wrote, “Now that my father is a grandfather he just can’t wait to give money to my kids. But when I was a kid and I asked him for 50 cents, he would tell me the story of his life. How he got up at 5 a.m. when he was 7-years-old and walked 23 miles to milk 90 cows. And the farmer for whom he worked had no bucket, so he had to squirt the milk into his little hand and then walk 8 miles to the nearest can. All for 5 cents a day. The result was...I never got my 50 cents.”
“But now he tells my children every time he comes into the house, ‘Well, let’s see how much money old Granddad has for his wonderful grandkids.’ And the minute they take money out of his hands I call them over to me and I snatch it away from them. BECAUSE THAT’S MY MONEY.”
Being a parent and a father can be an interesting and trying experience.
Someone said, “Fathers spend the first part of a child’s life urging him to talk and walk, and the rest of his childhood telling him to sit down and keep quiet.”
A son who was in college wrote home to his dad. He said, “Dear Dad, Please let me hear from you more often, even if it’s only five or ten.”
One day a woman left her baby daughter in her husband’s care while she was busy doing some work in another room. He immediately buried himself in his newspaper, and forgot all about the baby until he heard a series of thumps, followed by a horrendous cry. Instantly he knew that the baby had fallen down the stairs. He called out to his wife, “Honey! Come quick! Our little girl just took her first 24 steps!”
Dads are very special people to their kids and they have a tremendous impact on their lives and in our society… Statistics:
25 million children do not live with their fathers. 63% of youth suicides are (FFH)
85% of children with behavior disorders are FFH 80% of rapists are FFH
71% of high school drop outs are FFH 70% of teen pregnancies are FFH
75% of all the youth in chemical abuse centers are FFH 85% of youths in prison are FFH
And there are some who say that dads are not important. I say dads are extremely important. Growing up I rarely saw my dad, my parents divorced when I was six; my dad had other things that took his time. In the past ten years we were closer than we had ever been, but it wasn’t near enough. I needed him when I was young, I needed his advice, I needed direction, but he wasn’t there to give it to me. And now having just lost my dad there’s emptiness within me that I cannot explain.
Dads are very important. Now, listen any man can have kids, but it takes a special person to be a Godly-father. A Father that is there for his kids, a father that gives godly advice, a father that gives his kids direction in life.
And that’s what King David did for his son Solomon. Now don’t misunderstand me, David made some critical errors in his life that had an adverse effect on his kids, but while he was on his death bed he gave Solomon some advice that we can all live by.
1. Be Strong
This sounds like something we tell out sons, doesn’t it. “Be strong. Stay tough. Hang in there. Don’t give up.” But it is good advice for all of us, regardless of gender.
Adrian Rogers tells about the man who bragged that he had cut off the tail of a man-eating lion with his pocketknife. When asked why he hadn’t cut off the lion’s head, the man replied: “Someone had already done that.”
It’s easy sometimes to be cocky, and pretend to be brave and strong, but what Solomon needed was true strength, strength that only God can give. That’s why Ephesians 6:10 tells us to, “Be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.”
We live in a dangerous world and there are things that we fear, for example:
One summer evening, during a violent thunderstorm, a mother was tucking her small boy into bed. She was about to turn off the light when he asked with a tremor in his voice, “Mommy, will you sleep with me tonight?” The mother smiled and gave him a reassuring hug. “I can’t dear,” she said, “I have to sleep with Daddy.” A long silence was broken at last by a shaken little voice saying, “The big sissy.” THERE ARE THINGS WE FEAR IN LIFE --- BE STRONG.
Now think about this, David was dying and Solomon would soon be taking his place as King of Israel. I know you’ll be surprised by this but there were some people that hated Israel and their God. And you know what that’s still true today. I know that’s breaking news for all of you.
So Solomon as King of Israel was responsible for a nation. So he needed to be strong. He needed to stand firm against the opposition that he would face. AND DADS YOU ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR YOUR FAMILY, AND YOU NEED TO STAND FIRM AGAINST ANY OPPOSITION.
You see, we are at war and there is an enemy who is on the prowl. Listen to the orders given to us in 1 Peter 5:8-9, “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.”
There is an enemy and men have been called by God to stand at their posts. John 10:10, Satan is a thief who, “comes to steal, kill, and destroy.” He wants to destroy our reputations, our marriages, our families, our children, and our churches.
So we must be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. And we must use all the weapons that God has made available to us. Listen to Paul’s advice in 2 Corinthians 10:3-5, “For though we live in the world, we do not wage war as the world does. The weapons we fight with are not the weapons of the world. On the contrary, they have divine power to demolish strongholds. We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ.”
Remember a couple of weeks ago in a sermon I said, “We must win the battle of our minds”? The same is true with our families. There are all kinds of influences and pressures and teachings that oppose God’s word and we need to stand firm and make sure our kids are grounded in His word as well.
We are to be actively engaged in combat with anything that would cause harm to our families. To do that we need to be strong. Strength in life requires character, determination, integrity, and it requires a commitment to God and family.
By the way strength has nothing to do with having big muscles and being able to whip anybody you don’t agree with or don’t like. That’s just someone who cannot control his own temper. Any child can do that. True strength is not a physical attribute, it’s a mental and spiritual attribute that few men have today.
2. Be A Man
What does that mean? To be honest we have so many poor examples that we have lost perspective on what it means to be a man. You see, there is great deal of confusion in our society today of what it means to be a man. And much of that is due to the influence of humanism, feminism and the lack of attention to the biblical teaching of manhood. And that’s led to some confusing role models...
-- Rambo & Steven Segall - real men because they can kill, destroy, show no mercy or guilt.
-- Or men like Wilt Chamberlain who shows his manhood by how many women he has had.
-- Or men like Donald Trump, who defines his manhood by his bank account, or net worth.
So it can be pretty confusing. One thing we can be certain about is being a man is different than being a child.
1 Corinthians 13:11, “When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.”
My sister in law had a sign a her wall that read, “The bigger the boys, the bigger the toys.” And you know what? That’s the absolute truth. There are a lot of adult males that are just big boys. They haven’t grown up, there just playing with bigger toys.
That’s the way I look at Rambo & Steven Segall, There no longer playing with slingshots and Beebe guns, their playing with m-16’s and grenades. That’s the way I look at men like Wilt Chamberlain, there no longer chasing girls their chasing women. That’s the way I look at men like Donald Trump their no longer try to crush their competition in games like “Risk” or “Monopoly” their trying to crush their competition in the game of life.
Paul said it’s time to put away those childish things, and David was saying the same thing.
He said, “Solomon your about to take over my thrown, it is time that you become a man.”
How does a child speak? In selfish terms…, Give me, I want, I need… When I was a boy I could get my grandpa to get me anything… Shaking the shelves at the store… a child’s world revolves around himself.
MEN are selfless, they give, they serve, and they sacrifice for the good of their children and for others…
How does a child think? A child thinks in small terms. A child thinks of a world roughly his size, a size he can comprehend and manage. A child thinks about small spaces and about short spans of time. “Are we there yet?” A child has very little patience.
And a child thinks small. When I was a kid my world revolved around my neighborhood. Children think small. They create a little comfort zone for themselves. And that’s all right, for a child.
But when we become adults, we need to put an end to childish things. We need to stop thinking like children. We need to expand from thinking about our narrow and comfortable world, and start thinking broadly and discover a larger world out there, a larger task out there.
When we grow up we are called to do God-sized tasks. God does not call us to do something comfortable and manageable, but to things that broaden our perspective, He calls us to things that stretch us to the limits, He calls us to do things that we cannot accomplish without Him.
God does not call us to think small, or to limit ourselves by what is comfortable and easy and friendly. God calls us to think large; God calls us to think about impacting all kinds of people and all kinds of places.
If you are thinking that your mission in life is just to take care of yourself and your own, and hunker down into a quiet corner, you are still thinking childish things. We need to have a global mission – because that’s God’s mission for us.
How does a child reason? Something like this: “I’ve done something I was not supposed to do. I did wrong. However, if Mom and Dad don’t find out, I got away with it, and everything is cool. I just put one over on the old man.” A child’s reasoning is, “It ain’t wrong if I didn’t get caught.” The sad thing is there are a lot of adults that reason the same way.
But we need to put an end to childish things. We need to stop trying to get away with things and discover grace and forgiveness. I need to know that I cannot put anything over on the Father who pursues me behind and before, Who sees my every step, every thought, and every action. I cannot put one over on my Heavenly Father.
I cannot continue to be a child who reasons that if you don’t see it, it didn’t happen. I must be an adult, who can face the awful truth about myself. I must be an adult, who can acknowledge that I have sinned and come short of the glory of God, whether anyone has seen it or not. For God has seen it, and against Him, Him only, have I sinned and done this evil in His sight.
Only after I admit and confess my sin can I experience His grace and receive His forgiveness and only then can I be free to do the same for my children.
Be a man; take responsibility for your own actions, see the big picture – realize God has a mission and a purpose for your life, and serve others.
3. Be Faithful
Vs.3, “Keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in His ways and keeping His statutes, His commandments, His rules, and His testimonies… that you may prosper in all that you do.”
Faithfulness isn’t a virtue that is celebrated much today. Our society just doesn’t see as being very important. It’s much more important to feel good, and experience pleasure than it is to be faithful. That’s certainly true in a lot of marriages. But faithfulness is of utmost importance to God.
And God says that those who are not faithful will not prosper. That’s certainly true in every area of life. And David learned first hand the pitfalls of not walking in the ways of the Lord…
Now don’t get me wrong, the Bible says David was a man after God’s own heart, but by no means was he faithful in all his ways. His most well known failure was committing adultery. And it was his wondering eye that led to great loss in his family.
Of coarse most know that David lost the first son of Bathsheba. The child conceived due to his adultery. Some time later, David’s daughter Tamar was raped by her half-brother, Amnon. David then lost his son Amnon, because Absalom wanted vengeance for the rape of his sister, so he killed him. Then he lost Absalom who was killed by one of his servants because Absalom tried to overthrow David so that he would become king of Israel.
David knew what he was talking about when he told Solomon to be faithful, to walk in the ways of the Lord. Prosperity comes to those who are faithful. Husbands who are faithful to their wife, dads who are faithful to the children, and men that are faithful to the God of heaven and earth.
But you know the best way for our children to see the benefits of being faithful is for us to be faithful ourselves. Godly advice is good, but a Godly example speaks volumes to our children.
We need to be an example of a faithful father to our children.
Did Solomon adhere to his dad’s advice??? Like so many sons before and so many sons after he did not… He tried to make allies by marrying women from other countries, He allowed them to have influence over things of vital importance, He turn and serve their god’s as his own.
He was given Godly advice but he chose to follow his own heart instead. By the way, dads, there are no guarantees with our children, they have a free will to chose for themselves just like you and I do. But your influence on your child is overwhelming.
One startling bit of research conducted by the Christian Business Men’s Committee found the following: When the father is an active believer, there is about a seventy-five percent likelihood that the children will also become active believers. But if only the mother is a believer, this likelihood is dramatically reduced to fifteen percent.
Mark Twain said, “When I was a boy of 14 my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to the 21, I was astonished at how much the old man learned in 7 years.”
So you may be wondering, who is the Godly-father ---- I hopes it’s you and me.
CONCLUSION: Psalm 127, “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD watches over the city, the watchman stays awake in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep. Behold, children are a heritage from the LORD, the fruit of the womb a reward.”
