What is a Father?
Text: Ps. 90:1-2, 11-17, Eph. 6:1-4
Opening:
1. There is two ways to recognize power.
1. One is to see it at work.
2. Is to measure it when it is gone.
2. What we are witnessing in America, is the results of absentee fathers
a. Drugs & promiscuity
b. Violence
Take an older elephant and let him teach the younger rouge elephants, how to behave
3. Fathers are misunderstood creatures
1. What is a mother? You know right away.
What is a father? Well, that takes some thinking through
2. It is said that father is found in the dictionary between fathead & fatigued
3. We fathers, are like the man in this story.
There was a man who had no children who wrote a book entitled…
“How to raise children.”
After he had a few children… he wrote another book.
“Ideas for raising children”
After they had gotten a little older, he wrote yet another book, “Tips from a struggling father”
And after they had reached teenage years, he took it upon himself to write yet another book entitled,
“Anybody out there got any ideas?”
What is a father?
A. Fathers are those called by God to establish and lead homes
1. Read Gen. 2:20-25
2. God anointed him for this job
The promise is good things to the children that submit under their fathers
B. Fathers are a picture of God to their children
1. God has chosen earthen vessels to bear his glory before the children
a. The word tells us that in the image of God, man was made.
"Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image… So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them." (Genesis 1:26-27, NKJV)
"For a man indeed ought not to cover his head, since he is the image and glory of God; but woman is the glory of man."
(1 Corinthians 11:7, NKJV)
b. Man, more than woman, shows forth the male likeness of his Father-God
1. Can woman portray God? Does she too, bear the image of her creator? Yes, but not his male characteristics.
Woman show forth the motherhood of God – his compassion, his feelings, his sensitivity
2. Man shows forth his male like character - his warrior tendencies, love of battle, his strength.
C. A father is one who is more sure he does not know what he is doing than you are sure of
1. A real father, deals with dealings of inadequacies all the time
For Us….
1. What is something you wished above all else, your father knew?
I wish my dad knew….
Play DVD on Our father’s love letter to us
Closing….
1. Maybe its time to make some things right with your fathers.
Fathers, maybe its time we make some things right with our children
I Took a Piece of Plastic Clay
by: Author Unknown,
I took a piece of plastic clay
And idly fashioned it one day-
And as my fingers pressed it, still
It moved and yielded to my will.
I came again when days were past
The bit of clay was hard at last.
The form I gave it, still it bore,
And I could change that form no more!
Use Amy and Aaron & John for this next part
I took a piece of living clay,
And gently fashioned it day by day,
And molded with my power and art
A young child’s soft and yielding heart.
I came again when years were gone:
It was a man I looked upon.
He still that early impress bore,
And I could fashion it never more.
I did not use this part. I added it later
Our Fathers Who Are on Earth
If Satan thinks they are a key battleground, shouldn’t we?
by Roland C. Warren
I am the president of a secular organization that works to increase the number of children who grow up with involved, responsible, and committed fathers. Christians often ask me, "Why should I be concerned about your work of connecting fathers to their children? Shouldn’t the Great Commission and soul winning be our number one priority?"
These questions remind me of what happened to my wife when she was having lunch with a non-Christian friend a few years ago. She asked her friend if she minded prayer before the meal. Her friend said, "That’s fine," so my wife started her prayer with the phrase "Dear heavenly Father." When she finished, her friend said that she could never pray those words since her father was such an [expletive].
I believe that today Christians often overlook three important truths about the Great Commission. These truths can radically change the way we view our work of sharing Jesus with others so they might come into an intimate relationship with our heavenly Father.
First, the relationship people have with their fathers may directly affect their ability to relate to God the Father. A "loving heavenly Father" has no meaning to those who don’t know what a loving father is. In fact, if their fathers were so terrible, any god who’s also a father must be infinitely terrible!
Jesus, on the other hand, in coming to tell the world how good the heavenly Father is, used his relationship with his Father as an evangelistic tool.
Second, the epidemic of one out of every three kids in America growing up without a father is not a coincidence. There is a concerted attack on the institution of fatherhood by Satan himself. The Devil’s work is to influence dads to be disconnected, distant, or even abusive, so that children start life believing that this is how all fathers are—even a heavenly Father.
And why attack the father? Because the greatest, most powerful truth that any person who does not know Christ needs to hear in order to be saved is this: God is a good Father whose desire and plan is to bring back his lost children to himself. Satan knows that good fathers can pave the way for the gospel and, conversely, bad or absent fathers pave the way to separation from God.
Third, a life-changing truth about how we should preach the gospel can be found in the parable of the sower. In it, the Word of God is the seed that is being sown into different types of ground, which represent the types of hearts into which the Word can be sown. As we know, only one type of heart brought forth the fruit of salvation—the good, fertile ground.
The problem isn’t that the Word isn’t fruitful, nor is it that the sower isn’t sowing. The hindering force in this parable is the type of ground into which the Word is being sown.
Thus, our work is to prepare the ground so that it may bring forth fruit. We can do this by teaching fathers how to support and nurture their kids and by helping them feel the importance of their efforts.
It is no coincidence that many of the problems Satan has sown into people’s lives are directly tied to the relationship with their family—specifically, their father. Satan is trying to create stony ground to make it harder for the gospel to yield its fruit.
The power contained in the father-son relationship was clearly evident in Jesus’ own life. Before he departed for the desert, his Father opened up the heavens, and announced to the world: "This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased."
Here was Jesus—fully God and fully man—yet God the Father knew that in Jesus’ humanity, he needed the fatherly affirmation that he was loved and accepted before he entered a time of tremendous temptation.
It’s the chief model for all earthly fathers. All children will face temptation. How they respond will depend largely on what they have experienced—the truth of God modeled and affirmed by their fathers, or the lies of Satan who has kept them isolated from the life-giving encouragement of their families.
The work of connecting fathers to their children is not something to do in addition to preaching the gospel, but is a central part of how we can sow the Word into the hearts of children who will be able to call God Father.
