This past Monday was our son-in-law’s birthday. We’ve cared about this young man for a long time, but now he’s even more special. He is our granddaughter Olivia’s father. And that makes him extra special. So we sent Don a birthday card and a little gift, and got an email response. In part, it reads, “Family is more important to me than I could ever describe. Out of necessity I have become the … glue that binds … my mom and dad and extended family. While I sometimes wish that I did not have to take the lead so often, I take comfort in knowing that God has seen fit to anoint me as the guardian of my mother, brother, and father. God has also seen to it that I have had teachers available to me so that I can further evolve into the man I want to be.”
Don then goes on to say some nice things about how the Lord gave him his in-laws as teachers. I’ll omit what he said about yours truly, but I do have to quote him when he says that when he wants to know where his wife and infant daughter get their independent streak, he need look no further than … well, you know who!
When a young man today speaks about the importance of family, I get excited. When he sees himself as glue that binds his family together, I get more than excited. I feel overjoyed! Now when he says that sometimes he wishes he did not have to take the lead quite so often, well, I understand, but I know it’ll be all right. It’ll be all right because he knows that his place comes from God and that God will equip him. When I hear all of that, I can’t ask for more. There’s a young man on the right track.
And as for being one of his teachers, I don’t know. I’d like to be worthy of that. I’m afraid I have to confess that, like a lot of men and fathers, I was not always so good at leading. Sometimes I was better at leaving. Better at waiting instead of wading in. Better at sitting back instead of stepping forward.
What the world needs now, what families need now, is men who will step up, assume leadership, get with the program, and do what’s right. What the world needs now is men who, without hesitation, with the Lord on their side, will do the responsible thing. Even when it seems too little too late, just do it.
Time and again I come back to the Genesis stories about Jacob. That old scoundrel helps me, because he messed up in more ways than most of us can even think of. And yet God stayed with Jacob, God prodded Jacob, God gave Jacob a second chance. God stayed with Jacob until Jacob finally got it right. But Jacob surely did mess up, big time, on the way.
You know the story. I don’t have to fill in all the details. But I might remind you that Jacob started out, from infancy, trying to get by on the cheap. They say that when he and his twin brother Esau were born, Jacob came out hanging on to his brother’s heel, getting a free ride from Day One! As the boys grew up, Esau went out and did the hunting and the farming, but Jacob sat around, enjoying his air-conditioned tent. Even as a boy his get-up-and-go got up and went! Jacob, irresponsible from the start.
And do I need to remind you of Jacob finagling his hungry brother into paying a very high price for one little old bowl of stew? Of Jacob, tricking his poor, blind father into giving him Esau’s inheritance? Do you need to hear of Jacob, the original mama’s boy, scooting off into the hills when he could no longer hide behind his mother’s skirts? Do I need to remind you of Jacob, cheating his own uncle out of most of his wealth; of Jacob, marrying two sisters, but treating one of them like trash? Jacob was a mess. He was irresponsible, lazy, hopeless. I think the street word is “triflin’”. If your daughter had brought Jacob home from college, you would have taken her aside for a heart to heart talk; he was just “triflin’”.
And if some of the sisters here today are inclined to remark, “Just like a man. I’ve seen his kind”, guess what?! I will agree with you! Too many of us are like Jacob. Too many men, husbands and fathers, have tried to get by on the cheap. Too many of us have hoped that our tasks would get done by somebody else. Too many of us have been Jacobs.
But look out! Because this same Jacob met his match. One night Jacob wrestled with God Himself, all night long. Almighty God struggled with Jacob and promised him, “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go … for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.” That’s the same Jacob. Triflin’, maybe; but chosen of God and a man of promise. Oh, there’s hope today for men and fathers and husbands who may be like Jacob. God is not going to let us go. God is going to deal with us until He has done what He wants to do through us. Count on it; when you wrestle with God, you won’t be the same again.
Now as the years went by, Jacob fathered twelve sons. That sounds good. Sounds like a blessing. An expensive blessing, but a blessing just the same. Did that end Jacob’s messing up? Did fatherhood cure Jacob’s ways? Not on your life.
What does he do with his twelve sons? He picks out one of them and makes him his favorite. Joseph gets the goodies while the others work out in the fields. Joseph gets a splendid coat while his brothers sweat through their raggedy jeans. Joseph fills his head with ideas about superiority while his brothers do the everyday grunt work. And Jacob sits idly by, does nothing about it, takes no responsibility for what is about to happen.
You remember how it ends up: with Joseph sold into slavery, with the old man told a massive lie – and isn’t there some kind of justice when a conniving trickster has a bigger trick pulled against himself? Jacob enters his mature years with his sons lost – yes, his sons, plural, all of them. One of them lost to slavery, and the others of them lost in a moral quagmire, because of his example, his irresponsibility, his foolishness, his stupidity. Lost! Jacob – what an example for Father’s Day!
But now what was it God said to Jacob? What had God promised this irresponsible, devil-may-care, disengaged father? “I am with you and will keep you wherever you go … for I will not leave you until I have done what I have promised you.”
The brothers, you’ll remember, went to Egypt to buy food. When they arrived they discovered, to their amazement, that their long-lost brother Joseph was now in charge of the place. The one they had put out was now at the top of the heap. And so they return to tell their father:
Genesis 45:25-46:7
Jacob cried out, “Enough! My son Joseph is alive. I must go and see him before I die.” And they set out for Egypt. Egypt, a strange and frightening land. A different sort of place. A land where their God was not worshipped nor the customs of His people respected. But to Egypt, where Jacob’s son was. Where his responsibility lay. Where he might unite again with his own. Jacob saw, late in life, that it was time to go to Egypt. Time to make a new beginning. Time to forge a new relationship with his sons. Time to let God fulfill God’s promises. It was time to go to Egypt.
I
Brothers, it is time for the men and fathers we are to go to Egypt. It is time for us no longer to procrastinate, no longer to hope that things will take care of themselves, no longer to suppose that somebody else will do it. It is time for us, men and fathers, to go to Egypt.
It is time for us to forge a new relationship with our children. It is time for us to go to them, wherever they are – and I am not talking simply about geography, I am talking about their emotional location. It is time for us to go to our children and revive relationships. It might feel awkward, and we might worry about what they will say, but that must not stand in the way. It is time to go to Egypt. It is time to redeem our relationship with our children.
Jacob, when he heard that his son was still alive, said, “That’s enough. My son is still alive. I must go and see him before I die.” Jacob, big-time mess, saw that in the mystery of God, he had one more chance to connect with his children. Now he didn’t know what kind of reception he would get from Joseph. He didn’t know what kind of man Joseph had become. Jacob might have expected a lecture from this alienated son. He might have expected a cold shoulder. He might have expected hostility. He didn’t know what to expect. But Jacob did know that the relationship of parent and child is irreplaceable, unique, and critical, and that if he was to finish his life with any kind of peace at all, he would have to take this risk. He would have to go to Egypt and see this son.
John Trent tells in his little book, “Free to Forgive” about his childhood. He and his brother were abandoned by their father when they were very young, and for years they and their mother never heard a word from him. John grew into high school and became a star football player. Just as his senior season was ending, he got word that his father was coming to town and would be in the stands for that final game. John played that night as he had never played before. All his energies went into impressing this unseen presence, up there in the stands somewhere. As John finished the game, to the cheers of the crowd, he hurried off the field, rushed through his shower, so that he could finally meet his father. John fantasized about what the man looked like, and wondered what they would say to each other. As John ran through out of the locker room toward the gates, his eyes scanned everywhere for this mysterious man. He rounded a corner and there, standing in front of him, was his brother, and his mother – but no father. The man never showed up! And John Trent says that it took him years and years of spiritual counseling and emotional work before he could forgive the man who promised but never made good.
Oh, it’s time for some of us to go to Egypt and take the risk of reconnecting with our children. Some of our children have strayed. They’ve gotten into things we are not proud of. We never intended to raise a son for the prison system or to put a daughter out on the streets. We don’t like to talk about it. We’d just as soon be like Jacob and think of them as dead. But if you have a son or a daughter and you’ve lost connection, I tell you, it’s time to go to Egypt. It’s time to approach that young man and admit you didn’t do all you could have done, but this is a new day. It’s time to find that young woman and confess you didn’t know what to do for her a few years back, but this is a new day.
I’m working with a young man who keeps going in and out shelters, in and out of jail, in and out of drug treatment, in and out of alcohol treatment; I assumed that he had no family anywhere around. One day I was driving him to a clinic, and as we went down one block, he said, “My father lives right there.” I was surprised; I asked him about his father and whether he couldn’t get at least a place to stay there. His answer told me everything, “My dad said he never wanted to see me again and if I showed up at his door he’d have me arrested.” What a tragedy! I think I know where that alcoholism and that drug abuse began! It’s time for that father to go to Egypt and start all over with his son! It’s time to redeem our relationships with our children.
II
More than that, it’s time to go to Egypt and let God do what God has promised to do. It’s time for the men and fathers I know to step forward and put themselves squarely in the hands of God and let God keep His promises. I don’t know much about the Promise Keepers men’s movement, but I know that its very name says a lot. It says that there are men who know that not only must they keep the promises they have made to their wives and their children; but also that they must let God keep God’s promises to them.
When Jacob got ready to go to Egypt, he went first to the Lord. He offered his worship to the god of his fathers, and the Bible says that God told Jacob, “Do not be afraid to go down to Egypt, for I will make of you a great nation there. I myself will go down with you to Egypt, and I will also bring you up again.” Jacob found out that if he would just be responsible, go into the tough spots, he would not be alone. God would keep God’s own promises.
Men and brothers, it is time to go to Egypt. It is time for men to stand squarely on the promises of God and to claim them, positively and forcefully. It is time to go to Egypt in the presence and power of the Lord.
a
It is time for men to give leadership to the church. In church after church, men have sat down and let women run everything but the money and the property. Now please do not misunderstand me. I yield to no one in my admiration for and support of women in all phases of the life of the church. I am delighted that this congregation was the first Baptist church in the Washington area to ordain women as deacons and as ministers. I am pleased beyond measure that we do not discriminate at any level on the basis of gender. We have had men serving in the nursery and the kitchen and women working on the building and the grounds. That’s as it should be. But, I tell you, something is out of balance when the membership is 65% female! Something is off kilter when men have to be coaxed into leadership! It is time for men to give leadership to the church and let God do what God wants to do.
A pastor friend of mine told me, several years ago, that he was sorry his church had begun to put women in all leadership roles. He was sorry because the brothers had simply sat down and let the ladies do it all, and he could no longer persuade the men to be deacons or trustees or anything! What is it about us, fellows, that we are threatened? Are we afraid that the women will show us up? Are we concerned that we won’t do it right, so we decide not to do it at all? Do we not understand that the God who promised Jacob never to leave him until he was finished would go down to Egypt with him and would bring him up again? It’s time to go to Egypt and be God’s men in God’s church.
b
It’s time to go to Egypt and put our resources to work in this community. It’s time, brothers, we who likely still control the wallets in our homes, it’s time to put our resources to work and make a difference in this Egypt. It will no longer be sufficient for our wives to put in the pennies they’ve saved from housekeeping to try to keep ministries going. It’s time to go to Egypt and make a real difference.
Oh, it must have been quite a sight when Jacob set out for Egypt, because look what he took with him! He set out with his sons and their wives and their children, and “they also took their livestock and the goods that they had acquired in the land of Canaan, and they came into Egypt.” What a tribe! Jacob and sons and children and the whole kit and caboodle! Jacob made a major commitment to Egypt. He brought everything he had, to Egypt.
It is time, people of God. It is time for us to commit major energies, significant resources, to ministry and witness in this community. It is time for us to forge ahead with the things that will matter in real lives in this Takoma, this Egypt. It’s time to reach young people, out here on these streets, with something solid, whatever it may be. If it’s recreation, then let’s do recreation. If it’s a computer lab, that’s on the way, but let’s do it. If it’s tutorial work, what are we waiting for? One of our deacons did a little research lately, and found out that the academic achievements of children in this area are appalling! We need to do whatever it takes to redeem this Egypt. If it’s scouting, if it’s music, if it’s food, if it’s auto mechanics, let’s do it!
Auto mechanics! Now the preacher has dropped off the deep end. Listen: this week, I looked out my office window, and across the street there was a car jumping up and down, all by itself. No driver in it, but this old car was sitting at the curb, rocking and rolling, up and down, front end up, rear end down, then the other way around. I have no idea what was going on. But I did see two young men, probably about twenty years old, orbiting around the car, opening its trunk, fiddling with it. I have no idea what that was about, but if auto mechanics is something we can use to reach people, and I know of one church that did that, then let’s get going! Let’s go to Egypt and take there everything we have and claim this place for God.
Men of Takoma, it is time. It is time. It is time to go to Egypt.
There was a father once who looked out and saw a needy world. He saw the futility, the pain, the sin of the human heart. This father saw how incredibly distorted His children had become. Was it this father’s fault that they had turned out as they had? No one blamed Him for it. He had been attentive. He had provided for them. It was not His fault. He might have just decided to go on a long vacation and escape this mess, this father.
But He did not. He did not. The father of whom I speak came down to His own, and His own received Him not. They rejected Him. But still He gave; He gave the best that He had. He gave Jesus. He went to a cross to suffer and to die. He went to give Himself for His lost and wandering children. Can we do any less?
Men and brothers, it is time. Time to go to Egypt.
