I. I know that this may come as a terrible shock to you all, but I am going to be preaching a sermon today that goes along with what you would expect on Father’s Day.
A. Well, it is at least as much of the traditional Father’s Day sermon as I can muster.
B. According to the Bible’s design for the family unit the father was the leader of the family and was responsible for the well being of the family. It was his job to see to the needs of the family and he was also responsible for the education of the children.
C. It was his job to see to it that his children were prepared for life; that they were trained in the customs of the community; that they were trained in an occupation; and that they were trained in the ways of God.
D. When the bible says that the man is the head of the house it has a lot more to say about responsibility than it does control. The father was given authority only because he was given the responsibility.
E. And with all responsibility, if the responsibility is not handled in the correct manner the authority is honored in the same way.
F. Men if you are not responsible and do not use the authority given to you by God, in the way that you are suppose to, to see to the well being of your family then don’t be surprised if your wife and your kids do not have the respect for you that you think they should.
G. You were given authority in the home by God but if you are not responsible in the authority that you have been given, and if you don’t put the well being of your family above all else, then don’t be surprised if you don’t get the respect that goes with it.
1. And while I am on that subject, since you are given authority, and your wife and children are supposed to be in submission to you, if you misuse the authority that you have been given and they don’t adhere to the guidelines that God has established for the family then you in part are responsible for their rebellion against God’s plan.
2. Your position in the family, as God designed it, makes you responsible for the direction of your family.
H. The lack of responsible fathers may be one of the greatest down falls of our culture today.
1. With the increase in men that make babies and take no responsibility for them, there has been a great increase in the deterioration of society.
2. And I know that there are a lot of single moms who struggle with trying to raise children without the help of a father.
3. And, I know that there are a lot of families where the father does live in the home, where the mother is left with the responsibility of teaching the children about God by herself.
4. Men, are usually the first to moan and groan about the condition of the world, and the people who leach off of society, but men who don’t take their responsibility in being a father and husband seriously may well be the greatest reason that things are the way they are.
I. We parents are responsible for raising our children above and beyond everything else, and above and beyond anyone else.
II. So let’s look at some of what that means.
(Prov 22:6 NIV) Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
A. One of the first and foremost responsibilities of parents, is to train their children, and when I say parents I mean the father and mother. But since the father is the one that the bible places in authority in the home that means that he is the primary person responsible.
B. That doesn’t mean mothers, if your husband does not do his job that you are to let the children go whichever way they want to, but it does mean that your husband is the primary one responsible and he does have the area of first responsibility and authority.
C. Unfortunately I know that there are a lot of you women that are thinking right now that there are a lot of men that abuse the authority that they were given and don’t take responsibility of being a Father that they should, and even more unfortunately you are right.
III. What I want to do is break that verse down that we just read and look at what it means in terms of being a parent, so you ladies listen too, because you might have to be the one that carries the load.
(Prov 22:6 NIV) Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
A. Train means to discipline, or instruct. It is the job of setting guidelines that will form the values that a person will have for the rest of their life.
1. The priorities that you set for yourselves parents, will be the priorities that your children adopt, so the idea of, do as I say and not as I do, will not work.
2. Your children will pattern their lives after yours. They will pattern their priorities after your priorities.
3. We parents train our children by what we say, but what we do trains them so much more. If you want an honest child then be honest.
4. If you want a child that puts God first in their life, put God first in your life.
5. That is not a guarantee, but the odds and the statistics say that your children are most likely going to adopt the values and priorities that you model for them.
B. So we must train, and we are to train a child. That word child means someone in the period between infancy and adolescence.
1. That means that the time of your training begins when your child is an infant.
2. That cute little baby that you bring home from the hospital should be in training.
3. Don’t decide when they are teenagers and start rebelling that you need to work on their values, because at that point 95% of the time you are too late.
4. The time that you have to instill things in your children last from infancy until adolescence, that does not mean that teenagers don’t need discipline and guidance, but if you have not started younger in life with the training the odds of you being successful are slim.
5. If you want to run interference for your children when the are 35 then start doing it when they are two, and keep doing it and I assure you that you will be doing as long as you live.
6. We don’t like to see our children disappointed, and we don’t like to see our children fail, but if we don’t allow them to fall on their face sometimes when they don’t listen, so they can learn from their mistakes while they are small, then we will have to be running interference for them when their mistakes become bigger, and it will not end.
C. We are to train a child from infancy to adolescence in the way he should go. Man this is a tough one for a lot of dads.
1. This phrase "in the way he should go" means in the direction he was intended or according to appointment, and from what I can tell of the Hebrew the "he" in the sentence is just an add on generic term.
2. The word child that is used can mean any child male or female that is between infancy and adolescence. The point is that this does not just apply to boys.
3. Our children are to be trained in the direction that they were intended. This phrase carries with it the idea of stringing a bow so that an arrow might be made to hit a mark.
4. As parents we are shooting an arrow into the world with an intended destination, and when we look at how that destination was determined, it’s as a sobering thing.
D. This child that you have been given responsibility for was created by God, and, gifted by God for a task in life, that God appointed before the foundation of the world.
(Jer 1:5 NIV) "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations."
1. Jeremiah gives us more than enough evidence to say with confidence that God has an appointed task for children before they are born.
2. In other places in the bible it is apparent that God has a task that he formed us for and gifted us for before the world was ever created.
3. When that child that you were given, was born to you, you were given an assignment, and entrusted with a creation of God that he had planned and assigned a task to, before the world was created.
4. Parents, you are on a joint venture with God to aim that child as an arrow shot out into the world, which means that you are to train him or her for the assignment that God created them for.
5. Which means that you, in your job as a parent have to understand who that child is, and what the personality that God gave them is, because you are to train them in the way that THEY are to go.
6. God has given your child, a specific personality, and as everybody who has been through the new members class that we do has seen, our personality always coincides with our spiritual gifts.
7. It is your job as a parent to help that child develop according to the way that God designed them, which may or may not be the way that you function.
E. This all means that as a parent and especially as a Father, you are to train up that child that has been entrusted to you by God, in the way that God designed them to go.
1. That may or may not be the way you are. It may mean that they like things that you don’t like, that they related and feel about things in way that you don’t.
2. Their personality may be different, they may be motivated by things that don’t motivate you.
3. They may be gifted in areas that you are not, and if you try to force them to feel and think in the ways that you do instead of the way that God made them then you are trying to alter God’s plan for what he created.
4. You are to train the child that God gave you in the way that he created them, not in the way that you want.
5. That means that you have to work to understand, and know the personality of the child that you have.
6. It means that you have to put the time into being a parent that it takes to understand who your child is.
F. It says in (Eph 6:4 NIV) Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
1. The best way to exasperate a child is to try to make them be you, instead of letting them be them.
2. The most frustrating thing that you can do is to take a child that God has created to be one way and try to make them be something else, because that is the way that you would do it.
3. Fathers’ that means just in case you miss what I am saying that if you Son would rather be in the band than on the football field, it doesn’t matter if you were an All American linebacker, he needs to be in the band and you need to support him, and praise him, and let him grow up to be the man that God intended him to be, instead of the image that you had in your mind when you saw him in that crib the first time.
4. Yea, I know how you think. The first present that I ever gave Stephen was a football, and it was right after he was born, but if Stephen didn’t want to play football that would be ok, because I love my sons not my expectations of what I want them to be.
G. And the main training that we as parents are to instill in the lives of our child beginning with infancy is training and instruction in the Lord.
1. We are given the task, of a joint venture with God, of teaching our children to know about God and his desire for their life and to know God in a way that they can grow up loving him.
2. In Deu 4:9 God has given the children of Israel the law, and then he says, (Deu 4:9 NIV) Only be careful, and watch yourselves closely so that you do not forget the things your eyes have seen or let them slip from your heart as long as you live. Teach them to your children and to their children after them.
3. Fathers we are responsible for teaching our children the things of God!
4. We have been handed a creation of God, and God expects nothing less than for us to teach that child about Him.
5. We are to see that our children are instructed in the ways of the Lord, and there are so many parents who run to the church when their kids are teenager, and start getting in trouble, and start showing signs of the ground work not being laid, and they want to come in and have the church, fix it and I have to tell them you started too late.
6. And there are a lot of parents who want to bring their kids to church and leave them, so they can learn, but if you are not modeling it for them, then you are not doing your job, because they will learn more from what they see in you that they will what they see from or hear from others!
7. It is our responsibility to train our child in the ways of the Lord, and Proverbs says that it is to start at infancy!
H. You see that is the rest of the verse that we started with. (Prov 22:6 NIV) Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
1. Discipline, and instruct, from infancy to adolescence, a child in the way that has been assigned to them by God, and when they are old, or beyond childhood they will not depart from it.
2. Train them when they are young and they will know when they are teenagers.
3. TRAIN THEM WHEN THEY ARE YOUNG AND YOU WILL NOT HAVE TO APOLOGIZE FOR THEM WHEN THEY ARE ADULTS!
4. Train them when they are children and you will not have to raise their children when you are old!
I. Parents, but fathers above all, you have been given stewardship over a creation of God do your job well, the future of our nation and our world depends on it.
