Where Have all the Fathers Gone?
As a teenager I thought my dad was the dumbest person in the world. I loved him, but I didn’t think that he was too smart especially when he disciplined me. After getting married and having 5 kids that thought that I was pretty dumb, I soon realized how smart my dad really was and how just he was in his discipline.
This week I started remembering a song from my teenage years. One line in the song was “Where have all the flowers gone?” Today on this Father’s Day we need to ask, “Where have all the fathers gone?”
We just finished our vacation Bible School at Bel Aire Baptist Church this week. I taught the kids from the 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th grades. I had 24 beautiful kids in my class. Out of those 24 kids, 17 of them lived in a home without a father.
Where have all the fathers gone?
Chuck Colson runs a prison ministry. Every mother’s day and father’s day, his ministry gives cards for the prisoners to send to their mothers and fathers. They always give out more cards for mother’s day than they do for father’s day. In one large prison in California on mother’s day they gave out over a thousand mother’s day cards for the prisoners to send to their mothers. At the same prison on fathers’ day only 6 inmates ask for cards to send to their fathers.
On live TV shows you always see people holding signs saying “hello Mom” or hear athletes being interviewed say “Hello Mom.” Why not the fathers?
To be a great father, we must first become a great husband. The Bible tells us how a husband should be.
Let’s read:
Eph 5:21-33
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
I started to leave these verses out of this sermon, but it is God’s words, not mine. Please understand these verses are not saying that your wife is your slave to serve your every beckon call. Husbands, we submit our lives to Jesus Christ because He first loved us. Christ doesn’t force us to do anything, but He is our Savior and our Lord. In that since husbands, you are to be a spiritual leader in your home just as Christ leads us spiritually.
25 Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her
26 to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,
27 and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.
Christ loved us so much that He laid down His own life for us. Through the shedding of His blood, we have been made holy and blameless. Husbands we are to lift our wives up not put them down.
28 In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself.
29 After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does the church--
30 for we are members of his body.
Husbands, next to God, your wife should be the most important things in your life. What comes first in your life?
Pleasures
Sports
Cars
Work
Money
When you come home from a hard day at work do you flop down on the sofa, turn the ball game on and yell to your wife to bring you a beer? Wives I hope you wouldn’t do it. Husbands how many times a day to you kiss your wife and tell her that you love her? Many times I hope.
31 "For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh."
32 This is a profound mystery-- but I am talking about Christ and the church.
When you married your wife, you became as one. Becoming as one means that you can never be separated from each other.
33 However, each one of you also must love his wife as he loves himself, and the wife must respect her husband.
(NIV)
If you want the respect of your wife, earn it by loving her as Christ loves His Church. I am counseling a new Christian that is about my age. He is complaining that his wife is constantly nagging and complaining about everything. I first told him that if he would go out and get a job instead of his wife having to work to support him, then she might not nag so much. Secondly, I asked him if he prayed about the problem. He told me that he asks Jesus all the time to make his wife to stop nagging. My comment was “Does Christ get tired of listening to your nagging Him?” No, then start listening to your wife’s nagging and she will start respecting you when you start supporting her.
If you show that you love your wife, then your children will show you love and respect.
One of the best ways to correct your children is to correct the example you are setting for them.
Josh 24:15
15 But if serving the LORD seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your forefathers served beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the LORD."
(NIV)
Fathers, we have the responsibility to raise our children in the Lord. Don’t rely on the Sunday school teachers to teach your children about God and salvation. Dads, you should be the one that leads your child to Christ, not someone else. Show your children that they can always count on you and that you are there when they need help.
Illustration:
One day a father was watching his young son play in his sandbox. Someone had place a large rock in the middle of the sand box. The young boy tried to pick it up but it was too heavy. He tried to roll it but couldn’t. He even laid on his back and tried to push the rock with his legs, but that didn’t work either. The dad finally walked over to his son.
The boy said, “Dad I have tried everything and I can’t get this rock out of my sand box.”
The father replied, “Son, you haven’t tried everything.”
The boy said, “Dad, I did try everything. I tried to pick it up, I tried to roll it and I tried to push it and nothing worked.”
The dad bent down and lifted the rock out of the sandbox and said, “ You see son, you didn’t try everything. You didn’t ask me to help you!
Do you have a rock in your life today that you can’t move? Have you tried everything? Have you gone to your Heavenly Father to ask for help?
John 1:12-13
12 Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God--
13 children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
(NIV)
We have a heavenly Father that loves us so much that He gave His one and only Son so that whomever believes in Him will not perish but have ever lasting life. This Father’s Day let’s honor our Heavenly Father. Give Him the praise and glory that He deserves. When you have tried everything and nothing worked ask your heavenly Father for help. He is always there for you and is waiting for you to call out to Him.
Invitation:
