Today we are celebrating a day honoring our fathers. Being a father is a great responsibility. What we do as a father will impact generations to come. Our children learn by watching us and they will become the type of parents that we were. Children learn by example.
Prov 22:6
6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
(NIV)
We must start training our children from birth to be obedient and to love the Lord. We must show them by our actions that we too love the Lord and that He is first in our lives. God created the first family. It consisted of Adam and then Eve. God told them to be fruitful and increase in number. Adam and Eve had Cain, Abel, Seth and many more sons and daughters over his 800 years of life.
Gen 1:27-28
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
(NIV)
God set the standard for a family, one man, one woman and children. Today our families are under attack. We are being told that a normal family can consist of two men and children or two women and children. Our children are being taught this in school. The entertainment industry is sending the same message. Just about every show on TV has either a homosexual character or the subject matter deals with homosexual activity. The few shows on TV that doesn’t deal with homosexuality will make fun of the traditional family. Usually the shows will portray the family as dysfunctional. The fathers in the shows are shown as stupid, crude and dumb. It is the same in most commercials. Our children are learning that families don’t matter. Because of the efforts of media and the turning away from God and sound doctrine, we are seeing an increase in abortions (over 4000 per day), increase in unwed mothers, increase in divorces even in our churches and the legalization of homosexual marriages. Because of the hate speech law in Canada, it is now illegal for pastors to preach that homosexuality is a sin and abomination to God. Our US Senate just passed a hate crime bill by a two-thirds majority. Is the same thing going to happen to us? I will go to prison before I stop preaching the entire Word of God.
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 and sporting events you always see people holding signs saying “hello Mom” or hear athletes being interviewed say “Hello Mom.” Why not the fathers? Is it that we are not being the fathers that we should be? Is it that we no longer have time to be fathers? Is it that our priorities are not in the right order?
We must first set a priority.
Matt 10:37-38
37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
(NIV)
The verse we just read says that we must put God first. God comes before our spouses, our children, our jobs, our processions and our pleasures. God first, spouse second and children third.
Truthfully, what comes first in your life?
To be a great father, we first must be “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. The King James Version says:
Eph 5:22
22 Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands, as unto the Lord.
(KJV)
This is telling the wives to go to your husbands for spiritual guidance and advice in things instead of going to your best friend or another man.
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.
Husbands we are to love our wives in the same way that Christ loves us. 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. We are to see our wives as Christ sees us, as holy and blameless, without faults. We are to lead our families with the Word of God and not with our desires.
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.
These verses tells us that we are to care for our wives and to provide for her needs in the same way that God provides for our needs. Husbands how often do you kiss your wife? How often do you tell her that you love her? How often do you show your love for her by helping her around the house or with the kids? Christ is there always to help us.
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 no longer function independently but you are your wife function as one in agreement in all things. All the Christians in the world belong to one body. That body is the body of Christ that saved each one of us and brought all Christians together in one body for the glorification of Jesus Christ. Becoming one also means that we are married for life.
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. You may be sitting there thinking, “he doesn’t know how my wife nags me constantly.” Jesus could say the same thing about each of us. So much of the time our prayers to him are so selfish and nagging. Does He complain? Does He stop loving us? No! Jesus continues to listen to us and to love us. Try listening to your wife and watch her respect for you grow.
If your children see the way you love your wife and how the wife respects her husband, then you will see children that loves their parents and respect their authority.
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.
Sandbox Story:
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)
This father day, let us honor our Heavenly Father. To Him all the praise and glory belongs. We have been made children of God, because we have accepted Jesus Christ as our Savior. God has created a place for us in Heaven for eternality. He will send His Son back for us, but until that time He provides for all of our needs. He doesn’t promise riches here on earth, but He does promise riches in Heaven. Until He calls us home, He has even provided us with a helper, The Holy Spirit. If we lean on His word and believe we have a peace and joy that nothing can destroy.
Invitation:
If you have a rock in your sand box, don’t struggle; call upon the Name of the Lord. God is always there, waiting for us to call out to Him.
If you don’t know God as your Heavenly Father, then you need to meet Jesus at the Cross. God sent his one and only Son to suffer and to take on our sins while hanging on that old rugged cross. God raised Jesus from the grave on the third day where He lives and reigns at the right hand of the Father today. Jesus said:
John 14:6
6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.
(NIV)
