In preparing this message a single song kept coming to me. Its one of those songs that once its in your head you can’t get it out, and what’s worse is it is sung by a group that I don’t really like all that much.
The song is probably familiar to most of us here; its by “The Judds”, the song is also the title of the message this morning. Daddy’s Hands, is a song about a person who reflects back on their father and how his hands meant different things at different times. Sometimes they were soft and tender, sometimes they were hard as steel, but no matter what they were like Daddy’s Hands were always filled with love; love for his family, his wife and his children.
On this Father’s Day I can’t help but reflect on Daddy’s Hands, not mine or yours but our heavenly father’s hands, our Daddy’s Hands.
The word Abba, is Aramaic for Father in the most familiar sense of knowing a father, the closest parallel in English would simply be, daddy. To cry out to God as Abba, Father is to cry out with our hearts as children and with our minds acknowledging that he is the one who we follow and obey.
Our daddy’s hands do so many things in our lives. God’s hands serve many purposes, just as our own hands accomplish many tasks in our lives.
Our Eternal Daddy’s Hands: Instruct us, command us, guide and warn us. These are probably the tasks that Daddy’s hands do, that we simply resist the most. God looks to help us find our way through life, he looks to direct our paths, and he looks to be a light for our journey. He speaks to us through his written word, through prayer, through our own intellect and through the voices of those who have gone before us. But, so many times we be come convinced that we know more than God does and we refuse to take direction from him.
We like stubborn adolescents develop arguments that seek to rationalize our own actions so that we may be continue to go the direction that we have chosen for ourselves. We look to culture to tell us what is right and what is wrong and we begin to deceive ourselves, and then we begin to resist our Daddy’s hands. When all the while he is simply looking out for our best interests.
I saw a T-shirt this last week that had the roles of the Father printed down the front. This list went something like this:
Feed baby Change diapers
Chase toddler Fix Bicycle
Go Fishing Get Stupid over night
Loan Car Keys Pay for college
Get brilliant over night Repeat for sibling.
I am convinced that with each generation we reach that age of adolescence and we find that God has gotten stupid over night. None of the things he says make sense, he seems irrational, irrelevant, out dated, and absurd. And, and so we begin to ignore everything he says which gets us into a lot of trouble. Then one day after we have matured spiritually we look at God and realize that all of the sudden he has become brilliant! All of the things that he has been telling us are suddenly full of truth and wisdom. We must be open to the instruction, commands, guidance, and warning of Daddy’s Hands, or else we risk resisting God.
In the Old Testament one of the four tasks that a father had to his son was to teach that son a trade or a skill. A daddy’s hands train us; they teach us how to do things. And our Father has given us gifts that he wants us to use, through the Holy Spirit he teaches us how to use these gifts, he gives us the direction and the ability to use them so that we might minister to those who are all around us.
One day while we were packing a U-Haul to move, my son went running for the street. He had seen something on the other side that he wanted to check out and he went running. Knowing the danger and wanting to protect him from harm, I quickly reached out and clamped down onto his shoulder. In our lives God’s hands come down on our shoulders as well, they restrain us from things that are dangerous, and they also restrain us from doing things that might hurt others.
You know the one aspect of my Daddy’s hands that I couldn’t stand as a child? When my father told me that I was wrong, and he rebuked me for doing something, I hated those times. We live in a time when to tell for someone to be rebuked is seen as an act of intolerance and hatred. We live in a time when we are free to run headlong into traffic and we are taught to push off the oppressive hands that tells us we are heading for danger.
Proverbs 3:11
My child, do not despise the LORD’s discipline
or be weary of his reproof,
12 for the LORD reproves the one he loves,
as a father the son in whom he delights…
17 Whoever heeds instruction is on the path to life,
but one who rejects a rebuke goes astray…
A wise child loves discipline,
but a scoffer does not listen to rebuke…
I find it interesting that the only people that need to be rebuked are others who are doing things that we don’t like. As a nation we have ignored our Daddy’s rebuke and his correction, we have made excuses and we hide behind our logic and reason, ignoring what God has written in his Word. We should be delighting in his rebuke, and in his correction, because it is then that we know we are following the path that he has laid out before us.
One of my favorite things to do when my son was a baby is something I don’t get to do any more. I no longer get to hold him in my arms and feed him. Sure, I provide food for him, but I miss those times when I could hold him and feed him. Fathers, we are not the only one’s who like to feed our children. God, truly takes care of all our needs, he makes it so we don’t have to worry about what we will eat, or wear. He takes care of us, and he delights in nourishing us. He seeks to fill our needs and he simply wants us to follow him wherever he may lead.
But, you know there is one job that Daddy’s hands have that we haven’t looked at yet. This is probably the most important job that his hands have. Our daddy’s hands love us; they have reached out across time and across space to embrace us with the love that only God can give.
A love that goes beyond all understanding, a love that embraces us as we are and does not demand for us to be perfect before we come to accept that embrace. A love that sent his only son to live a mortal life, to be ridiculed, nailed to a cross and die as a sacrifice for our sins, for our mistakes, for our misdeeds. A love that does not fade and that endures even when everything else around us has fallen apart. An embrace that nothing can separate us from. A love that seeks to forgive us, guide us, nurture us, teach us, rebuke us, train us, and most importantly a love that seeks to grant us salvation.
This is what Daddy’s hands are for…
On this day that we have set aside to remember our fathers, let us remember our Abba Father, let us remember his hands, and all that he has freely given to us if we simply come by faith to the foot of the cross.
