Family Valued
Lessons in Love
June 19, 2005
“Bad dad.” That’s what my six-year-old son Ben calls me when I say or do something to discipline him. I know, those of you who have older kids are thinking, “It’s only begun.” Being a parent isn’t easy, and to be truthful, everybody’s dad is flawed in one way or another. They are too strict, or too lenient, or too distant or workaholics. We all long for a father we can love and admire. Those of us that are happy with our fathers are so because we are wise enough to love him despite his faults as he loves us. Yet the notion that there is someone out there who can straighten out all of our problems is appealing. TV shows of the fifties had such fathers such as Robert Young of Father Knows Best. This show was an early sitcom in which the plot would revolve around a variety of small problems that could finally be sorted out in the end by dear old dad. But Robert Young never was unemployed, laid off, downsized, outsourced, overworked, or underpaid. He never cheated on his wife, never arrested, never had to provide long-term care for his aged parents. He didn’t do drugs and though the real Robert Young was an alcoholic who finally got sober, the television version never struggled.
The dads in the Bible weren’t like Father Knows Best. They struggled. Their flaws stood out enough to be recorded. Isaac cannot even keep up the customs of his own people in giving his estate to his firstborn son, Esau. Jacob, his brother tricks Isaac and winds up with God’s promise and the Promised Land. But Jacob is no great shakes as a father either. He has twelve sons and most of them plot against one son, Joseph and sell him into slavery. So Jacob is not a great father as he is not able to manage jealousy and homicidal rage in his own family. Israel’s kings fare no better, David commits adultery and murder, and finally is forced into a civil war with his own son Absalom.
Even in the New Testament, there aren’t many shining father figures. Joseph is good to Mary but we have no stories about what kind of earthly father he was to Jesus. The one story we do have is about him losing the young boy Jesus altogether in a busy town.
But Jesus tells a good story about a great father recorded in Luke 15.
Then he said, "There was once a man who had two sons. The younger said to his father, ’Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’" So the father divided the property between them. It wasn’t long before the younger son packed his bags and left for a distant country. There, undisciplined and dissipated, he wasted everything he had. After he had gone through all his money, there was a bad famine all through that country and he began to hurt. He signed on with a citizen there who assigned him to his fields to slop the pigs. He was so hungry he would have eaten the corncobs in the pig slop, but no one would give him any. "That brought him to his senses. He said, ’All those farmhands working for my father sit down to three meals a day, and here I am starving to death. I’m going back to my father. I’ll say to him, Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son. Take me on as a hired hand.’ He got right up and went home to his father. "When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him. The son started his speech: ’Father, I’ve sinned against God, I’ve sinned before you; I don’t deserve to be called your son ever again.’ "But the father wasn’t listening. He was calling to the servants, ’Quick. Bring a clean set of clothes and dress him. Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet. Then get a grain-fed heifer and roast it. We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time! My son is here—given up for dead and now alive! Given up for lost and now found!’ And they began to have a wonderful time. "All this time his older son was out in the field. When the day’s work was done he came in. As he approached the house, he heard the music and dancing. Calling over one of the houseboys, he asked what was going on. He told him, ’Your brother came home. Your father has ordered a feast— barbecued beef!— because he has him home safe and sound.’ "The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in. His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen. The son said, ’Look how many years I’ve stayed here serving you, never giving you one moment of grief, but have you ever thrown a party for me and my friends? Then this son of yours who has thrown away your money on whores shows up and you go all out with a feast!’ "His father said, ’Son, you don’t understand. You’re with me all the time, and everything that is mine is yours— but this is a wonderful time, and we had to celebrate. This brother of yours was dead, and he’s alive! He was lost, and he’s found!’ " Luke 15:11-32 (Message)
What a guy!
The father gives us some great lessons in love. These lessons are for all of us, not just dads.
Lesson #1: Make your love extraordinary.
The first thing the father does in this story is a mystery. He loves his son enough to let him leave, and supplies him with a wad of cash. That’s certainly not the ordinary thing. He doesn’t try to guilt or manipulate him into submission. He doesn’t boot him out with just the shirt on his back. Does the father his son is making a wise choice? I’m sure he doesn’t. Does the father appreciate being disrespected by the son’s demand to have what will be passed on to him when his father dies? I can’t imagine he does. Yet he lets his son leave, because he loves him, yes, because the father knows love doesn’t control or manipulate or overprotect. His son isn’t a kid any more. He’s a man, young and stupid, but a man nonetheless. What the father does is an act of extraordinary love.
God loves you and I that same extraordinary love. He gave us a will and He allows us to use it even when we go against His will. You do realize that God could have created us like every other creature He shaped into life. We could have been created to operate purely on instinct, not knowing why, but just knowing it’s time to build a nest, it’s time to hibernate for the winter, it’s time to come out of the ocean and lay eggs in the sand. Or God could have put an obedience chip in our brains and we would do every single thing He wanted us to do. He could just sit in Heaven and play with a cosmic Game Boy to control every thought, word and action. He’s God- He could have done that. But He loved us extraordinarily, and made us in His own image. In Genesis 1, “Let us make humans in our own image.” In Psalm 8, David says, “What are mortals that You would even think of us, yet You made us a little lower than You?”
Parents have a God given charge to discipline their children- train them up as Proverbs 22 says. There is a right place for firmness and boundaries with children. But make your love for those in your life extraordinary like the father in Jesus’ story, even with your children. The hardest task of parenting is letting go appropriately. No kid wants dad or mom or best friend or big sister running alongside the bicycle, holding on while they’re trying to ride off to the first day of middle school. Let go of the sheltering and controlling nature. Ask God to show you where your love is inappropriately too controlling, suffocating or overprotective. Allow people you love to be in the hand of their Heavenly Father.
Lesson #2: Make your love enduring.
He loves his son enough to let him leave, but he doesn’t ever let go of him. I just gotta believe the father didn’t say to his son, “And don’t you ever come back here again!” I believe all the evidence in the story points to the exact opposite response. His son was always on his mind and heart. That’s enduring love. The son finally comes to his senses, and although is nervous about going home, seems to know that’s an option. Then Jesus says the father sees the son while he was still far off. That means the father was on the lookout, every day. His love was enduring, long suffering. The father’s heart was certainly broken all the time his son was gone, and the father’s love never weakened. If anything, it grew stronger. I heard a parent in our body say when asked if she loved one of her kids more than another, “The one I love the most is the one who needs my love the most right now.”
So many people learn to love conditionally. That’s sad. “I’ll love you as long as I think I should, or as long as you make me happy.” There is a place for conditional love. It’s called dating, because dating is what you do until someone better comes along. But in family relationships, both in your earthly and spiritual families, God says the love is to be long suffering, unconditional, and enduring whatever it needs to endure.
Father’s Day, and Mother’s Day, can be extremely painful, and I know there’s a very good chance that’s true for some here. It’s painful because parents may have violated this lesson. Their love to you for some reason wasn’t enduring. They may have said to you, “And don’t you ever come back here again!” They may have said some hurtful, severing equivalent. The end result is conditional love, and that’s an oxymoron.
Just as the father in the story had an enduring love, we are to have that same kind of love, for our kids, and for others in our family as well. Is there someone you need to talk with today to mend a broken relationship? Do you need to make a phone call after worship, or write a letter, offering enduring love just like God offers us?
Be kind and loving to each other, and forgive each other just as God forgave you in Christ.
Ephesians 4:32 (NCV)
Lesson #3: Make your love extravagant.
The father expressed his joy over his son’s return by throwing a huge welcome home party. He dressed his son in the finest clothes, gave his son the family ring, a modern day equivalent of the dad’s credit line, and ordered up a high dollar buffet feast. That’s extravagant.
The gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John record the account of the woman who poured an expensive perfume on Jesus’ head at a dinner party “got it”. She understood this lesson- make your love extravagant. People criticized her. They griped she could have sold the perfume and fed and clothed lots of poor people. The perfume was worth about a year’s wages for the average worker. Jesus, however, praised her and said wherever the gospel would be spread, her story would be told. It’s clear Jesus in this story of the loving father, wants us to get this lesson.
Extravagance doesn’t have to be in terms of money. You can be extravagant with your time as a gift of love. Take your child out to lunch this summer on a workday. Wait upon your family members. Take orders for a kitchen run while watching TV, and be lavish in what you bring them. You can be extravagant with a poem or a letter you write for someone in your family. Extravagance is by definition, over the top. Go for it! Make your love extravagant. I have work to do, but I want to be known as an extravagant lover.
Where is God showing you to be extravagant with your love for his children? Maybe a more important and scary question: where is God calling you to be extravagant in your love for Him?
Lesson #4: Make your love evident.
The oldest son isn’t too thrilled about the reception his brother gets when he returns. That happens a lot in real life, too. Two words: sibling rivalry. “Dad loves you more than he loves me. I don’t give mom and dad any grief, and you get all the attention.” It happens in churches too. “Why’s the pastor always talking about we got to get more people in here? It’s like he thinks the visitors are more important than those of us who keep this place running. I mean, look at all the work you did on that picnic last week- he wasn’t even here. He was on vacation! And does he realize just how much money I gave last month?”
That’s the heart of the older brother. He wouldn’t even go in the house for the party. But look what the father did. It’s clear that his love for the younger son is evident; he goes out to find the son who’s lost now. Some versions of scripture say the father begged him. He reminded the son of the evidence of his love for him. “You and I are very close, and everything I have is yours.”
Sometimes we need to be reminded just how evident God’s love for us is, and sometimes we need to make our love evident to those we’ve been placed in relationship with. We don’t get to choose our earthly family. And we can only choose somewhat our spiritual family. We’re to make our love evident.
Dads, I’m going to go out on a limb with you since it’s Father’s Day. I’m going to challenge you a bit. Some of you are typical males, and that means you’re selfish. You’re all about you, your work, your hobbies, your space, and if there’s any energy or interest left after that, you’ll spend it on your kids and your wife. God has placed a high calling on you as a father. Your kids only get one dad. You’re it. Your company can get a bunch more like you to do your work when you retire or you switch jobs, but not so with your kids. You’re dad. Your golfing buddies can fill their foursome if you can’t make, so don’t worry. Make your love evident to your kids. They don’t yearn for just a father figure. They yearn for you. Forget the past; start right now to be the loving father God calls you to be. What course corrections do you need to make?
No dad is perfect; we said that at the start. But some dads stand out. Their love shouts over the whispers of their flaws.
Team Hoyt video (available from www.sermonspice.com)
Do you think Rick Hoyt has any doubts about how much his father loves him?
Can your kids, your spouse, your family members, and your friends say the same about you? Make your love extraordinary, enduring, extravagant, and evident.
Do you have any doubts about how much your Heavenly Father loves you? Look at the cross.
But God showed his great love for us by sending Christ to die for us while we were still sinners.
Romans 5:8 (NLT)
God is your Loving Father. He made a way for wayward children like you and me to come home to His loving embrace. He sent Jesus to bridge the chasm your sin has put between you and God. His cross means you can get across and restore your rightful place in the family, and live intimately with God, wide open in the extraordinary, enduring, extravagant, evident love that He has for you, His child.
Happy Father’s Day, Dad.
