The Perfect Father
6/19/05
Father’s Day
Lighthouse Assembly of God
Pastor Greg Tabor
Introduction
Today is a day we honor fathers. Perhaps your father is with you this morning or maybe you will meet him for lunch or maybe a card or a phone call is all you can do because of the distance between ya’ll. Maybe your kids will be honoring you today in some special way. For some in here there’s been many Father’s Days, but for others, they are just getting started.
Some in here may have wonderful memories of their dad, while others remember a cold, callous, indifferent dad or maybe even a wicked, hurtful man.
On Father’s Day we try to focus on the good qualities of our dads. The facts are that none of us have had perfect dads. Even the best dad has his flaws. This morning I want to take a look at the Perfect Father, your Heavenly Father. My hopes are that dads would want to be more like Him and that all of us would put our hopes in Him. He’s the best Father of them all.
I want to focus on 5 roles I’ve found that my perfect Father fills:
He’s my provider
In early times the man was the provider and the woman the nurturer. And while culture has changed some things, it is still fundamentally true. The man has the responsibility to provide for his family. He is the head of the family, therefore the buck stops there.
In Matthew 7:9-11 NIV, Jesus says:
9“Which of you, if his son asks for bread, will give him a stone? 10Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? 11If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!
A variation of this is found in Luke 11:11-13 NIV, where the gift of the Holy Spirit is mentioned as the provision:
11“Which of you fathers, if your son asks for a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!”
God will provide the Holy Spirit whom Jesus said would clothe us in power (24:49) and whom he referred to as the ‘promise of my Father’ (ESV). What a promise of great provision!
Granted, there are wicked parents that abuse their children and would give a stone if the son asks for bread. But generally speaking, most parents wouldn’t think of depriving their children of the basic necessities of life. And they surely wouldn’t give them a poor substitute as some kind of joke to mock them. Earthly dads are sinners and far from perfect. But most of them would provide for their children’s needs. How much more so can God give us exactly what we are needing!
In Matthew 6:33 God promises to provide the things we need if we will seek first His kingdom. I know we can say like Abraham in Genesis 22:14, “The Lord will provide.” Like a good Father, He may not supply every single want in our life, He may not supply every need in the way we think it should be provided, but He will take care of His children because He is a Perfect Father.
He’s my disciplinarian
We tend to not like the word disciplinarian. Perhaps you cringe a little because your dad was a staunch disciplinarian. I’ve heard older folks talking about being ‘taken to the wood shed.’ Perhaps you cringe because your dad was abusive and punished you in ways that strike fear in you today. Or maybe we don’t like discipline at all anyways and would rather not talk about it.
The perfect Father disciplines. A great passage on God disciplining His children is found in Hebrews 12. In this passage the writer is encouraging the readers to not give up under the persecution they are experiencing, but to realize that God is disciplining them. That may seem strange to us, but God uses various things to not only punish wrong doing, but to prevent wrong doing and to educate His children in the way they should walk. He is in the process of training us. Sometimes He uses methods we wish He’d bypass. We will go through some suffering. Jesus told us that. But we need to realize that when God disciplines us, He allows things to come against us in order for us to grow spiritually.
John MacArthur, Jr. explains the meaning of the word discipline: “The word is a broad term, signifying whatever parents and teachers do to train, correct, cultivate, and educate children in order to help them develop and mature as they ought.” He also states, “God uses hardship and affliction as a means of discipline, a means of training His children, of helping them mature in their spiritual lives.”
The writer of Hebrews lets us know:
- that discipline is a sign of sonship (v.7)
- If we do not undergo discipline we aren’t true sons (v.8)
- If we respected our human fathers for disciplining us, then shouldn’t we submit that much more to God who is doing this for our own good (v.9-10)?
- God’s discipline, if we let it, will result in our spiritual growth (v.10-11)
As we should be glad that our dads kept us in line and taught us right from wrong, even when it was painful, we should rejoice that our heavenly Father, who is perfect in his administering of discipline, would treat us as sons and daughters disciplining us so that we might grow in Him. Understand, discipline doesn’t just refer to punishment for sins. John MacArthur, Jr. writes that God has three purposes of discipline: punishment, prevention and education. God gave Paul a thorn in the flesh to prevent him from being proud, not to punish him for pride. God allowed Job to undergo suffering not because he was sinful or to prevent him from sin, but rather so that He would come to know God in a whole new light.
God can use even the most painful of situations to teach us things we might never have listened to Him about when we were all comfortable. The fact is that the Bible tells us we will have trials and God always uses everything for our good and His glory. So listen to your teacher in the midst of your sufferings. God’s ultimate goal is that we would become more like Him in our character.
He’s my security
Have you ever heard a little boy say, ‘My dad can beat up your dad’? Kids like to think of their parents as the biggest and strongest.
Mason the other night in the bed was scared of the shadows. I told him I wasn’t scared and he rolled over and said then he wouldn’t be either. In a matter of minutes he was sound asleep.
What is this all about? Security. The Father is the protector. Has been down throughout history and will be till Jesus comes despite the feminization of our culture. Dads should be looked to as the protector. And dads should see themselves as the protector.
As the Perfect Father, God is our protector. In a computer word search I did in the NIV it has listed 16 times the word fortress used to refer to God in the book of Psalms. God is a safe haven to run to when you feel insecure and afraid.
We should find security in the fact that nothing happens to us that doesn’t first pass through His hands. And what passes through His hands is meant by God for our good, not our destruction. Job couldn’t have been afflicted with out God giving the devil permission. And it is also good to note that God does at times pull us out of the trial as He did Peter in Acts 12. It is right to pray for protection. Even Paul asked for prayer for his rescue from unbelievers in Romans 15:31. God still offers physical protection and a shielding in our lives. We would do well to ask for God’s protection from the enemy and evil-doers, and then trust Him when He allows us to go through the storm rather than pulls us out.
Something else we should take note of is that while on this earth our lives could be snuffed out, God offers protection that no earthly Father offers. He offers protection of the soul.
Even during a time of suffering for Paul, he was able to write Timothy and say, “I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him for that day” (2 Timothy 1:12 NIV). At the end of Jude’s letter he writes, “To him who is able to keep you from falling and to present you before his glorious presence without fault and with great joy”(Jude 24). These men were confident that God offered protection that would see believers through to the day they would be presented to God.
He’s personal
Israel had a problem with wanting to be like nations around them. Because of this they had a problem with idolatry. God pronounced judgment on them and spoke against idolatry. In a passage where God is speaking of the worthlessness of idols, he states:
“They know nothing, they understand nothing; their eyes are plastered over so they cannot see, and their minds closed so they cannot understand.” Isaiah 44:18 NIV
In Jeremiah, God tells Israel to not learn the ways of the people around them. He speaks of their idols by saying:
“Like a scarecrow in a melon patch, their idols cannot speak; they must be carried because they cannot walk. Do not fear them; they can do no harm nor can they do any good.” Jeremiah 10:5 NIV
But God isn’t a block of wood or chiseled stone. He is able to have a relationship with you. He wants you to know Him.
In Habakkuk 2:19 God asks a question about idols, “Can it give guidance?” Obviously no. It is a ridiculous to think that idols made by man out of a tree or stone could provide any sort of personal relationship with people on any level. God knew this and rebuked His people for their rejection of Him and their dependence upon carved wood and chiseled stone.
Unlike the impersonal idols of the nations in Israel’s day, God is very personal. There are still many in the world that bow to idols. But they offer no relationship and their cold eyes show no care. But listen how personal God is.
Matthew 10:30 NIV tells us: “And even the very hairs of your head are all numbered.”
Psalm 139:13-16 gives a picture of our God involved in the formation of our lives and who knows all of our days before any come to pass. Jeremiah 1:5 gives light to the fact that God knows us and His plans for us before we are even conceived.
God is personal. When we pray we call Him “Our Father” according to Jesus’ example of prayer to the disciples. He knows everything about your life whether you want Him to or not. And if you give Him the opportunity, He knows how to untangle your messes, fix your brokenness, and get you back in good working order. He is not a god who does not speak or give guidance, but rather He is a God who speaks and delights in giving us guidance.
He’s always there
Not only is it good to know that God is personal, but it is good to know that He is present. In a world where so many fathers are characterized as absentee dads, it is good to know that the heavenly Father is always present.
Deuteronomy 4:7 NIV Moses asked the people, “What other nation is so great as to have their gods near them the way the LORD our God is near us whenever we pray to him?”
We are invited to approach the throne of grace with confidence in Hebrews 4.
Hebrews 13:5 quotes Deuteronomy 31:6 when it says, ““Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”
It is good to know that unlike so many absentee dads, God will never walk out on you.
“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” Psalm 46:1 NIV
And while adversity will come it is great to know that all of those problems we go through will not be able to separate us from the love of God (see Romans 8).
Conclusion
We barely touched the surface of who the Father is. But we know that He is our Perfect Father. He’s the Father you have always wanted. The great thing is that He is the Father who is available to you. He’ll gladly adopt you into His family.
As a dad in here today, I challenge you to be a provider for your family, to protect them to the best of your ability, to discipline your children training them to be godly kids, to be personally involved in the details of their life, and to fight against your own absenteeism. They need you there. And you need to be an imitator of God, asking Him to make you more like Him. You’ll never be God. But you can grow in His character. And since they’ll want to be just like you, you need to be just like Him.
If you are in here today and you are really needing the touch of a perfect Father today, please know that God is here and wants to minister to you this morning. When everyone else fails He never fails. Put your trust in Him.
