The Ultimate Father

INTRODUCTION

 Today we are celebrating the Father’s Day holiday.

 This is a day in which we come together to celebrate fatherhood.

 Fatherhood is something that in our society we need to celebrate. I have mentioned to you before about how much society has tried to discount the role of the father in the life of a child. TV most usually depicts fathers as men with a spine and without a clue.

 There are groups out there today who are telling society that fathers are not important. The government has even tried to replace the father in some segments of our society.

 Each year more and more children are raised in homes in which there is no father present.

 Why has fatherhood taken such a bad rap? Could it be that today when you speak about how God is our Father, that many people do not get a favorable impression of God from that because they did not have a father or they had an abusive father?

 I find it interesting that in the Bible, especially in the New Testament, God is called “Father.”

 In the Old Testament God is not referred to as Father very much. That is because in the Old Testament, God’s relationship with people was mostly done through other people like the prophets and priest.

 When Jesus came, He brought us into more a Father child relationship with God. Now we do not need a priest to go to God like they did in the Old Testament, we can pray directly to Him. Jesus made this change in relationship possible.

 ROMANS 8:15 tells us, “For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, "Abba! Father!"

 And GALATIANS 4:6 says, “Because you are sons, God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, "Abba! Father!"

 What is it about God that makes it possible for us to call Him Father? Is a person just a father because of their participation in the birth of a child or is there more to being a father than that?

 I believe that not every man who sires a child is a father. Today I want us to look at the ultimate father and see what He provides to us to earn the right of being called Father. I want us to also look at the appropriate response that we should have to the ultimate father and to our earthy father’s.

SERMON

THE ULTIMATE FATHER PROVIDES:

I. LOVE

1. One thing that a father provides to his children and family is love.

2. God earns the right to be called father because he has provided love to us. Listen to these passages.

 ROM 5:8 But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

 ROM 8:32 He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

 EPH 2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,

 2THESS 2:16 Now may our Lord Jesus Christ Himself and God our Father, who has loved us and given us eternal comfort and good hope by grace,

 1JO 4:10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

 JOHN 3:16 "For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

3. God loves us with an unconditional love. This is the type of love a real father has for his children and family. A father earns the right to be called father by his love.

 1JO 3:1 See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

4. A father who loves his children will provide structure and discipline for them.

II. DISCIPLINE

1. A loving father will do one of the toughest things that a father will have to do, discipline his children.

 PRO 3:12 For whom the Lord loves He reproves, Even as a father corrects the son in whom he delights.

2. The word discipline means “to train”, “to teach”. It comes from the word in which we get “disciple”. PRO 4:1 Hear, O sons, the instruction of a father, And give attention that you may gain understanding,