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By Pastor Glenn Pease
Dick Van Dyke tells the stories of how children act toward their father when they are angry.
In his book Faith, Hope and Hilarity he tells of a boy who had been spanked by his father for making too much noise.
The boy climbed into his mother's lap and said, "Mama I wish you had married Jesus.
He loves little children."
Another little boy who had been punished for misbehaving carefully left his father out of the lineup when he said his prayers.
When he finished he said to his dad, "I suppose you noticed you wasn't in it."
It is not easy to be a good father, for even when you do the right thing you are not necessarily rewarded for it.
This is so clearly portrayed by Jesus in the story of the Prodigal Son.
The poor father could not seem to win.
He had two boys each of which was worse than the other in different ways.
The younger son was a liberal rascal who cared only for his own pleasure.
He went off and wasted his inheritance on wine, women, and song.
He brought disgrace to the family name, and he was an embarrassment to dad.
His older son was a self-centered conservative.
He was a workaholic who devoted his life to the farm, but never learned how to enjoy life, and have some fun once in a while.
He resisted those who did, and so he was also an embarrassment to his father.
Two boys from the same father, and we can assume from the same mother, and they are as opposite as day and night.
They are both extremists at opposite ends.
You have the open minded liberal and the narrow minded conservative.
Poor dad has to cope with this pathetic pair of sorry siblings.
This parable, and the whole of the Bible, and life in general make our first point clear.
I. IT IS A HARD JOB TO BE A FATHER.
If you have any doubts about it, just ask God.
He has had the hardest time of any father on record trying to raise a decent family.
His chosen people were often more rotten than the pagan kids next door.
A major portion of the Old Testament deals with God's grief, and His judgment on His own children because of their folly and rebellion.
Many a father as a child who is just like the kids he doesn't want them to play with.
God had this very problem, and this confirms the message that Dr. Dobson is continuing proclaiming to Christian parents.
You can do everything right to the best of your ability, and pray, and teach wisely, and still have a child grow up and be a rebel.
He is constantly dealing with godly Christians who have an ungodly child.
They are devastated by it, and they are filled with guilt because they wonder where they failed.
Dobson says this is nonsense.
You just as well blame God for all the rotten things His children do, as to blame yourself for what your children choose to do.
God does what a father ought to do.
He gives love, guidance, and instruction for life through His Word, and still those with all of His provision choose to go after idols, and follow the path of sinful folly.
The father of the Prodigal and the elder brother is portrayed by Jesus as an ideal loving father.
Yet neither of his boys took after him.
They were defective specimens of humanity.
If you think there is a magic formula that will always produce and ideal child, you are blind to reality, for neither God nor man has ever found such a formula.
The Bible reveals children who have an awful background and home life grow up to be impressive godly people.
Then there are those who have the ideal environment who grow up to be scoundrels.
This is not to lead us to conclude that it does not matter what you do, for it does.
The majority of good and godly people had fathers who were good and godly.
The majority of bad kids had bad fathers.
It matters very much the kind of dad you are, for this will impact your kids for life.
My point is that every child has freedom of choice, and the best parents can have children who choose to be prodigals.
The best of parents can have the worse of kids, just like the father of these two boys in our text.
Chuck Swindoll in his book Simple Faith tells the true story of Robert Robinson.
As a young boy he heard the great evangelist George Whitefield in London.
He was converted and felt a powerful call to the ministry.
At age 25 he became the pastor of the Baptist Church in Cambridge.
He was so successful that it went to his head, and he became a carnal child of God.
He published several volumes of his sermons, and a couple of hymns.
One of them many of us have sung often: "Come, thou fount of every blessing, turn my heart to sing thy grace; streams of mercy never ceasing, call for songs of loudest praise."
His song lived on even though he faded from the scene because of his bad choices.
Swindoll tells of an incident in his life that others doubt ever really happened, but has become a part of his history.
Robinson was on a stagecoach, and he was sitting by a woman reading a book.
She was so blessed by her reading that she had to share it.
She pointed to this hymn that he had written, and asked him what he thought of it.
He was overcome with emotion and burst into tears and said, "Madam, I am the poor unhappy man who wrote that hymn many years ago, and I would give a thousand worlds, if I had them, to enjoy the feelings I had then."
Here was a prodigal child of God who made choices that lead him to be an embarrassment to his heavenly Father.
History is loaded with children of God who are rebels in the family of God.
Why is it so hard to succeed, even for a perfect and ideal father?
Because it is a hard job to be a father.
The mother has all the advantages.
She has carried the child for 9 months, and then she gives birth to the child.
There is a built in intimacy of mother and child that a father can never have.
He has one strike against him before the game of parenting even begins.
The second strike is that men are more self-centered by nature just because they do not have the gift of intimacy that mothers have.
This leads them to have a tendency to give their children a self-centered perspective.
Randy Lindsey tells of the little boy who was late for Sunday School.
The teacher asked him why he was late and he said, "I was going to go fishing but my daddy wouldn't let me." "Good for him," she said, "And did he tell you why you couldn't go fishing on Sunday?"
He responded, "Yes he did.
He said there wasn't enough bait for both of us."
This may be an extreme case, but the fact is, fathers struggle with intimacy.
Four year old daughter demanded that her father read her the story of baby Moses night after night, and finally he decided to tape record the story.
When she asked to hear it he just switched on the recorder.
That was fine for two nights, but then she came to dad again and pushed the book at him.
"Now honey," he said, "You know how to turn on the recorder."
"Yes," she replied, "But I can't sit on its lap."
Children crave intimacy, and fathers seek to escape it.
It is easy to do what you like, and dads tend to watch TV, putter in the garage, or play sports.
These are fun and easy, and they call for no intimacy.
Men do not enjoy intimacy like women do.
They can't get enough of it, and men cannot escape it enough.
What wives and kids most want from a father is what is least wanting to give, and that is why it is so hard to be a father.
Lewis Smedes in his book caring and commitment says his studies reveal most fathers have a feeling of failure about raising their children.
They know they lose their temper more than they ought to, and they know they avoid intimacy and getting close, and they know they try buy things to take the place of this closeness.
It is just plain hard to be a dad, and there is no escape like there is for other relationships.
You can just walk away from a friend.
You can cease to be a husband or wife.
But you cannot stop being a parent.
Even if you abandon your child you cannot make them a non-child.
Once you have a child you don't have to say that you will be their parent until death parts you.
There is no other option.
They are your children till death.
It is one of the most permanent relationships of life.
You can be a wonderful parent, a poor parent, or a mediocre parent, but you cannot be a non-parent once you are one.
There is no place to go to resign.
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