Father's Day
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Introduction
Introduction
When does a joke become a Dad joke? When it’s apparent! I just had to start off Father’s Day with a good Dad joke. Nothing beats a good eye-rolling pun.
Now just so you know I’m not planning to always preach about each holiday as it comes, with the exception of course of Christmas and Easter, and will probably in most cases just continue whatever sermon series I’m working on in the future, but last year when I was doing the other holidays like Mother’s Day, Thanksgiving, etc, I just happened to be away on vacation for the Father’s Day sermon, so I thought I’d make up for it this year.
Now there are a million books, videos, seminars and other sources of wisdom out there that can teach you how to be a good Dad. In fact I think in many ways the reason these books can claim such great success with their readers is because any Father who is intentionally trying to be a better Father is off to a great start in comparison to those who aren’t. In any case, today I’m not interested in talking about how we can be good Dads, but how we can be Godly Dads. There’s only one source for that: The Bible.
So what does the Bible have to teach us about being good Fathers? A LOT. For starters the very fact that God calls Himself The Father means that everything God does teaches us something about being a Father. Then there are the examples of human fathers in the Bible and what we can learn from their negative and positive examples about Fatherhood. There are also lots of passages in Scripture about parenthood in general. So with so much material to choose from I decided to narrow my study just to the passages written specifically to Fathers about being Fathers. So I grouped them together into a few categories of what the Bible has to say to Fathers. It says these things:
Have Children
Don’t Anger Your Children
Train Your Children
Discipline Your Children
Provide for Your Family
I know, five whole points! I’m going crazy here. Some of them will be quite brief though, especially the first one, where the Bible encourages men to become Fathers.
Have Children
Have Children
Illustration: Owen vomiting down my bathrobe.
So hearing that story you may wonder why I would still whole-heartedly recommend that men become fathers. But don’t just take my word for it. God’s very first command to mankind was to have lots of children.
God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. Rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and every creature that crawls on the earth.”
Later on in Genesis God repeats the same commandment to Noah and his sons after the flood. Now one could argue that this command was important at the start in order to continue the species and now that we have reached over 8 billion people we can cross that one off the to-do list. Mission accomplished, well done Shem, Ham and Japheth. Yet here is what Psalm 127:3-5 says about the value of children:
Psalm 127:3–5 (CSB)
Sons are indeed a heritage from the Lord, offspring, a reward.
Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the sons born in one’s youth. Happy is the man who has filled his quiver with them.
They will never be put to shame when they speak with their enemies at the city gate.
That seems like a pretty glowing endorsement of becoming a father to me. The Bible always speaks positively about having and raising children, and is so full of advice about being parents that it seems to assume that most people will have children.
Does this mean that everyone should have kids and you should feel bad if you don’t? Certainly not. Nowhere in the Bible after Noah’s sons does God command people to have children. The Bible only ever recommends parenthood, it never commands it.
In fact Paul expresses in 1 Corinthians his preference for people to remain single so they can focus on the Kingdom of God, and I assume I don’t have to explain that if Paul calls you to stay single he would also be expecting you to not have children.
But to be honest I think the call to fatherhood is actually in a sense on every man in the church. Just because you don’t have biological children doesn’t mean you can’t be a father to someone who needs one. In fact Paul and John often refer to the members of their churches as their “children” in God. So even if all the advice we’re about to look at from Scripture doesn’t apply to your household, maybe you can find a way to apply it to fatherhood in the church.
Don’t Provoke Your Children
Don’t Provoke Your Children
Illustration: Anyone who’s raised or maybe even babysat toddlers knows how easy it is to accidentily provoke a toddler.
Mind you I don’t think that’s exactly what Paul has in mind here in Ephesians 6:4
Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
It’s pretty impossible sometimes to predict exactly what will trigger a toddler breakdown. I can remember one time when I was trying to brush Owen’s teeth he was upset that I was trying to brush his teeth for him, but more upset when I tried to hand him the toothbrush to do it himself. Rather instead I’m sure Paul had in mind the kind of Dad I think all if not most of us have met. Dads who provoke and anger their children needlessly. In Colossians Paul says basically the same thing but uses the word “exasperate.”
Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they won’t become discouraged.
Now neither of these I think is intended to make us into pushovers who won’t do anything that risks making our children upset. Sometimes you need to stick to your guns and put your foot down when drawing clear boundaries and disciplining your children. It’s just that probably more often than we realize we can avoid provoking or exasperating our kids without need. Katie is much better than I am about finding a way to keep and enforce boundaries while working with our children to find a way to avoid temper flare ups.
It’s all I believe a matter of balance. Knowing when to be firm and when to be soft. Because if we even from a well meaning place are provoking our children needlessly to anger than we are putting them in a frame of mind that leads to rash decision making and therefore often sinfulness. So it’s our responsibility as fathers to do our best to make sure that we aren’t abusing our position in the family to frustrate our children and lead them into lives of sinfulness. The Scripture has a different definition in mind.
Train Your Children
Train Your Children
Illustration: One of the hardest parts of training children, at least for me, is allowing them to do something with me or for me that would be 1000 times easier and faster to just do myself. That’s part of the reason that training our children requires intentionality.
Yet despite the challenge training our children to live good godly lives is something the Scripture calls us repeatedly to do. In that same Ephesians 6:4 passage that warns against stirring up anger in our children Paul contrasts that with training them and instructing them in the Lord’s way.
Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.
And this isn’t just a New Testament idea, but was an important part of Israel’s responsibility as God’s people. They were tasked by God with bringing up each new generation to follow God and His laws after them to preserve a people for God and prepare the way for the Messiah. The Lord says so in Deuteronomy 6:6-9
These words that I am giving you today are to be in your heart. Repeat them to your children. Talk about them when you sit in your house and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Bind them as a sign on your hand and let them be a symbol on your forehead. Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your city gates.
I love how God doesn’t just say “teach them to your children” but encourages them to be constantly talking about it, writing scripture all over the walls and even displaying them on their bodies. That’s the practical advice God is giving for how to raise up children who follow after God like you do. Make God’s word central to every aspect of your life, a constant in your speech and maybe even put some on your walls.
One skill I would love to hone and master is using “teachable moments.” Little occasions in day to day life where something that might have passed unnoticed or been seen as unimportant can be used to teach some valuable lesson. In this case we’re looking for moments where we can intentionally teach our kids about who God is, who Jesus is, who the Holy Spirit is, and how the Bible teaches us to live. In this way we can do our best to set up our children to begin right. Or as the book of proverbs puts it,
Start a youth out on his way;
even when he grows old he will not depart from it.
Now this is not a gaurantee from God that if you start out children right they will never stray from the way that you raised them. The nature of the book of Proverbs is that it is a book of wisdom that shares general principles about living a wise and godly life. Thus in general if you train your children to do right than they will continue to do right.
Discipline Your Children
Discipline Your Children
Illustration: The process of transplanting a blueberry bush, how it seems on the surface like you may be hurting the plant, you are looking out for their health in the long term.
In the same way, discipline is the way we guide our children to a better future, even if in the moment it might seem like harm. This is why the Bible has this sometimes hard to swallow pill in Proverbs:
The one who will not use the rod hates his son,
but the one who loves him disciplines him diligently.
Now I am not going to get into the debate on the effectiveness of physical discipline from the pulpit right now. There is an argument to be made that “the rod” can be taken as a metaphor to mean all corrective discipline, although in the context of ancient Israel Solomon probably meant this on both a literal and metaphorical level. The point of the matter is that although in the moment giving consequences can be painful even if you don’t use physical punishment (toddler meltdowns because they didn’t get their way can be quite something), the cost of not disciplining children is much higher. I think we’ve all seen some adults behaving in a way that makes you think they probably could have used some more discipline.
This is why God leads by example in this. Again in proverbs it says,
Do not despise the Lord’s instruction, my son,
and do not loathe his discipline;
for the Lord disciplines the one he loves,
just as a father disciplines the son in whom he delights.
God shows His love for us in disciplining us for doing wrong. Read the Bible with the point of view that God is a Father disciplining wayward children, and you will see that God goes to extremes to teach us the right way that we should live. He loves us and wants what is best for us, and going our own way and falling into sin is certainly not what is best. We should strive to be like God in this way as earthly fathers.
Nowhere does scripture more drastically describe the consequences of failing to discipline our children more than in
Discipline your son while there is hope;
don’t set your heart on being the cause of his death.
Now by no means can I say that everyone who has died on the streets or in prison did so because their father failed to discipline them. In most cases there’s no way for us as human observers to know what the root cause of those sorts of things is in someone’s life. Yet I wonder if we knew what God knows if it would surprise us just how many of the people who die needlessly did so because of a lack of a father’s loving guidance and discipline?
And after all, the word for discipline and the word for disciple come from the same root for a reason. Discipline is part of what shapes us into the disciples God wants us to be and He uses suffering in our lives in order to discipline us as the author of Hebrews says in
Endure suffering as discipline: God is dealing with you as sons. For what son is there that a father does not discipline?
Therefore he not only assumes that a father will discipline his sons, but goes so far as to use our suffering as evidence for the fact that God is our Father and is treating us as His own children. What a privilige that is, to be considered children of God, and to be valued so highly as to be worth being trained and disciplined in His ways.
Provide for Your Family
Provide for Your Family
Illustration: The other day I saw a red fox with Owen and Lucy. I have always loved Red Foxes, but only recently learned that they are great dads. They provide for the mother after the birth of her children. He brings her food every four to six hours.
There is a long history of fathers being the ones to go out and provide for their families. We return to proverbs once again to see this in the Bible,
A good man leaves an inheritance to his grandchildren,
but the sinner’s wealth is stored up for the righteous.
So not only is Proverbs saying a man should provide enough for his family to survive day to day, but enough to outlast his own life and even the lives of his children to provide an inheritance for his grandchildren. That’s some high level providing there. Of course this is a small picture of the kind of Father we have in Heaven. He is of course God our provider, one of the names of God in the Old Testament, who according to Philippians 4:19
And my God will supply all your needs according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus.
So God takes care of all of us, and calls fathers to provide for our families both to take care of their needs but also to be a living symbol of the God who provides for each of us. Perhaps this second part, the part where we are pictures of who God is, is the reason why Paul has such strong words about fathers who will not provide for their family in
But if anyone does not provide for his own family, especially for his own household, he has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
Primarily in context Paul is talking about men providing for their widowed mothers, but he also says “especially for his own household” making this application even stronger as a call for us to provide for our wives and our children.
Conclusion
Conclusion
So that’s the high calling God places on fathers, and the challenge we are called to this Fathers day. A Godly Father avoids unnecessarily stirring up anger in his children so that they are not provoked to sin. A Godly Father teaches his children how to follow God the same way that He does. A Godly Father Disciplines his children to keep them from going astray into sinful lifestyles that lead to death. And a Godly Father does all in his power to supply for the needs of his family.
This isn’t just for literal fathers. Remember that as a church we are a family. The moment we put our faith in Christ and followed Him we were adopted into a new household. So some among us may not be fathers to biological children, but that doesn’t mean you can’t be a spiritual father in our church. This doesn’t mean you can’t reach out with fatherly love toward the poor, the widow and the orphan.
Above all things I want to remind all of us the most important reason that the Bible puts such a high value on fathers and calls them to such high standards. This is because God has called Himself our Father. I’ve mentioned it before in this sermon, but what we do as fathers for this reason reflects on who our heavenly father is. Like it or not dads shape our theology without even realising it, because the first time you hear someone call God “Our Father” how could you not compare Him to your earthly Father? This is a scary thought for those of us who are dads. To think that everything I do is teaching Owen and Lucy and Eliza what it means for God to be a Father is to terrify myself with the weight of the responsibility.
Thankfully God does not leave us alone. We received the Holy Spirit as our helper for a reason, and with prayer and practice we can strive to be fathers who may not be perfect, but point our children to the Father who is Perfect. Who is much slower to anger, and much more abiding in love. So this Fathers day let us foremost celebrate Our Heavenly Father, and celebrate those things about our earthly fathers that reflect Him.