The Exemplary Father

Psalm 89:1–4 NASB95

I will sing of the lovingkindness of the Lord forever; To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth. For I have said, “Lovingkindness will be built up forever; In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness.” “I have made a covenant with My chosen; I have sworn to David My servant, I will establish your seed forever And build up your throne to all generations.” Selah.

Introduction

In her book The Toxic War on Masculinity, author Nancy Pearcey notes how it has become more acceptable to hate men and the idea of masculinity. She relates a comment from a British feminist in the New Statesman periodical, “You can’t hate all men, can you? Actually, I can . . . As a class, I hate men.”

A trending hashtag: #KillAllMen.

You can buy t-shirts that say “So many men. So little ammunition.”

Book titles: I Hate Men, The End of Men, and Are Men Necessary?

She tells of a media researcher who conducted an extensive content analysis or more than 2000 mass media portrayals of men, including news, feature articles, talk shows, and more. He found that more than 75% of all media representations of men portrayed them as “villians, aggressors, perverts, and philanderers.”

Think of Homer Simpson, Ray from “Everyone Loves Raymond,” Tim the Toolman Taylor from “Home Improvement.” All fathers. All goofballs.

The portrayal of men in our society is not good. In some cases, we have no working definition of man and father. Confusion dominates this topic just about everywhere you look.

Which raises the question for us: As Christians, what is a father? What should he be like?

Background of Psalm 89

The Bible Knowledge Commentary (Psalm 89):

“The psalm is attributed to ‘Ethan’ (a Levite, 1 Chron. 15:17–18, and a wise person, 1 Kings 4:31) but the exact occasion of its writing is unknown. Various military defeats, such as the invasion of Judah by Shishak of Egypt (1 Kings 14:25) and the Babylonian Exile, have been suggested.”

Give outline of Ps 89

(1) Praise for who God is

(2) God rules over all creation

(3) Retelling of God’s covenant with David and Israel; consequences if covenant is broken

(4) Description of God judging Israel for breaking the covenant

(5) A lament, a crying out, to God for when he will rescue his people

(6) Ends with the psalmist praising God even in the midst of judgment

This Psalm teaches us what kind of Father God is:

=> loving and faithful, just, protective, and disciplinarian

From this we can learn what kind of Father we ought to be. . . .

1. The Father is Loving and Faithful (89:1-4)

Psalm 89:1–2 (NASB95)

I will sing of the lovingkindness of the Lord forever; To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth. For I have said, “Lovingkindness will be built up forever; In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness.”

God is loving.

OT: “Love” (חֶ֫סֶד) = “affection”; other words used in OT mean “concern for one’s well-being”

NT: agape, phileo - unconditional concern for one’s well-being; affection

Love is not mere feelings: it is much more. It is also not intrinsically sexual.

Cottrell’s def of God’s love (modified by me): “God’s love is his self-giving affection and selfless concern that actively seek the joy and well-being of his creation.” [FOFA, 91]

What this means is that God has a genuine affection for us—he delights in us. He has a genuine concern for what is best for us; he does not wish or desire evil upon us. He desires for us to have a genuine joy. He cares.

Significantly: he desires our well-being. God does not want to give us everything we desire. Many of our desires and passions are sinful. He wants our what is best for us. He wants us to live in accordance with how he has made us. When we do this, we flourish, and he wants us to flourish.

God is Faithful.

. . . To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth. . . . In the heavens You will establish Your faithfulness.”

OT: “faithfulness” = firmness, steadfastness, fidelity

[Francis Brown, Samuel Rolles Driver, and Charles Augustus Briggs, Enhanced Brown-Driver-Briggs Hebrew and English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 53.]

God always keeps his promises; his “yes” means yes and “no” means no. God is always true to his word.

This is seen in the idea of covenant (contract). When God makes a covenant, he does not break it. He keeps it. He made a covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob which continued on with David.

Psalm 89:3–4 (NASB95)

“I have made a covenant with My chosen; I have sworn to David My servant, I will establish your seed forever And build up your throne to all generations.”

The Response to the Father’s Love and Faithfulness

Psalm 89:1 (NASB95)

I will sing of the lovingkindness of the Lord forever; To all generations I will make known Your faithfulness with my mouth.

Our Fatherly Responsibility (Ps 103:13-14; Eph 5:25; Col. 3:19; Matt 19:4-6)

=> Just as God has love for us and is faithful to us, we are to have love for our children and be faithful to them.

Psalm 103:13–14 “Just as a father has compassion on his children, So the Lord has compassion on those who fear Him. For He Himself knows our frame; He is mindful that we are but dust.”

Show genuine affection and interest in them.

Look out for their well-being and do what is best for them. Don’t give them everything they want, no matter how much they might complain.

Be faithful to them. Be committed to being their father and an integral part of their lives.

=> One of the best ways to show love and faithfulness as a father to your children is to also be loving and faithful to your wife.

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

Colossians 3:19 “Husbands, love your wives and do not be embittered against them.”

=> The best way to show love and faithfulness to your children is for father’s to be faithful to their covenant of marriage to their mother.

Matthew 19:4–6 “And He answered and said, “Have you not read that He who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? “So they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.””

Talk about marriage

2. The Father is Just (89:13-14)

Psalm 89:13–14 NASB95

You have a strong arm; Your hand is mighty, Your right hand is exalted. Righteousness and justice are the foundation of Your throne; Lovingkindness and truth go before You.

Justice is giving to a person what that person is due. If guilty, then punishment. If innocent, then no punishment. It is about being fair. It is about being righteous. The two are intimately linked. To be just is to do what is right, or to be righteous.

We’re reminded in v.14 that God is still loving and truth. This shows us that justice (requiring judgment and fairness) go along with being loving and true. They are not mutually exclusive. God can be and is both just and loving.

The best example of God being both just and loving is the cross of Christ.

What happens when justice and fairness are practiced? How do people respond?

The Response to the Father’s Justice (v.15-16)

Psalm 89:15–16 (NASB95)

How blessed are the people who know the joyful sound! O Lord, they walk in the light of Your countenance. In Your name they rejoice all the day, And by Your righteousness they are exalted.

Proverbs 29:2 “When the righteous increase, the people rejoice, But when a wicked man rules, people groan.”

Our Fatherly Responsibility (Col. 3:21)

As fathers, we are to be just and fair. We need to be of sound mind when it comes to being just with our children. This is often plays out in the discipline of children. Often, we need to calmly investigate what our children have done or not done, not just jump to conclusions.

It’s all too easy in the heat of the moment to reprimand or punish unjustly.

Colossians 3:21 “Fathers, do not exasperate your children, so that they will not lose heart.”

Do not exasperate them. “Exasperate” = make furious, discouraged, irritate (i.e., due to their unjust discipline). Yelling and cussing—no good!

3. The Father Protects (89:9-10, 17-18, 19-29)

Psalm 89:9–10 (NASB95)

You rule the swelling of the sea; When its waves rise, You still them. You Yourself crushed Rahab [Egypt] like one who is slain; You scattered Your enemies with Your mighty arm.

Psalm 89:17–18 (NASB95)

For You are the glory of their strength, And by Your favor our horn is exalted. For our shield belongs to the Lord, And our king to the Holy One of Israel.

Psalm 89:19–29 NASB95

Once You spoke in vision to Your godly ones, And said, “I have given help to one who is mighty; I have exalted one chosen from the people. “I have found David My servant; With My holy oil I have anointed him, With whom My hand will be established; My arm also will strengthen him. “The enemy will not deceive him, Nor the son of wickedness afflict him. “But I shall crush his adversaries before him, And strike those who hate him. “My faithfulness and My lovingkindness will be with him, And in My name his horn will be exalted. “I shall also set his hand on the sea And his right hand on the rivers. “He will cry to Me, ‘You are my Father, My God, and the rock of my salvation.’ “I also shall make him My firstborn, The highest of the kings of the earth. “My lovingkindness I will keep for him forever, And My covenant shall be confirmed to him. “So I will establish his descendants forever And his throne as the days of heaven.

God crushes and scatters his people’s enemies. God is described as a shield. It is said here that God protects the one with whom he made a covenant. God will keep his people forever.

God our Father is one who protects his people.

This does not mean that nothing wrong will ever occur for God’s people. Just Ps 89 itself attests to this.

The Response to the Father’s Protection (v.26)

Psalm 89:26 NASB95

“He will cry to Me, ‘You are my Father, My God, and the rock of my salvation.’

Illustration:

News story told in Nancy Pearcey’s book The Toxic War on Masculinity:

In 2018 there was a mass shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks, California. The killer was a 28 year old young man who was a college dropout, former Marine, unemployed, divorced, and living with his mother. He knew that the Borderline Bar and Grill had a weekly college night when it would be crowded. Wearing a black hoodie, he entered the bar, tossing smoke grenades to confuse and blind people. He began shooting.

A 20 year old young man and college student along with 7 other young men who were present, began grabbing college students and pushing them under a pool table to protect them. Afterwards, a 21 year old young woman told reporters, “There were multiple men who got on their knees and pretty much blocked all of us with their back toward the shooter, ready to take a bullet for any single one of us.”

Later, reporters asked the young man how he had the presence of mind to do such a thing. He replied, “My life is taken care of. I know where I’m going if I die, so I was not worried to sacrifice.”

That’s what real men, real fathers, do: they protect just like their heavenly father.

Our Fatherly Responsibility (Prov 23:24; Eph 5:25; 1 Pet 3:7)

Protecting is about physical protection, but it is much more. It’s about giving instruction, preparing our children to navigate a sinful, dark world.

Prov 2-7 all about a father giving wise advice to his son so that he will be protected from evil—that he will avoid being a fool, avoid perversions, avoid adulteresses and women who desire to lead men into sexual activity reserved for marriage; he gives advice how to live a life pleasing to God, a prosperous, peaceful, and virtuous life.

Proverbs 3:1–4 “My son, do not forget my teaching, But let your heart keep my commandments; For length of days and years of life And peace they will add to you. Do not let kindness and truth leave you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart. So you will find favor and good repute In the sight of God and man.”

Protect not just your children, but also showing them how it’s done by protecting your wife.

Ephesians 5:25 “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her.”

1 Peter 3:7 “You husbands in the same way, live with your wives in an understanding way, as with someone weaker, since she is a woman; and show her honor as a fellow heir of the grace of life, so that your prayers will not be hindered.”

Do you protect your wife from sin? Gossip? Slander?

Would you take a bullet for your wife?

4. The Father Disciplines (89:30-45)

Psalm 89:30–45 (NASB95)

“If his sons forsake My law And do not walk in My judgments, If they violate My statutes And do not keep My commandments, Then I will punish their transgression with the rod And their iniquity with stripes. “But I will not break off My lovingkindness from him, Nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. “My covenant I will not violate, Nor will I alter the utterance of My lips. “Once I have sworn by My holiness; I will not lie to David. “His descendants shall endure forever And his throne as the sun before Me. “It shall be established forever like the moon, And the witness in the sky is faithful.” Selah. But You have cast off and rejected, You have been full of wrath against Your anointed. You have spurned the covenant of Your servant; You have profaned his crown in the dust. You have broken down all his walls; You have brought his strongholds to ruin. All who pass along the way plunder him; He has become a reproach to his neighbors. You have exalted the right hand of his adversaries; You have made all his enemies rejoice. You also turn back the edge of his sword And have not made him stand in battle. You have made his splendor to cease And cast his throne to the ground. You have shortened the days of his youth; You have covered him with shame.

Hebrews 12:6–7 “For those whom the Lord loves He disciplines, And He scourges every son whom He receives.” It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom his father does not discipline?”

The Response to the Father’s Discipline (v.46-52)

Psalm 89:46–52 (NASB95)

How long, O Lord? Will You hide Yourself forever? Will Your wrath burn like fire? Remember what my span of life is; For what vanity You have created all the sons of men! What man can live and not see death? Can he deliver his soul from the power of Sheol? Selah. Where are Your former lovingkindnesses, O Lord, Which You swore to David in Your faithfulness? Remember, O Lord, the reproach of Your servants; How I bear in my bosom the reproach of all the many peoples, With which Your enemies have reproached, O Lord, With which they have reproached the footsteps of Your anointed. Blessed be the Lord forever! Amen and Amen.

Our Fatherly Responsibility (Prov 13:24; Eph 6:4)

Proverbs 13:24 NASB95

He who withholds his rod hates his son, But he who loves him disciplines him diligently.

Ephesians 6:4 (NASB95)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.

Grant Osborne. Ephesians: Verse by Verse (Instructions to Parents: Don’t Provoke, but Build up Your Children (6:4))

“While Roman social codes centered around that aspect of patriarchal power over children, Paul here reverses the norm and focuses on the obligation of fathers to rule lovingly and to raise up their children rather than beating them down. . . . They are not to marginalize and diminish their children or make them bitter and angry through mistreatment, insensitivity, or unrealistic demands.”

Discipline is also about instruction.

Deuteronomy 6:4–9 NASB95

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. “These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart. “You shall teach them diligently to your sons and shall talk of them when you sit in your house and when you walk by the way and when you lie down and when you rise up. “You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontals on your forehead. “You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

Ephesians 6:4 (NASB95)

Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord.