Fathers Day - 06.16.2024

Introduction

If you have your Bibles please open with me to Deuteronomy 6 and find verse 1.

In view of Father Day this year we are going to take a week off working through the Gospel of Mark and examine the important role of fathers.

Which is why we are found in the book of Deuteronomy.

Let us start out today by answering some questions about the book of Deuteronomy.

It was written by Moses near the end of his life, we know this in part because of who this book was written for.

Its intended audience were the Israelites who were going to take possession of the Promised Land.

It was these men and women who had been raised in the wilderness wandering for forty years because of the disobedience of their parents.

Let us try and play ourselves in their shoes for just a moment…

These men and women were raised traveling around the desert in tents, they did not know permanent dwelling.

This was due the disobedience of the generation before them.

Their parents, 40 years before, made it to the Promised Land and refused to go in, they feared the people of the land.

So, they rebelled against the Lord and the Lord pronounced punishment.

They would all perish in the wilderness and never set foot in the Promised Land.

So we have the book of Deuteronomy, and it served a few purposes…

First, it was the recounting of the faithlessness of the prior generation and the faithfulness of the God who preserved these people.

Second though, it was intended to be a covenant renewal of this new generation of Israelites.

Which is why we could look back at Deuteronomy 5 and see a repeat of the 10 commandments.

This writing served as a reminder to the people about what was required of them.

Overall this book is a charge to the next generation to obey the Lord, take possession of the Land, and instruct the next generation.

It is here we come to our verses today, verses that command the passing on of the Word of God to the next generation of people.

A task that is vital to every aspect of life, if things are not passed along you can have a collapsing of society.

I mean this even in the most practical of senses.

If a generation rises up that knows nothing of carpentry, then construction will cease.

If a generation rises up that knows nothing of history, then errors will be repeated.

If a generation rises up that knows nothing of healthcare, then common sickness will prevail.

If a generation rises up that knows nothing of God, then you will have a people following their own selfish desires and you will descend into immorality.

If nothing is passed on to the next generation then you have a people stumbling in the darkness and society will collapse.

So it is a natural thing for many of these areas to be passed on, there is a desire within parents to give our kids a better start, to pass on all that we know.

Yet when it comes to that which is most important, the temptation is for us to sit that aside for another.

The verses today remind us as fathers we have a vital task before us, one we must give ourselves to for the sake of the next generation.

Deuteronomy 6:1-

The greatest benefits God has conferred on human life, fatherhood, motherhood, childhood, home, become the greatest curse if Jesus Christ is not the head.

Oswald Chambers (Lecturer and Missionary)

The “do’s” of fatherhood cannot be lived out by proxy.

R. Kent Hughes