Father’s Day 2026—Proverbs 3:1-6
Notes
Transcript
Happy Father’s Day!
I normally have a long introduction for Mother’s Day sermons because I am not a mom and I want all mom’s to know that while I am preaching to them, I really don’t understand what they are going through.
I am a dad, though, so I don’t need to give a long introduction. I understand. I convince myself that I know what I am talking about.
Several years ago, I was talking about sermons with a friend. He doesn’t go to this church. He expressed his frustration with his pastor. His pastor always gave a nice, encouraging, uplifting message on Mother’s Day because mothers have a hard time. Good for that pastor. But, then my friend continued and said that on Father’s Day, the pastor always came on hard, causing dad’s feel like they were failures by the end of the sermon.
There is a place for that. But that is not my heart today. My heart is to extend God’s grace to a bunch of human men who do not always get it right. But, to extend that Grace while calling us to be men.
To do this, we are going to look at Solomon as a father.
By the end of today, we will have look at our text:
My son, do not forget my teaching,
but keep my commands in your heart,
for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you peace and prosperity.
Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
However, before we examine this passage, we have to paint a picture of humanity. And ask the question: What is your legacy?
Before we dive in, will you pray with me?
1. A Legacy of Sinfulness
1. A Legacy of Sinfulness
What is your legacy?
Most people who know Solomon’s life would say that he left a legacy of sinfulness.
He started out so well! He was considered David’s good son, chosen by God to succeed David on the throne. Chosen to continue the line to the Messiah.
After he was crowned, God appeared to him, saying that he would give Solomon anything. And Solomon chose wisdom, instead of riches and power. What a guy!
And then, Solomon grew older, and began to follow all sorts of other things rather than God.
King Solomon, however, loved many foreign women besides Pharaoh’s daughter—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Sidonians and Hittites. They were from nations about which the Lord had told the Israelites, “You must not intermarry with them, because they will surely turn your hearts after their gods.” Nevertheless, Solomon held fast to them in love. He had seven hundred wives of royal birth and three hundred concubines, and his wives led him astray. As Solomon grew old, his wives turned his heart after other gods, and his heart was not fully devoted to the Lord his God, as the heart of David his father had been. He followed Ashtoreth the goddess of the Sidonians, and Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. So Solomon did evil in the eyes of the Lord; he did not follow the Lord completely, as David his father had done.
On a hill east of Jerusalem, Solomon built a high place for Chemosh the detestable god of Moab, and for Molek the detestable god of the Ammonites. He did the same for all his foreign wives, who burned incense and offered sacrifices to their gods.
Sinfulness.
Solomon’s sons saw him. They saw him follow his lust. They saw him follow idolatry. They saw him participate in the horrible worship practices.
We can read about Rehoboam. Under his leadership:
Judah did evil in the eyes of the Lord. By the sins they committed they stirred up his jealous anger more than those who were before them had done. They also set up for themselves high places, sacred stones and Asherah poles on every high hill and under every spreading tree. There were even male shrine prostitutes in the land; the people engaged in all the detestable practices of the nations the Lord had driven out before the Israelites.
Solomon definitely passed on a legacy to his sons.
God, when he described his character to Moses declared:
You shall not bow down to them or worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God, punishing the children for the sin of the parents to the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
Why would he punish this sin? Because the children, down to the third and fourth generation, follow the sins of their ancestors.
We see generational sin in other places in the Bible. We could look at Abraham. When he moved to Egypt, he lied about his marriage, saying that Sarah was his sister.
Then, Isaac did the same thing with his wife when he moved to Gerar. Lying.
Jacob, then, lies to Isaac, pretending to be his brother Esau and steals the blessing.
A generational sin, passed on, from one person to another.
“Children can see the sins of their parents and, due to their own sinful nature, begin to emulate those sins over time.”
“It does seem to be the case that children who are abused can sometimes grow up to abuse others. Children who come from homes where the parents got divorced are more likely to get divorced. Sons who had fathers who objectify women tend to objectify women. Daughters with bitter mothers tend to be bitter as well. Sometimes children sin in the opposite way of their parents. Someone with a domineering father might grow up to be a passive father.”
What is the legacy that we are passing on?
I look at my life and see the sinful patterns of my father and my grandfather. And I look at my sons and wonder how many of my sins are going to be repeated in their lives.
I pray that this is not the case. But, as I wallow in sin and don’t seek Jesus to break that sin in my life, I know the chances are great that I will pass it on to my kids.
What is the legacy that you are leaving to your children? Is it a legacy of sinfulness?
2. A Legacy of Regret
2. A Legacy of Regret
Perhaps, you look back on your life and see how you lived it. You know it was wrong and you didn’t change. And you see your life lived out in your children, your grand children. And you wish it wasn’t the case.
And you are leaving a legacy of regret.
Solomon looked back on his life and was filled with regret.
The last book of the Bible that he wrote was Ecclesiastes. We studied it a few years ago.
He wrote:
About his life:
I denied myself nothing my eyes desired;
I refused my heart no pleasure.
My heart took delight in all my labor,
and this was the reward for all my toil.
Yet when I surveyed all that my hands had done
and what I had toiled to achieve,
everything was meaningless, a chasing after the wind;
nothing was gained under the sun.
He talked about his wisdom, his work, his pleasure, his power, his positions, his wealth, his family and children. Everything was meaningless, because he had been pursuing the wrong thing all his life.
He wished that when he was younger his focus would have been right. That he wouldn’t have pursued all those idols, both the false gods and all those desires.
He wrote at the end of his letter, and you can hear the regret:
Remember your Creator
in the days of your youth,
before the days of trouble come
and the years approach when you will say,
“I find no pleasure in them”—
Remember him—before the silver cord is severed,
and the golden bowl is broken;
before the pitcher is shattered at the spring,
and the wheel broken at the well,
and the dust returns to the ground it came from,
and the spirit returns to God who gave it.
Now all has been heard;
here is the conclusion of the matter:
Fear God and keep his commandments,
for this is the duty of all mankind.
I’m young. Most of you are older than me. But, I still look back on moments of my life and I regret things that I pursued instead of God. Sins that I held onto. And I wish that I had lived differently. I wished that God had been preeminent in my life.
But, when we are old, we cannot change what we did early in life. Those mistakes, those purposeful actions, those choices, are there, set in stone.
And so, we look back with regret.
But, that is good. Because as we look back with regret, we can repent. We cannot change the past, but we can change moving forward. And as we repent, we boldly declare what we did in the past was wrong.
We declare it to God.
As Solomon’s father, David did:
Have mercy on me, O God,
according to your unfailing love;
according to your great compassion
blot out my transgressions.
Wash away all my iniquity
and cleanse me from my sin.
For I know my transgressions,
and my sin is always before me.
Against you, you only, have I sinned
and done what is evil in your sight;
so you are right in your verdict
and justified when you judge.
And we declare it to those around us:
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
That’s what Solomon is doing in Ecclesiastes. He is boldly declaring to God and all those who will hear that the life he lived was wrong. And he pleads with those around him to not follow him in his life. To not make the mistakes that he made. To not pursue a life of pride, selfishness, and so many other sins, but instead to pursue God.
Regret is not nice. But, regret draws a line, an honesty of what is right and what is wrong, so that the next generation doesn’t have to follow in our sins.
What legacy are you leaving? Is it a legacy of sinfulness? Is it a legacy of regret?
3. A Legacy of Grace
3. A Legacy of Grace
I am grateful. That by Jesus Christ, as we follow him in repentance, he allows us to leave a legacy of grace.
We have studied briefly the life of Solomon. We know his sin. We know that he looked back on his life with regret.
When would we think that he wrote these words:
My son, do not forget my teaching,
but keep my commands in your heart,
for they will prolong your life many years
and bring you peace and prosperity.
Let love and faithfulness never leave you;
bind them around your neck,
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Then you will win favor and a good name
in the sight of God and man.
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
We have no idea when he wrote them.
We know he compiled his proverbs over the course of his 39 years on the throne. Some he wrote early one, when he was still on the straight and narrow. Others he wrote in the middle of his reign, when he was pursuing all those women and following those idols. Others, he wrote at the end, when he was filled with regret.
We don’t know when he wrote this. All we know is that he did. He left his son with some words of wisdom, words that have been passed down to us, words that have been memorized and taken to heart by millions as a promise:
Trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;
in all your ways submit to him,
and he will make your paths straight.
That doesn’t sound like the writings of someone stuck in sin. However, it was. No matter when Solomon wrote this to his son, he was a sinner, living in sin, building up regret. And yet, God allowed him to write this, to pass on some sort of nugget to his son.
God’s grace. He doesn’t wait for us to be perfect to allow us to have an impact on the next generation. But, as we struggle through this life, trying to live faithfully, and failing. God still will allow us to make some sort of impact, to point our kids to him, not because our wisdom, but God’s amazing grace.
I know I am speaking to kids today, of all ages, who have had dads of all shapes and sizes. Some of your dads might have left a legacy of sinfulness, and that was it. Some of them might have left a legacy of regret, and they tried to change and you saw it.
No matter, see past what they did, and look to see what God was doing, how he used your dad to shape you, to point you to God, either because of sin or regret, and thank God for that.
Than, pick up the phone and call your dad, if you can, and thank him for how God used him. He may not understand it, he may disregard it, he may be humbled by it. Either way, do it.
And to those dads who cannot understand God’s grace, who are caught up in the sin or the regret and don’t know what to do. Let me tell you about the perfect father, who had no sin and no reason to regret, but sent his son to die for us. To pay the penalty for our sin, to wipe our past so we do not have to be defined by regret, and to give us the grace to pass on truth to the next generation.
Jesus died for you. Trust him. Submit to him. Believe on him and you will be saved. And that is the best legacy of all to leave.
