Father's Day Sermon
Eph 6:4 “The Christian Father”
INTRO: Point Man
I. GET INVOLVED
EXP: 2 Ways to Measure the Power of Something: (1) See it at work, (2) See what happens when its gone. In our generation, we are measuring the power of a dad, mostly because it is so conspicuous by its absence.
People all over the nation are waking up to the power of the dad!
Dr. James Dobson: “Our very survival as a people will depend on the presence or absence of masculine leadership in millions of homes.”
Professor Max Lerner: “The ‘vanishing father’ is perhaps the central fact of the changing American family structure today.”
NY Times Magazine did an article on welfare in the NY Public school system. It quoted a Schoolboard member as saying “The board realized it had penetrated into a world where there is no father. The welfare world of NY is a fatherless world.”
The chief of police in Detroit, Michigan said that most of the men his department arrests not only don’t have any responsibile older man in the house, they have never even met one!”
Dr. Loren Moshen, of the National Institute of Mental Health anaylzed US census figures and found that the absence of a father to be a stronger factor than poverty in contributing to juvenile delinquency.
A group of Yale behavioral scientists studied delinquency in 48 cultures world-wide and found that crime rates were highest among adults who as children had been raised solely by women.
Dr. Martin Deutsch found that the father’s presence and conversation, especially at dinner time, stimulates a child to perform better at school.
John Hopkins University researches found that “young white teenage girls living in fatherless families were 60% more likely to have premarital intercourse than those living in two-parent homes.”
Dr. Armand Nicholi’s research found that an emotionally or physically absent father contributes to a child’s (1) low motivation for achievement (2) inability to defer immediate gratification for later rewards (3) low self-esteem and (4) vulnerability to negative peer pressure.
Dr. Paul Meier, founder of the Menerith Meier Health Clinic has said, “The vast majority of neurotics, both children and adults, grew up in homes where there was no father or the father was absent or weak, and the mother was domineering.”
So much for Murphy Brown.
EXP: Frankly, the scripture has a very simple anti-dote to this: “Fathers, bring them up!” Translated: Get Involved!
What’s happening in America is that the workplace is replacing the family as the center of people’s creative energy, relational energy, and affections! Read the popular business literature about how to lead successful businesses. What do those books say? “You have to work together like a family” Successful leaders testify, “The people in my department are like a family.” “Our success depends on how close we are as a team.” Business is becoming a surrogate family.
ILL: A few months ago I was involved in ministering to a family in crisis from a different church. The entire family was at the hospital because of the illness of a teenager. The parents were divorced. And it was a bit awkward because the mom was on one side of the room and the dad was on the other and both of their hearts were breaking, but they couldn’t comfort each other. And two of the dad’s fellow workers came to the waiting room to support him, and the comment they all made was, “We’re all just like family.”
And I had nothing against them being there. It was fine, but I kept thinking it was a tragedy that here was his real family...but they had been replaced by people who were just like family!”
And many times, even when we’re at home, we’re not really “at home.” A 1998 study about internet use showed that the more time a person spends on the internet, the more his social circle shrinks, creating more loneliness and depression. And that’s not just with friends...it’s with families. I know personally of more than one home that has been broken by divorce due to on-line romances. I’ve never been involved in chatrooms, but I can tell you that personally I’ve started spending less and less time on the internet simply because it takes me into a virtual world, but away from the real world!
EXP: You may not know it, but I’m an outstanding free throw shooter in the game of basketball. There have been times when I have made 100 shots in a row. In fact, Phil Jackson, the coach of the Lakers, wants me to coach Shaq on his free throw shooting. Of course, when I shoot free throws, I like to stand only 5 feet from the basket and I like the rim to be placed 6 feet high instead of 10 feet high. I have discovered that when you place the rim at 10 feet and you make me move back to the regular free throw line, that my accuracy drops dramatically.
Why? Because error increases with distance.
Dads, if you are to effectively lead your family, you cannot do it from a distance very well. Psychologists tell us that children need an average of 12 hugs a day to experience their optimum emotional health. So my question to you dad, is “How many of those hugs do you personally plan to give every day?” Error increases with distance. Principle Number One: Get Involved. Bring them up!
II. ENCOURAGE BUT DON’T EXPASTERATE
EXP: When Paul wrote Thess. He was able to say in 1Thess 2:10 “You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless we were among you who believed. For you know that we dealt with each of you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you to live lives worthy of God...”
Men, that’s exactly what we want to do in our children’s lives: We are to encourage them to live godly lives.
(By the way, That’s my role as pastor, too. And I especially feel that with our youth group.)
EXP: But scripture gives a warning, too. Encourage, but don’t Exasperate. Some translate it as “Provoke” or “Provoke to anger.” Colossians says you can “embitter your children.”
What causes children to become exasperated? Normally we think of setting the standards too high. Convictions that turn into petty games of control. So that they can never live up to the standard and there is never any liberty and you have convictions about everything! And everywhere you turn there are rules, rules, rules.
Mark it down: Rules without Relationship equals Rebellion.
But there are other ways to provoke or expaserate.
(1) Overprotection: (They feel they have to do something drastic to establish their identity.)
(2) Favoritism: (Do you think Jacob’s favoritism toward Joseph had anything to do with how his brothers reacted? Were they just a little exasperated, perhaps?)
(3) Push them to over-achieve
(4) Fail to make sacrifices for them-- (Make them to feel like they are a constant inconvenience.)
(5) Neglect them (Have you ever considered how David’s neglect of Absalom broke not only Absalom’s heart, but eventually it also broke David’s heart!)
(6) Withdraw your love
ILL: p. 135-136 from Tender Warrior
III. BALANCE NURTURE WITH CORRECTION
EXP: Training and Instruction of the Lord. The second word in that phrase, “instruction” speaks mainly of correction. It speaks of verbally warning, admonishing, correcting, and pointing out the proper thing.
And kids need that. When they speak disresectfully they have to be corrected. When they disobey, they have to corrected. When they develop a wrong attitude, they have to be corrected.
I don’t say a lot about this but I’m going to be true to the scripture...and faithful. The scripture teaches that when children are young, sometimes correction involves spanking.
Proverbs 29:15 “The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.”
Proverbs 13:24 “He who spares the rod hates his son, but he who lvoes him is careful to discipline him.”
Proverbs 23:13-14 “Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul from death.”
Now, I want you to hear me very carefully. These are not permission slip verses for physical abuse. Nowhere does God condone physically abusing anyone. And dads, we need to remember that we are bigger and stronger and our children are just little guys. And Spankings are not to be given in fits of anger, nor are they to be given because you are angry.
ILL: Greg Mills and his dad.
Spanking is not a tool for you to vent your frustration or embarrassment that your child disobeyed. Furthermore, not every offense calls for swats.
However, there is something that swats can do that time-out cannot do. There is something that swats can do that being grounded cannot do...I think that 29:15 says it best, “The rod of correction imparts wisdom, but a child left to himself disgraces his mother.”
It imparts wisdom.
I know in our experience that when our children were younger, we had to spank them more often. But it imparted wisdom to them and now even with the younger ones many times they can be corrected with a word.
And I say that to you parents who are filling our nursery with your precious babies. Understand that as they get into those preschool years and early elementary years, there is something that spanking can do for your children at appropriate times that nothing else will do.
EXP: But that correction needs to be balanced with the first word... “Training” or “nurture” or “discipline,” though not here in the sense of punishment.
In his excellent book, The Effective Father, Gordon McDonald gives two excellent examples of training. The best one involved his mother. They lived on the corner of a busy intersection and she had to train him on how to live and cross the street and not get killed.
(1) She impressed him with the danger of the situation.
(2) They crossed together
(3) He would lead her by the hand
(4) He would cross alone while she stood on the corner and told him when to go and when to come back
(5) He would cross while she stood on the porch or doorway...under her watchful eye
(6) Finally, she gave permission for him to cross alone and regularly because she had trained him
Parents, this is nurturing. This is training. This is “bringing them up.”
I wonder, Dads. How much effort are you putting into the training of your children in decision-making? In relationships? In entertainment? In spiritual habits?
IV. FOCUS ON THE FINISH
EXP: The Christian Dad has a driving, relentless, world-stopping goal in mind...It never leaves his mind. It is never far from his lips...It is constantly in his prayers...It is always on his heart. It is that phrase, “In the Lord.”
That phrase means far more than simply that there is a Christian form of parenting. It reminds us that our life-goal is to see our children grow up “in the Lord.” To see them take Jesus as their Savior and to live under His lordship...To see them walk daily, even as adults, with the Lord. And to raise their own children to walk daily with the Lord.
I was thinking recently about how much of Proverbs is written by Fathers to teenagers and about how much of it is instructions to them about raising their children that aren’t even born yet!
The magazine Men’s Life recently published a study that showed that when a father is an active follower of Jesus Christ, 75% of the time, his children will be also. If only the mother is an active believer, that figure drops to only 15%. (Girls, if you want your children to go to heaven you would be wise to choose a husband who is radically committed to Jesus Christ.)
Harmon Killebrew, the great baseball player for the Minnesota Twins, tells about a time when he and his father and brother were playing baseball in the yard and the mother called out to her husband complaining that they were ruining the yard. Killebrew’s father replied, “Dear, we are raising boys, not grass.”
What are you raising, dad? Are you just raising kids? Or are you raising Christians? If you want Christians, dad. My advice to you is wear the shoes, you want them to fill.
ILL: Father’s Day Poem
ILL: W.A. Criswell letter.
Dad, your son or daughter is an eternal soul. He or she will spend eternity somewhere. Chances are it will be where you lead...Not so much with whether or not “you accepted Christ” when you were 10 or 12...but where you lead them. God has loaned these eternal souls into your care for a few short years...You are God’s point man. Make sure you don’t blow the mission.