TDMLL

Thank you, Patrick.

I never felt like I was your boss.

You were always so unruly.

It's been five years.

Five years since you left me.

And I look out and I see some young people who have grown up so much in five years, I've hardly recognized them when I see them in the hallway.

Some of you are still sitting in the same seat that you were five years ago.

Some of you look a little older.

But I am so pleased to be able to come and share with you just some brief thoughts about Fathers and Father's Day.

I appreciate Pastor Dave's invitation to allow me to do this this morning.

There are a number of our friends from the Summer Institute of Linguistics, and I'm not going to ask you to introduce yourselves, but would you mind just standing if you're part of the SIL program so we can acknowledge your presence here with us?

There's some over here all the way around.

Well, welcome and thank you so much.

Somebody said I hear that you're speaking on Father's Day.

What are you going to speak about?

I said, Fathers.

It's pretty much a given that we speak about fathers on Father's Day.

I'm saddened, as I'm sure you are, the direction our country is going in relation to families.

And so it does us well to spend a few minutes looking at the Word of God and the central passage, perhaps, on the subject of fathers this morning, as we find it in Ephesians chapter 6 and verse 4.

Ephesians 6 · chapter mention

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

There are positive examples of dads, there are negative examples of dads in Scripture.

There are principles we can learn about fathering, but there really aren't a whole lot of central passages on fathering other than this passage in particular and its corollary in the book of Colossians.

What I hope to do this morning is three things.

First, we're going to look at the contrast of this verse.

That'll be point one.

The second, we'll be looking at the content of this verse, and we're going to use the power of observation.

What does it say?

Interpretation, what does it mean?

Correlation, what else does Scripture say about this?

And that will be the content section.

And the third part will be the conclusion, where we'll look at the fourth step in Bible study, which is application.

What does it mean to me?

First of all, I want to tell you that what I'm going to tell you is nothing new.

Surprise, surprise.

You will just be reminded, perhaps, of things that you already know.

But reminding is one of those things that we are told to do every once in a while in Scripture to help us refresh and remember and get back on course, perhaps if we have gotten off of course.

Second, I know that 50% of you say this doesn't apply to me.

I'm not a father, I'm never going to be a father, or I'm too old, I'm not any more in my responsibilities as fathering goes.

But I think it helps us to be reminded of what fathering is all about so that we can encourage those who are still in the process.

I look around and see some of you, young guys, just starting out with young families, like we saw in our dedication time.

They need to be encouraged to be good fathers.

Some of you, grandfathers, can encourage the younger men in their important role of fathering.

And if you still have your fathers living, which some of us do not, I hope today, sometime, you will contact them and let them know of your appreciation for their influence in your life.

There are no perfect fathers.

You ask us as fathers, and we would be the first to admit that.

But there are those who are striving to do what the Lord has said in this important role of fathering.

Okay, so let's begin by asking our Heavenly Father to bless this time together.

Lord, we pray that you will take your word and apply it to our hearts as needed.

We pray for these fathers right in the middle of this important role that they have as husbands and fathers, and we ask your blessing upon them.

And we pray that this might encourage them in this important ministry that they have.

Thank you for not leaving us in darkness concerning what you want us to be and do as dads.

In Jesus' name, amen.

Okay, the first point was the contrast.

If you look at Ephesians chapter 6, verse 4, it really is simply a contrast.

Ephesians 6:4

There are those who are addressed, in this case the fathers, and then there is a negative command, and that is followed by a positive command, separated by the adversative but.

Don't do this, but do this.

And that positive behavior to bring them up, the children up, is further specified by the kind of bringing up they are to receive in discipline and instruction.

And that discipline and instruction is to be in the realm of the Lord.

So it's a very simple verse to look and break apart as we notice it's basically just the contrast.

The second point is as we look at the content, and there we will look at some observations.

We will look at some interpretation and some correlation.

Notice obviously the first verse, the first word in the verse is addressed to fathers.

There really aren't many people in our lives that we call father.

There's the heavenly father, of course, and your physical father, perhaps an adoptive father or a father-in-law.

And then there are those who have the title of father, though Matthew chapter 23 warns us not to call any other father, but the father in heaven.

Matthew 23 · chapter mention

But this title is unique, it's special.

Father.

But when I read this verse again, I said to myself, where is love in this verse?

You would think if the Holy Spirit wanted to inform us about the role of fatherhood, he would have included love here.

Fathers, love your children and don't provoke them, but it doesn't say that.

And here's where I think the study of correlation comes in handy.

We correlate this with other portions of scripture to gain insight into what this passage might have to say.

And when I read this verse and I asked that question, where is love?

the verse from Psalm 103 that was just read came to mind.

It says, As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.

Now, if I didn't believe in the inspiration of Scripture, I would say David, who wrote this psalm, has it backward.

It should read, as the Heavenly Father loves his children, so earthly fathers are to love their children.

But it's reversed.

It is certainly true that the Heavenly Father is our example, and I believe in the context we can pull all these various ways that the Father loves us.

But isn't it interesting?

The implication seems to be that your children learn about God's love from the way you as fathers love them.

Wow.

What a responsibility that is.

How are we to love them?

If you go back in this verse, you'll see some of the ways that the Heavenly Father loves us.

He forgives, He delivers our lives from sin.

He showers His love upon us.

He generously gives good things to us, He's fair and just, He reveals truth to us, He's compassionate, merciful, patient, loving, isn't accusative, nor does He stay angry, doesn't deal with us according to our sins, but removes our rebellious guilt as far as the East is from the West.

What do your kids know about love and God's love from you, Dad?

That is your responsibility to help them see the Heavenly Father and His love through the way that you love them.

Another observation we see after the addressee, Paul says, provoke not.

Provoke not your children to anger.

Why does Paul begin with this negative instead of some positive?

Well, in Paul's day, a father had absolute authority over their children, including punishing them, exposing them, even if they're unwanted newborns, life and death itself, even selling them.

With that kind of authority and control in the home, it would be easy for a father to provoke children.

But correlating this with the passage in Romans chapter 10, verse 19, we see this same word, provoke, is used in the context of jealousy, provoking to jealousy.

Romans 10:19

Boy, that's a common theme in Scripture.

You think of the jealousy that existed in the home of Mary and Martha, of Cain and Abel, of Miriam and Moses and Aaron, of Joseph and his brothers.

See, fathers can provoke in the home jealousy when he favors one child over another, or spends more time with one or the other, or makes cutting comparisons.

I wish you could play ball like Jeff.

But all you want to do is sit and read.

We provoke to jealousy, dads, by some of the things that we say, or maybe the unjust and unfair we meet discipline out.

We create that kind of rivalry.

Provoke not.

Colossians 3.21, the parallel passage, puts it this way: do not provoke.

It's the same word, but it really means do not discourage your children.

Now, sometimes this is not intentional, certainly.

But we can discourage our children by expecting too much for their age.

I remember when Carrie started basketball, boy, oh boy, I thought I'm gonna help her to be the best basketball star there is.

And she came home one day and said, Dad, the teacher, Coach says I can move from B squad to A squad.

But I asked her if I could stay on the B squad.

And I thought, why is that?

You know, we as dads live our lives sometimes through our children, and we discourage them.

I think I was putting so much pressure on her that she thought the best way to avoid it was to stay on the B squad and not on the A squad.

So we can discourage our kids by failing to express our worth to them, their worth to us.

But another way we discourage our children is in a correlating passage found in Proverbs, which says verse 20, verse 6, many a man proclaims his steadfast love, but a faithful man who can find the righteous who walks in his integrity, blessed are his children after him.

Do you get that?

We're good at blowing about ourselves, if we were to put this in paraphrase.

We're good at making ourselves look good with our mouths, but the one who really blesses children is the man who walks in his integrity, who is consistent in his actions and values and principles.

We wonder why our kids quit church at 15 when we've been trying to tell them it's important, but we seldom show up.

Or we wonder why they don't respect the opposite sex when they hear what we call their mother.

Or they see us laughing, the fact that we were undercharged at the restaurant when we've been talking about honesty.

You see, children can become discouraged when dad's lips and his life do not agree.

So, fathers, which carries with it the idea of love, as we've seen, don't provoke, don't create jealousy, don't discourage your children, but bring them up.

Bring them up is the word for nourish.

It's also used in verse 29.

And nourish is a process.

It implies several things.

It implies time, it implies a relationship, it implies initiative, it implies planning, it implies thought.

All part of leadership.

You know, the sad thing that I have realized in the ministry is that we prepare our young couples very poorly to parent.

They kind of learn by trial and error or by remembering what their parents taught them or practicing exactly what they learned from their parents.

Nourish carries the idea of leadership, thinking about what is it that I want our children to know as far as values and the things that are important in life.

But bring them up in the discipline.

Here's the word that we usually associate with dads.

You know, you wait till your father gets home.

And it has that idea of commands and admonitions, of reproof and punishment.

That is certainly part of disciplining.

But there is also a preventive side to discipline.

There's not just punitive discipline, punishing for wrong, there is also preventive discipline.

And that's what Paul talks about in 1 Thessalonians 2, verse 11.

1 Thessalonians 2:11

Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you as a father with his own children.

Exhorting, imploring, encouraging, preventive discipline.

And notice that this whole concept of discipline, dead, is a part of having a relationship with your kids of love.

Hebrews reminds us that whom the Lord loves, he disciplines.

That is why I don't discipline your kids and you don't discipline mine.

When your son and daughter knows how much you love and care for them, your corrective and preventive discipline will be much more effective.

Bring them up in discipline and instruction.

The instruction is a different word, and it has the idea of training by word of mouth.

And here's where we want to bail, don't we, men?

We don't look at ourselves as teachers.

And then we go back to that Deuteronomy 6 passage, and we see that we're supposed to teach our kids and to talk about the Lord when we sit and when we walk and when we lie down, when we rise up and we have the word on our hands and our heads and on the doorposts of our house, and we bail out and say, okay, youth group, you take our kids, you do that, or Sunday school teacher, you take care of that.

And I think we miss an important thing that is being taught in these verses.

If we followed this literally, that all we would be is teachers all the time.

And what we have here is a figure of speech that is just simply saying, use teachable moments.

When you sit, when you walk, when you lie down at work with your hands, when you're thinking, when you're going into your house, use teachable moments to train your kids.

Dad, did you talk to your son after the Boy Scout ruling just came out?

Or after this terrible tragedy and the multitude of tragedies we've seen since Sandy Hook Elementary.

Or if there is bullying going on at school, or sporting events that have gone sour, or the good things that have happened.

Answered prayer.

Use teachable moments to instruct.

And remember that they're not learning just by what you say, but by what you do.

And the final phrase: instruction of the Lord.

Dads, we can teach our kids a lot about living, but we are also to be teaching them about the Lord.

Our teaching must be Christian, about spiritual things like honesty and integrity, hard work.

There's a recent poll that just came out and said this generation doesn't like nor believe in working hard.

Wonderful.

That's great for our country, isn't it?

We can teach about grace and forgiveness and self-control and generosity and joy.

Teach them about money.

When I was doing premarital counseling, I was appalled at what these young couples going into marriage knew about money.

They didn't know much.

And so some of them find themselves in a great deal of difficulty as they start out their marriage.

Does the Bible say anything about money?

You see, what I'm saying is, Dad, this is part of leadership.

What is it that you want to communicate to your children that relates to the Lord and how we deal with relationships and with one another?

One final correlation of note here.

Whether you know it or not, Dad, how you are leading in the home qualifies you to serve in the church.

Paul writes in 1 Timothy chapter 3, Elders must be one who manages his own household well, keeping his children under control with all dignity.

1 Timothy 3 · chapter mention

But if a man does not know how to manage his own household, how will he take care of the church of God?

If you do your job well in the home, the Lord has a place for you in serving him in the family of God, the church.

Okay, let's see if we can just pull together some very brief conclusions by way of application.

What does this mean to me?

There are five words that I think surface in this passage that I hope you dads will take away from you, and that's why the title of the sermon is so well put.

T D M L L.

Those are the five words.

You'll remember them, believe me.

Fathers teach.

Fathers teach.

But, dads, here's what I want you to see that may be a little different.

You don't need a classroom to be a good teacher.

Use teachable moments to give values and life lessons and truth about life and the Lord.

There are teachable moments every day.

My dad didn't become a believer till he was over 50 years old after he had a near fatal heart attack.

He never sat me down to instruct me in the law or the prophets or the New Testament.

But I learned an important lesson from his actions.

He ran a hardware store, and around Christmas time and Thanksgiving, if you bought an appliance or something worth some value, you would be given a free turkey.

Big deal.

But you know, in a town of 300, that was a big deal.

So one day my father, and I was probably seven, eight, maybe nine, but I think I was younger than older.

He said, Come with me.

We're going to a neighboring town to deliver a turkey.

So on the way I said, What did you, or what did they buy to get a turkey?

And he said, Nothing.

I said, Why are we taking a turkey?

They didn't buy anything.

Well, because these gals are two elderly sisters, one of whom has been bedridden with arthritis for over 20 years, and her sister perhaps had the worst task of taking care of her.

And we're taking a turkey because we want to just let them know we care about her.

And while I'm here, that's when, you know, guys that worked in the store like that did everything.

He said, while I'm here, I'm going to check their furnace for the wintertime to make sure it's working and lubricate the fan.

He didn't sit down and teach me that I should care for people like that.

He showed me.

Dad, have you planned about something like that that you can take your kids along and let them learn from your model about caring for those that are less fortunate?

Fathers teach, but you don't need a classroom to be a teacher.

Second, father's discipline.

But that discipline has to be within a close relationship of love.

And your discipline to be effective will be in a relationship of love.

And without that close relationship, your kids may result in anger and discouragement.

All discipline is not punitive, father.

Some of it is preventative.

Dad's discipline.

My father was really bad at punitive discipline.

We laugh because dad used to discipline us with a yardstick.

And invariably, when he hit us the first time, it broke.

And he gave up.

But there was a time when my next older brother, I'm the youngest of four boys, were on vacation with my father and mother in Colorado.

Now, as a businessman, you know you don't take vacations very often because when you're not working, you're not earning money if you own a business.

So this was a big deal.

We went to Colorado, and like boys are prone to do, we got the back seat and we fought.

And you know, there was that line in the seat that he was not supposed to get over.

If he stayed over there, we were fine, but he would not stay over there.

So we were constantly bickering back and forth.

And we were in Colorado, and my father had had enough.

My father was a man of few words, but we knew when he had had enough.

We packed up the car and we did not stop except for gas from Colorado back to Iowa.

No more vacation.

Get us home.

He'd had enough.

And that was his form of discipline.

And we sat back there on our side, looking like this.

Because we got the point.

Father's discipline.

But we never doubted that he loved us.

Third, father's model.

Peter Briscoe said it better than I.

He said, lifestyle is a contagious disease.

Our kids catch it from us.

Father's model.

Dad's like it or not, you are a model to your kid.

Your kid's favorite car is probably the car you drive.

Your kid's favorite football team is probably the car or the football team that you have.

Dr.

Charles Ryra used to tell us in seminary, men, if you want your parishioners to bleed, then you better hemorrhage.

If you want them to stand up straight, then you should be leaning backwards.

His point was that if we want our kids to pick up what we hold as important, then we better hold it as important before them and be a model for them.

I learned about something about my father after he had passed away at a memorial service on Memorial Day a number of years ago.

A man came up to me and said, You're Vic Lucan, aren't you?

I said, Yes, you're Tony's boy.

Yes?

He said, Well, you probably don't know this, but we were living in the Great Depression.

And your dad ran a hardware store.

And in those days you kept books, you know, each name had a book where you put in what they bought and how much it was, and it was carried until they could come in and pay for it.

And he said, You don't realize that, but many of those charges that we made in the depression, your father never collected.

I didn't know that, but it made a great impression upon me.

Father's model.

And then father's lead.

Father's lead.

It takes intention to do some of these things.

You have to plan it.

And leadership in your home is what qualifies you for leadership in the church.

And finally, fathers love.

Fathers love their children so they will know how much God loves them.

Think about that.

Go back and read Psalm 103, Dad, and see if these are the kinds of things that your kids are learning from the way that you love them.

And one of the ways that you can show them love is by loving their mother.

Psychologist Larry Crab says there are three things that a son wants to hear from his father.

That most sons have a great desire to have a connection with their father.

And he says they want to hear, first of all, there's hope.

Secondly, they want to hear that they're not alone.

That I am with you.

And then they want to hear, you can do it, son.

I believe in you.

It can be done.

I've done it.

You can do it.

You're not alone.

I'm here to support you, son.

And you can do it because I believe in you.

Those are the very same things, are they not, that we hear from our Heavenly Father?

He's our hope.

He's the one who will never leave nor forsake us.

And he's the one through whom we can do all things through him who strengthens us.

So happy Father's Day, Dad.

You have an awesome and great responsibility to teach, to discipline, to model, to lead, and to love.

Let's pray.

Lord, thank you for dads and for what they mean to us.

Thank you for so many times the modeling that we see in their lives that make impressions upon us.

So if this day we still have our earthly fathers, we pray that we might express to them our love and thanksgiving for what they mean to us.

We might encourage them as they strive to do what God has called them to do and be in their earthly families.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.