"Sacrificial Love: A Father's Day Reflection"

Good morning, and happy Father's Day. Here at Dillingham Moravian Church,

our goal is to help all of us learn the Word of God so that we can grow as disciples

of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ together.

My name is Pastor Simon, and welcome to the preaching ministry of Dillingham Moravian Church.

What kind of things do we as parents sacrifice for our children?

We sacrifice our time, our energy, and money as we pour ourselves into looking

after our family's needs If you have small children, as we do,

as parents we sacrifice our sleep and consequently brain cells and our memories,

I know families who have had to sacrifice relationships with their own larger

families because they have chosen to love their kids We sacrifice our recreation

and fun for the needs of our families,

Many families sacrifice good-paying jobs and take lesser-paying jobs so that

they can be with their children and their spouses.

Many missionaries leave a field so that their kids can get a better education.

My point with all this is that at the heart of our love for our families is sacrifice.

We as parents get this love from God the Father, who loves us so much that He

sacrificially gave His Son,

who is the only one like Him, so that our blood debt may be forgiven and that

we may be brought into relationship with the Father and be saved from the wrath

of Almighty God. Let us pray.

Heavenly Father, we come before You. We praise You. We bless You.

We thank You that You are the one and only and mighty God.

Thank you that not only are you the

one in heaven but you are the awesome

and mighty one you are the great I AM the one who is and was and always will

be but you're also our Father who loves us as a Father. As the greatest Father loves

His children. So Lord, today as we,

open up here with prayer.

My prayer is that we would know and understand your love by your power in Christ,

and that we would trust you, and that we would follow where you lead.

We praise you, we bless you, and we ask these things in your precious Son's

name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

Now, I normally do not preach topical sermons, but since it is Father's Day

today, I would like to focus on what the Bible teaches us of God in His nature

as Father, His relationship with His Son, and His relationship with us.

Now, there is way too much material in God's Word about God as Father to teach on all at one time.

So, I'd like to share with you some main principles about how we as earthly

fathers are to love like God the Father does.

The first principle to loving like

God the Father does is that the Father demonstrates His love by sacrifice.

I'd like you to turn with me today to John 3, verse 16.

John 3:16

John 3, verse 16. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten

John 3:16

Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life."

Jesus in John's gospel taught us that God the Father so loved the world.

The super important question we need to ask is, how did the Father demonstrate his love for the world?

Jesus told us that God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son.

The English phrase for "only begotten" or one and only meant "unique",

referring to "radically distinctive and without equal", meaning that there

is no one in all of creation who was and is and will be like Jesus.

Jesus is completely unique. And the reason why Jesus is so unique is because

He is unique in relation to God.

He is like God in His uniqueness.

The Hebrew understanding of son in position or title was that the eldest son

was the heir of the father and the son was the extension of the father in position and authority.

And so when the Hebrew people interacted with the eldest son of a family,

they gave the eldest son the same respect as they would the father.

However, Jesus' understanding goes much farther.

Jesus, the son of God, is the heir of God, the Father, and has the authority

of the Father, but is also the same in nature and relationship as the Father.

And this concept of unique meant that Jesus was unique like God.

And thus Jesus is God, come to earth, made human flesh.

This passage is clear that Jesus Christ was sent to earth to do what? To be sacrificed.

The word John used for "gave" meant "to sacrifice, to relinquish,

to endure the loss of someone or something."

There is the aspect of the Father relinquishing the Son over to be sacrificed,

letting Him go, and at the same time, enduring the incredible loss of His Son.

Since Jesus was in relationship, authority, and nature, like his Father,

the sacrifice of giving over His only begotten unique Son was a loss like no other!

I want you to understand that God sacrificing his Son was completely and 100% intentional.

The Romans and the Jews will eventually put Jesus to death.

Satan will believe that he had Jesus crucified, but it was all ordained by God!

The Father sacrificed His own completely unique Son.

Why? Because he, God, so loved the world. We cannot miss this!!

How do we know that God so loved the world so much?

We know God loved all the world beyond human understanding because the Father gave everything.

He sacrificed what was truly most important to him, His Son.

And this is what love is about.

Paul in Philippians 2, verses 3-8 commanded, "Do nothing from selfishness or

Philippians 2:3–8

empty conceit, but with humility of mind regard one another as more important than yourselves.

Do not merely look out for your own personal interests, but also for the interests of others.

Have this attitude in yourselves, which was also in Christ Jesus,

who, although he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God

a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself,

taking the form of a bondservant, and being made in the likeness of men.

Being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to

the point of death, even death on a cross."

Christ sacrificed his own desires and rights for God's good for us,

and lowered himself to be a human slave and then lowered himself even more to

the level of being crucified in shame, nakedness, and as a criminal.

Jesus sacrificed even more as his relationship with the Father was temporarily

cut off, as the Father turned away from our sin that Jesus was caring for us.

The reason why Jesus was able to sacrifice so much was because he lowered his

own worth in his own perspective.

This is what humility is.

So that the Father and we as miserable human beings would be more important,

more valuable to Christ than he was to Himself.

Now, how do we apply this to us as dads and as husbands?

As the Father loves us by sacrifice, we too must love others,

including our families, by sacrifice.

Now, I do not believe the Bible teaches that we are called to sacrifice our children to God.

Even in the instance of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice Isaac,

meaning to kill Isaac, God didn't let that happen.

It was a test of Abraham's faith in God and was a picture of God's sacrifice

of his Son Jesus the Christ.

We as Christ-following dads and husbands are to love our wives and children

with the same sacrificial love as Christ loved us, as He imitated His Father.

And in order for us as fathers to love our wives and children sacrificially

as the Father and Christ loves us,

we are to lower our opinion of ourselves in humility and view ourselves and

raise God up in our understanding to be our only treasure.

And as God becomes more and more our treasure,

as our outstanding value, we, you and I, view our families and others as far

more valuable than we are.

The difficulty with living this way is that in our fallen human flesh,

the great temptation is to think, believe, and act as we want to and not according to God's will.

And thus the question is, how are we to live and view others in such a self-sacrificial love?

A father is to love his family and others by abiding in Christ as Christ abides in His Father.

When Abigail and I were newly married, there was this process of making our

home together before and after our honeymoon.

Before the honeymoon, we had rented a basement suite of a nice little house

in a quiet community near the school where we attended and worked.

We had worked at buying some of the items needed to furnish the suite.

Abigail brought her belongings and her favorite hope chest. I brought my desk,

radio, mattress, bowl, and spoon.

You may laugh, but that was about all I really owned!!

After the honeymoon, we moved in together. My mattress was promptly thrown out and the real work began.

It was and still is a process. And this process of bringing two people together

into one, and making their home together is founded and based upon making our

home in God's love. It wouldn't work otherwise.

Now there are five of us, praise God! My point is that home is not the building

we are in, but home is where the people who are bound by the love of God remain or stay together.

Jesus in John 15:9-10 proclaimed this, "Just as the Father has loved me, I have also loved you.

John 15:9–10

Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love,

just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love."

In these two verses, Jesus used the word love, referring to the love of God five times.

Jesus did this because it is super important!!

What then does this love mean?

Agape love, or God's love, meant "to have a strong non-sexual affection and love

for a person and their good as understood by God's moral character,

especially characterized by a willing forfeiture of rights or privileges in

another person's behalf."

Because God the Father sacrificed what was truly most important to Him,

His one and only unique Son,

Jesus obeyed the Father because He loves His Father so much that He passionately

desired to stay or abide with his Father.

Jesus passionately values us as more precious and valuable than Himself.

He wants us to abide with Him and in His Father.

How does this apply to us as Christians? Jesus obeyed God as he lived or remained in his Father's love.

As fathers and husbands, we, you and I, are called to obey God by living pure

lives unto the Lord, following his ways in the Bible.

We are called to obey God by working to provide a home and food for our family,

spending quality time with our wives and children, training and discipling our

children through teaching them God's Word.

We are called to lovingly discipline our children when they are disobedient

to God's Word in order to train them to follow Christ better,

just as God disciplines us.

We are called to send our children out on mission into the world for Christ as we have been sent.

We're called to sacrifice our wants and desires for the needs of our wives As

we serve her and help her and encourage and lead her in abiding in Christ.

These are just part of what is entailed to obey Christ

as godly fathers and husbands. The only way that we can have the power from God

to joyfully view our family and others as being more valuable than ourselves

and to love them sacrificially is by actively and intentionally staying in God's presence.

We stay in God's presence by reading and learning from God's word and continually

praying and rejoicing and thanking God in every circumstance.

We live in God's presence or make our home with Him as we intentionally pursue

God with His sacrificial love and obey His word,

trusting in His love for us.

And as we trust in His love, we obey God.

We pursue God by constantly thinking and remembering and preaching to ourselves

who God is and how He loved us.

We abide in Christ's love by repenting of our sins and by trusting His promises

and principles, reminding ourselves that we do love God and wish to stay with

God and commit to trust and love Him more.

And then we step out in joyful faith to do what was commanded us in the moment.

Not only are we to abide in God's love by obeying God's word ourselves and actively

pursue living in God's presence, but we are to teach and abide in God's presence.

In God's love, as we model God's love, so that our family and others can do the same.

And thus a father we are to imitate Christ as Christ imitated His Father so that

our families can imitate God.

Isn't it true that children imitate their parents?

Sometimes they imitate the things we say and do that we don't want them to,

the little inflections that we speak with, or our mannerisms,

or how we walk or do things,

especially how the mother and father interact with each other.

But kids also notice and imitate the good things in their parents as well.

They notice how we as fathers sacrifice our needs and desires for the good of our wives and families.

An example of this is my five-year-old son, Paul, who out of the blue recently

thanked me for loving his mommy.

Children also imitate how we theologically and doctrinally think about the truths of the Bible.

Jonathan, our eight-year-old, is learning quite well the doctrines of Scripture,

but is not only memorizing the head knowledge of the commands and principles

of the Scripture that Jonathan has been displaying.

He is also learning to critically analyze and think about Scripture in a way

that combines the thinking and understanding of both Abigail and myself.

And he's done this by listening and watching how we argue about Scripture,

how we discuss about the scriptures, and how we think as a result of what we are saying.

As children of God, we are called to imitate Christ as Christ imitated his Father.

Paul in Ephesians 5, verse 1-2 explained, "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children,

Ephesians 5:1–2

and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us as

an offering and as a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma."

Paul taught that Christ loved us. How? He gave Himself up for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God.

Where do you think Jesus in His humanity learned to love so self-sacrificially? From His Father.

Let's look at John 5, verse 19.

John 5:19

"Therefore, Jesus answered and was saying to them, truly, truly,

I say to you, [this is what I want you to focus on.]

The Son can do nothing of Himself unless it is something he sees the Father doing.

For whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner."

Jesus said he could do nothing without doing what the Father has done.

And what was Jesus doing? Jesus was imitating His father in His character and actions.

And not only was Jesus deliberately imitating His Father, but Jesus was imitating

his Father's sacrificial love.

Jesus also imitated His Father so that we could imitate Him.

As we model staying in Christ and the Father by trusting and obeying God's word,

we as Christian fathers are modeling to our children on how to love God and

how to abide with God in all circumstances.

This is the heart of parenting! This is also discipleship! To stay in relationship

with the Father by believing and trusting His Son and living according to His ways.

Fathers, you and I, are called to stay in Christ and in the Father and to lead

our children and our wives to stay in God so that one day we can send them out

to be missionaries into the world for the gospel so that they can make disciples

as they, in turn, abide in Christ.

What then is God teaching us today as we celebrate Father's Day?

As the Father loves us with sacrificial love, we too must love others,

including our families, by the Holy Spirit's power and God's sacrificial love.

In order for us as fathers to love our wives and children sacrificially,

as the Father and Christ loves us, by God's grace, we are to lower our opinion

of ourselves and raise God up in our understanding to be our greatest treasure and value.

As God becomes more and more our treasure, we view our families and others as

far more valuable than we are.

We have also learned that as Jesus obeyed his Father and abided or made His

home in His Father's love,

we as Christians and as Christian fathers are to continually make our home in

the love of Christ as we obey God's Word.

As we sacrificially love God, our families, neighbors, and community.

God also taught us that we are to imitate Christ as Christ imitated his Father.

And as we, moment by moment, day by day, imitate Christ, our families will imitate

us in the following and abiding in Christ.

As we see our world and our country and its systems unraveling,

it is ever more important that we love our family sacrificially,

abide in Christ, and lead them to do the same.

Because our families are the future of the church, and they will be the ones

sent off on mission one day to bring the light of Christ to a dark world. Let's pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the wondrous mercy that you have overwhelmingly

bestowed upon us in Jesus Christ.

We thank you for the sacrifice that you have made on our behalf of sending your

son, the perfect and spotless lamb of God, God Himself.

Yet also man, because it was a man in Adam who made this mess in the first place.

Thank you thank you forJesus being

the only God.

Father, thank you that you have loved us so much that you sent Him to die in

our place. Thank you, Father, you are so good and we are so grateful for your love.

Help us to live in your love as Jesus has lived in Your love may we imitate Him,

and may we love you always.

In your precious Son's name, Jesus Christ, we pray. Amen.

I'll leave you with a benediction from Romans 15, verse 13.

Romans 15:13

"May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing,

so that by the power of the Holy Spirit, you may abound in hope."

Have a wonderful Sunday. May the Lord bless you.