Max
Maxamillion
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 | | Purred: Sun Jun 19, '11 11:47am PST |  | |  | | A Father Every Family Ought to Find!
Luke 8:41-56
Father's Day
1. The day we know as Father's Day has a rich and interesting history. In 1909, a lady by the name of Sonora Smart Dodd, a devoted daughter from Spokane, Washington campaigned for a Father's Day celebration after listening to a sermon on the merits of Mother's Day. Her mother had passed away, and her father had served as both a mother and father to his 6 children for 21 years.
2. She is credited with being the driving force behind the holiday. A statewide celebration was proclaimed one-year later in 1910. The date chosen to be her father's birthday was June 5; however, festivities were moved to June 19, the third Sunday of the month, because there was not enough time to prepare. Eventually, annual celebrations were held throughout the United States and Canada, and the holiday was officially recognized by Congress in 1972.
3. An old English proverb states,
"One father is worth more than a hundred schoolmasters."
4. August Strindberg said,
"That is the thankless position of the father: the provider of all and the enemy of all."
5. Cal Farley aptly summarized it,
"A boy is the only thing that God can use to make a man!"
6. Sad to say our day is a day of 'deadbeat Dad's' and failing fathers. Men, who are fathers, have overall shirked their God-given responsibility of being the leaders of their respective homes. In fact, according to a recent George Barna report, last year, 1 out of every 5 homes was maintained by a woman with no father figure present. (1)
7. I recently came across a recent study released from Harvard University. The study interviewed 370 men who had graduated from the university. These men were the 'successes' of our society. Armed with degrees from Harvard, they went out into their respective vocations and succeeded. Yet, many of them were scarred and wounded by fathers who were not there for them emotionally for them as they were growing up. Dr. Samuel Oshershon concluded his research by stating,
"These findings convince me that the pyschological or physical absence of fathers from their families is one of the great underestimated tragedies of our time!" (2)
8. Time Magazine recently released a study that showed 70% of all juveniles in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes. Children from broken families are nearly twice as likely as those in two-parent families to drop out of high school.
9. According to Dr. T. Berry Brazelton, a father's involvement with a child increases the child's IQ, the child's motivation to learn, and the child's self-confidence. In addition, children with involved dads are more likely to develop a sense of humor as well as an "inner excitement."
10. The renown Dr. James Dobson offered the following commentary:
"The Western world stands at a great crossroads in its illustrious history. The very survival of our nation depends upon the president..
Today across America ... we are honoring our Fathers. Since 1922 ... the third Sunday in June has been set aside to pay tribute to our Fathers.
God commands us in Exodus 20.12 to "honor your father and you mother, that your days may be long upon the land which the Lord your God is giving you."
Do you know why God commands us to honor our fathers? Well .. one reason is because of the meaning of the word "father." In the verb form .. the word "father" means "the founder .. to be the foundation .. to author."
You Fathers are the authors of your home! And God wants you to author a God-loving ... God-fearing ... God-honoring home!
Men ... listen this morning to the instructions that God has given us in Psalm 78.5-7, "For He established a testimony in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, Which He commanded our fathers, that they should make them known to their children; that the generation to come might know them, the children who would be born, that they may raise and declare them to their children, that they may set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments."
Fathers .. God has commanded us to teach our children and to point our children to Him and here's why: So that our children may have confidence in God and keep His commandments.
The New Testament tells us the same thing in Ephesians 6.4, "And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord."
And the word translated "admonition" means to put something into the mind. Fathers ... you are to be putting something into the minds of your children .. namely ... the Word of God!
Psalm 119.11, "Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You."
Now from Genesis 6 ... I want to show every man this morning how to be an influential Father! If there was ever a generation that needed godly .. influential Fathers it is this generation!
Noah was living in similar days. God describes the days of Noah in the first 4 verses of Genesis 6. Noah's days were filled with Apostasy (a falling away from God). They were days of Anarchy and days of Apathy! It sounds like modern America! Apostasy .. Anarchy .. and Apathy!
Verse 5, "Then the Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intent of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually." Noah lived in the worst of times!
Don't you know it was difficult to raise a godly home in that environment? Cheer up Dads ... it is possible! We can raise godly children in this wicked and perverse generation! But know this: we are the key just as Noah as the key for his home!
Beginning in verse 6 ... let me show you how to be an influential Father!
So what was it about Noah that made him an influential Father? More important than that .. how can we be influential...
There's no question in my mind that Psalm 128 can correctly be entitled The Fathers' Day Psalm. It is obviously written to a man. In verse 4 it says, "thus shall the man." It's written to a man who is married because verse 3 says, "thy wife." It is written to a married man who has children because it says, "thy children." So, Psalm 128 sets before us the kind of dad that all of us who are dads would like to be and the kind of dad that every father needs to be.
The more I studied this message this week, and looked at this Psalm, and saw the ideal picture in the Bible of a father and a dad, the more I became aware that there are many people in our American society will hear me talking today about a dad they've never had. Many of you have had Christian dads and do have Christian dads for which you are very, very grateful and thankful. But it is increasingly true in our day that this is a picture of a dad some have never had.
I want to read you an article from the World Magazine, a magazine that gives the Christian perspective on the news. The article is written by Barbara Curtis and it's entitled, "His Little Girl."
"I remember the day my dad left. He knelt and hugged me and cried. The skimpy dress of a five-year-old girl could not protect me from the chill that gathered around my arms and legs. The scratchy, tickler whiskers, would I feel them no more. The arms that felt so safe, would they be gone forever? What would it be like not to have a father?"
I'll come back to that later on in the message, but this expresses more and more of what's going on in our society. Families and children who are brought up without the benefit of a dad. We are coming increasingly to understand the value and the role of a father, and the importance of a dad in the family. I understand that they have recently had a summit on fatherhood in Washington, hosted by the Vice President. He issued the momentous statement that we now know that dads are an important influence in the lives of their children. I wonder how much money they spent in Washington to find that out? But, be that as it may, I do understand the Vice President is a good family man and a good father to his children. But you don't have to go to Washington to find out how important a dad is. All you have to do is read what the Bible has to say about it and also just look around and know in your own experience how very, very important a Christian dad is.
Psalm 128 gives us the ideal picture of a father and a dad. That's one of the things I like about the Bible. It gives us the ideal as the real. The Bible does give the real. I will remind you that in our study of the book of David, for all of his greatness and what a wonderful man he was, he was not a real good father. The Bible presents the real situation, life as it is. But it also gives us the ideal. If you really want to know about the institution of marriage ... |  |  | |  |
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