Michael Bryson, a first-time father, surprised his wife on her first Mother’s Day. He did so by bringing their six-month old son, Jason, to the hospital where she worked as a nurse. After the balloons and the laughing and the sharing was over, Miriam returned to her post and her two men returned to the car for the trip home.
You can imagine that getting all the stuff back into the car was not an easy job. Michael balanced the baby carrier on the roof of the car while tossing the candy in the front seat, arranging the flowers on the floor, and wrestling the balloons out of the wind into the backseat. Finally, he got everything arranged and headed home.
Suddenly, other drivers began to honk at Michael and flash their lights. He could not figure out what was happening, until he hit about 55 miles per hour on the highway and heard a scraping sound move across the top of his car. Then, Michael watched in horror through the rearview mirror as the baby carrier – and Jason – slid off the roof, bounced on the trunk, dropped to the road, and began to toboggan down the highway behind the car.
The driver in the car behind Michael’s had spotted the baby carrier and was prepared. He screeched to a halt behind the car seat to shield it from oncoming traffic. Michael slammed on his brakes, ran back to Jason, and discovered the baby had only minor scratches. Then, as the waves of fear, guilt, and relief hit him, this new father began to sob uncontrollably on the highway, while holding his son in a tight embrace (Byran Chapell, Holiness By Grace, 2001, http://www.preachingtoday.com, 2003).
We fathers blow it often times. Think of the fathers in Scripture. Think of Samuel, the last judge over Israel, who appointed his sons to be judges who were spiritually unqualified in 1 Samuel 8:1-5). David is notorious for failing as a father. Jacob paid favorites with his sons. On and on I could go.
Eugene Peterson writes,
A search of Scripture turns up one rather surprising truth: there are no exemplary families [that show us a father, mother, and children], portrayed in a way that evokes admiration. There are many family stories, there is considerable reference to family life, and there is sound counsel to guide the family, but not one model family is given for anyone to look up to in either awe or envy.
The biblical material consistently portrays the family, not as a Norman Rockwell painting around a Thanksgiving turkey, but as a series of broken relationships in need of redemption (Eugene H. Peterson, Like Dew Your Youth. Eerdmans, 1994, p. 110).
On this Father’s Day, I want to encourage you fathers and exhort all who are not fathers to encourage our fathers.
1. God Compares Himself to Fathers
In Psalm 103:13 “Like as a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on them that fear Him.”
Listen to George Sweeting, a former president of Moody Bible Institute, in a sermon of fathers:
“Consider the word father. There is no more important word in any language. God even uses the word to describe Himself and His relationship to His people.”
Jesus taught us in the model prayer to pray, “Our Father who art in heaven….” (Luke 11:2).
Sweeting added, “Fathers, you stand symbolically in the same position over your family that God stands in over His people. You represent God to your family” (Special Sermons on The Family, page 91).
Jesus in a parable again compared earthly fathers to our heavenly Father: “If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? Or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you (fathers) being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?” (Luke 11:11-13).
God compares Himself to human fathers not because earthly fathers are perfect, but because just as God the Father is the leader of the Trinity, so are fathers leaders in their homes.
2. To be Fatherless is a Great Hardship
Fathers are important. So important that God makes special provisions for fatherless homes. On behalf of the oppressed poor, the Psalmist prayed to God, “You are the helper of the fatherless” (Psalm 10:14). To the fatherless poor, the Psalmist promised, “The Lord relieves the fatherless and widow” (Psalm146:9). In the New Testament, James said “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows” (James 2:27).
Fathers are instructed to provide for their families. In 1 Timothy, Paul is giving guidelines for helping struggling widows in the church. First, the family of the widow should help her before the church is obligated. Paul in 1 Timothy 5:8 expands on that guideline: “If any provide not for his own house, he has denied the faith and is worse than an infidel.”
When a father can’t provide for his family, that puts that wife and kids in great hardship. So Scriptures make provision for the fatherless.
3. We are Commanded to Honor Our Fathers
Paul gave this instruction in Ephesians 6:1-3. This command has two parts. The first part is addressed to children still at home: “Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this right.” The second part is for grown children who are no longer at home. Even though grown children are adults on their own, they still should, “Honor your father and mother; which is the first commandment with promise.”
But some adult children may object, “You don’t my parents. My parents, especially my dad was abusive to my siblings and me. There is no way I will honor my father.”
Wednesday, I went with our members to Open Door Ministries to serve lunch. Before lunch, Kathy, the director, was giving out announcements. She also reminded everyone that Sunday is Father’s Day, and if their father was still living, they should call him and tell him that they love him. Across the table from where I was sitting was a young lady still in her twenties. She became defiant when told she should tell her dad that she loved him. She shook her head, “No!” She whispered, “No way!” If Kathy had read Ephesians 6:2, that young lady would have responded, “There is no way I am going to honor my dad. He doesn’t deserve honor. He deserves to be in jail.”
First, to help someone who is thinking this way, we have to define what it doesn’t mean to “honor your father.” It doesn’t mean you have to give them public praise or throw a party and celebration for him on Father’s Day. Secondly, to honor may simply mean to privately speak politely and respectfully to your father.
To honor your father means you find something for which to be thankful. Your father brought into this world, gave you life, fed and protected you when you were to little to protect and provide for yourself. This is the advice of Donald Sunukjian who said, “The human infant is not like an animal infant---able to take care of itself after a few months.”
Maybe your dad had a job he hated. But because times were hard, he toughed it out so he could provide food, clothing, and shelter for you. You can honor him by saying, “Thank you Dad, for providing for me while I was growing up” and obey God’s Word in Ephesians 6:2 (Invitation to Biblical Preaching, page 100).
I want to give the same advice that Kathy at Open Door gave the down and outs, “If your dad is alive, tell him that you love him.” I want to add, thank him for some small things he did for you or with you.
Brooks Adams kept a diary from his boyhood. One special day when he was eight years old he wrote in his diary, “Went fishing with my father; the most glorious day of my life.” Throughout the next forty years of his life, he never forgot that day he went fishing with his father; he made repeated references to it in his diary, commenting on the influence that day had had on his life.
Brook’s father was an important man; he was Charles Francis Adams, the United Sates’ ambassador to Great Britain under the Lincoln administration. Interestingly, he too made a note in his diary about the fishing trip. He wrote simply, ‘Went fishing with my son; a day wasted” (Sweeting, page 93). Of course, the day was not wasted, but the father never knew how much that one day meant to his son.
This Father’s Day let your father know about some little things that he did that meant a lot to you. I have a Father’s Day card in which I thank my dad for the fishing trips, one on one basketball games and the 410 shotgun he got me and our rabbit hunting together.