Sermon Central
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Father's Day
Contributed by Johnny Small on Jun 23, 2004 (message contributor)
Summary: To be a great father, you first must be a great husband.
Today we are celebrating a day honoring our fathers. Being a father is a great responsibility. What we do as a father will impact generations to come. Our children learn by watching us and they will become the type of parents that we were. Children learn by example.
Prov 22:6
6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it.
(NIV)
We must start training our children from birth to be obedient and to love the Lord. We must show them by our actions that we too love the Lord and that He is first in our lives. God created the first family. It consisted of Adam and then Eve. God told them to be fruitful and increase in number. Adam and Eve had Cain, Abel, Seth and many more sons and daughters over his 800 years of life.
Gen 1:27-28
27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
28 God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground."
(NIV)
God set the standard for a family, one man, one woman and children. Today our families are under attack. We are being told that a normal family can consist of two men and children or two women and children. Our children are being taught this in school. The entertainment industry is sending the same message. Just about every show on TV has either a homosexual character or the subject matter deals with homosexual activity. The few shows on TV that doesn’t deal with homosexuality will make fun of the traditional family. Usually the shows will portray the family as dysfunctional. The fathers in the shows are shown as stupid, crude and dumb. It is the same in most commercials. Our children are learning that families don’t matter. Because of the efforts of media and the turning away from God and sound doctrine, we are seeing an increase in abortions (over 4000 per day), increase in unwed mothers, increase in divorces even in our churches and the legalization of homosexual marriages. Because of the hate speech law in Canada, it is now illegal for pastors to preach that homosexuality is a sin and abomination to God. Our US Senate just passed a hate crime bill by a two-thirds majority. Is the same thing going to happen to us? I will go to prison before I stop preaching the entire Word of God.
Chuck Colson runs a prison ministry. Every mother’s day and father’s day, his ministry gives cards for the prisoners to send to their mothers and fathers. They always give out more cards for mother’s day than they do for father’s day. In one large prison in California on mother’s day they gave out over a thousand mother’s day cards for the prisoners to send to their mothers. At the same prison on fathers’ day only 6 inmates ask for cards to send to their fathers.
On live TV shows and sporting events you always see people holding signs saying “hello Mom” or hear athletes being interviewed say “Hello Mom.” Why not the fathers? Is it that we are not being the fathers that we should be? Is it that we no longer have time to be fathers? Is it that our priorities are not in the right order?
We must first set a priority.
37 "Anyone who loves his father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; anyone who loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me;
38 and anyone who does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me.
(NIV)
The verse we just read says that we must put God first. God comes before our spouses, our children, our jobs, our processions and our pleasures. God first, spouse second and children third.
Truthfully, what comes first in your life?
To be a great father, we first must be “a great husband”. The Bible tells us how a husband should be.
Let’s read:
Eph 5:21-33
21 Submit to one another out of reverence for Christ.
22 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord.
23 For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior.
24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
I started to leave these verses out of this sermon, but it is God’s words, not mine. Please understand these verses are not saying that your wife is your slave to serve your every beckon call. The King James Version says:
