Poppa … Pops … Pa … Dad … Daddy … Father … Sir!
Our heavenly Father, like our earthly fathers, has many different names. He is our “Father” because He is “Elohim” … the One … with a capital “O” … who created us. He is our “Father” because He’s “Jehovah Jireh” … He provides everything for us. And He is our “Father” because He’s “Jehovah Shammah” … because He is there for us … whenever … wherever … we need Him.
After King Solomon’s reign, the Israelites had a family feud that eventually divided the Kingdom of Israel into two separate neighboring nations. The northern kingdom kept the name “Israel” … while the southern kingdom called itself “Judah.” In 723 bc, the northern nation of Israel was overrun by the Assyrians … never to be heard from again. Around a hundred years later … in 607 bc … Babylon invaded Judah. They allowed Judah’s king to continue to rule … but only if the nation of Judah paid huge taxes. This went on for about 10 years until the king of Judah … Jehoiachin … decided to host the Jewish version of the Boston Tea Party and stopped paying taxes. It didn’t go well for King Jehoiachin and the nation of Judah.
Nebuchadnezzar’s response was swift and deadly. He invaded Judah, sacked the city of Jerusalem, destroyed the Temple, and carted off Jehoiachin and his surviving subjects to Babylon to be his slaves. Amongst those who were led off as slaves was the prophet Ezekiel.
In 574 bc … 14 years after the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the first Temple … God gave Ezekiel a powerful vision. In the vision, Jerusalem and the Temple were rebuilt and the name of Jerusalem … the “City of God’s Peace” … which is what the name “Jerusalem” means … was changed to “Jehovah Shammah” … meaning “God is There.”
It is hard for us to appreciate the significance of the name “Jehovah Shammah” to the Jews living in exile without a temple. Since King Solomon had built the Temple and the Spirit of the Lord had descended upon it, that was where God lived … in the Temple … which was located in the center of Jerusalem. God was there … physically present in the Temple, in the city … just as He was present with them in the Tabernacle as He led them through the wilderness to the Promised Land. The name “Jehovah Shammah” reminded them that God was still there … with them … even though their nation, their city, and God’s house had been destroyed and they were now living in exile. The name “Jehovah Shammah” also suggested that God the Father would one day gather up His children, rebuild Jerusalem and the Temple … where He would once again be with them. Every time they heard the name “Jehovah Shammah” they would be reminded of this promise while they were in exile and it would help them to never forget how God had kept His promise after they had rebuilt their city, became a nation again, and God had once again taken up residence in His newly re-built Temple.
From the very moment of humanity’s inception, God was there. In Genesis … the story of our beginning … God didn’t just create us and provided for us … He had a relationship with us. In Genesis 3, it says that God walked and talked with Adam and Eve in Paradise. He was with them and they were with Him … and they had everything … love … security … acceptance … innocence … perfection … and best of all, a close, intimate relationship with their Creator … until. A moment in time … an act of rebellion … and that beautiful relationship was changed. Adam and Eve were forced to leave the Garden of Eden. They no longer walked with Elohim in the Garden. They no longer talked to Jehovah Jireh in Paradise. And even though they had to leave the Garden of Eden, God went with them into the world that we live in today.
God is still “Jehovah Shammah” … God who is here with us … but not like He was with us in the Garden of Eden. In the Garden He was “Jehovah Shammah” … God Right There … in the most literal sense. After the fall, He was still “Jehovah Shammah” … He was still with us … but the proximity and the nature of our contact with Him was changed.
The closest we could get to God was through His Holy Spirit, His Presence … with a capital “P.” God didn’t physically travel in front of the Israelites in the wilderness … His Spirit, His Presence led them as a column of cloud or smoke by day and a column of fire or light by night. God didn’t physically dwell in the Tent of Meeting or the Tabernacle … His Spirit, His Presence did. God didn’t physically dwell in the Temple but His Spirit, His Presence did.
God was still amongst His people … but it wasn’t like it was before the Fall. There was no fellowship with God … like in the Garden … no relaxed walks in the cool of the day. Instead of being there with God and God with them, God was now “over there” … on a mountain top, in a column of fire or smoke, a cloud, or on the other side of a curtain. When Moses met with God, it wasn’t face-to-face. When the priests entered the Temple, it was not face-to-face. God was still with us … but because of sin, there was a space, a barrier between us and Jehovah Shammah.
Ezekiel had another vision before the Babylonians invaded in which he saw the Spirit of the Lord leave the Temple … which is why the Babylonians were able to invade Judah and destroy both Jerusalem … God’s holy city … and God’s holy temple here on earth. After Nebuchadnezzar’s disastrous retribution against Judah, Jerusalem was gone … the Temple was gone … and in the minds of the Israelites and Judeans … God was gone. They were alone … left to fend and protect themselves from the forces of nature and the greed, deception, and cruelty of men … a pretty terrifying realization, amen?
But God is “Jehovah Shammah” … right here … right now. He sent a vision to His prophet Ezekiel to comfort His children and to give them hope … to remind them that God was “Jehovah Shammah” … God was right there … even in Babylon. He showed Ezekiel a vision of a new Jerusalem … a new city with a glorious Temple where the sacrificial system would be reinstated. Ezekiel saw God’s glory return and take up residence in the Temple and dwell amongst His people once more … and the climax of God’s vision was that He would give His new earthly city a new name … “Jehovah Shammah” … “God is Right Here, Right Now” … proof that His anger is but for a moment, His favor for a lifetime; weeping may last for the night but a shout of joy comes in the morning (Psalm 30:5).
Jerusalem was rebuilt, though not renamed. The Temple was rebuilt … only to be destroyed again by the Romans 656 years later.
But … Jehovah Shammah is right here, with us right now, with us always. God’s presence came to dwell with us in a whole new and even more amazing way. Knowing our helpless and sinful condition and how hopeless and lost we could be without Him, God did the only thing that He could to redeem and restore His lost creation … He stepped out of Heaven … He took on flesh. “The Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen His glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth” (John 1:14).
God came near [move hands from Heaven to earth] to enter into here [point to heart]. In the words of the Apostle Paul: “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if He needed anything. Rather, He Himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:24-25). Jehovah Shammah made His dwelling among us … with us … that we might see Him, hear Him, touch Him. Jehovah Shammah stepped out of Heaven, walked among us, teaching us about His kingdom to come and His love for us. Jehovah Shammah … God Right Here … took our place on the cross and sacrificed Himself for our sins so that we could receive His gift of eternal salvation and once again walk with Him and talk with Him in Paradise forever.
Jehovah Shammah … God Right Here. Let me ask you: how can our children today come to know Jehovah Shammah if their earthly fathers do not? In far too many American homes, the father is not there. According to the latest U.S. census, 19.7 million children, more than 1 in 4, live without a father in the home (www.fatherhood.org/father-absence-statistic). Wow … 19.7 million children … more than 1 in 4 … live without a father in the home. Even when the father is present, he is often “ni shammah” … “not there.” According to “Fatherhood.org,” this country is experiencing what they call a “father factor” in nearly all of the social ills facing America today.
Teenagers have committed almost 800 murders so far this year. That’s hard for me to wrap my mind around … teenagers committing murder.
• Juveniles under the age of 18 account for 13.7% of all violent crime arrests and 22.5% of all property crime arrests.
• 2,198 juveniles have been arrested for forcible rape.
• 35,001 juveniles have been arrested for aggravated assault.
• 1,668 teens between the ages of 13-18 have committed suicide in the US in the past year. (www.teenhelp.com/violence-anger/teen-violence-statistics/)
Within the next 24 hours:
• 1,439 teenagers will attempt suicide.
• 2,795 teenage girls will become pregnant.
• 3,506 teens will run away.
• 2 teens will be murdered.
• 15,006 teens will use drugs for the first time
• Every 4 minutes a youth will be arrested for an alcohol-related crime.
• Every 7 minutes a youth will be arrested for a drug-related crime. (www.verywellmind.com/what-is-happening-to-our-children-2606269.)
Many studies cite the absence of a father as a contributing cause for these alarming statistics. More than 70% of all juvenile offenders in state reform institutions come from fatherless homes.
• There are more than 64 million men in America who identify themselves as being a father but only 26.5 million men are part of a home where they are married to a spouse and have children under the age of 18 living there.
• 85% of the youth who are currently in prison grew up in a fatherless home. (Texas Department of Corrections)
• Seven out of every 10 youth that are housed in state-operated correctional facilities, including detention and residential treatment centers, come from a fatherless home. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• 39% of students in the United States, from the first grade to their senior year of high school, do not have a father at home. Children without a father are 4 times more likely to be living in poverty than children with a father. (National Public Radio)
• Children from fatherless homes are twice as likely to drop out of school before graduating than children who have a father in their lives. (National Public Radio)
• 24.7 million children in the United States live in a home where their biological father is not present. That equates to 1 in every 3 children in the United States not having access to their father. (National Public Radio)
• Girls who live in a fatherless home have a 100% higher risk of suffering from obesity than girls who have their father present. Teen girls from fatherless homes are also 4 times more likely to become mothers before the age of 20. (National Public Radio)
• 75% of rapists are motivated by displaced anger that is associated with feelings of abandonment that involves their father. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• Living in a fatherless home is a contributing factor to substance abuse, with children from such homes accounting for 75% of adolescent patients being treated in substance abuse centers. (U.S. Department of Justice)
• 85% of all children who exhibit some type of a behavioral disorder come from a fatherless home. (U.S. Department of Justice)
Pretty sobering statistics, amen?
The home doesn’t need a man … there are plenty of those around. The home needs a father. And yet, through the example of one father in the gospels, we can once again learn how we, as earthly fathers, can teach our children the truth about “Jehovah Shammah” … that God is … and that God will always be there … when they need Him. That father’s name is “Jairus.” Jairus’ story is found in the gospel of Mark, chapter 5 and the gospel of Luke, chapter 8.
Jesus had just come back to Capernaum after visiting the tombs in Gadarea … the place where He had healed a man possessed by thousands of demons. As soon as Jesus’ foot touches the shore, He is crowded by people who have been looking for Him and waiting for Him … one of them was a man by the name of “Jairus” … one of the rulers of the synagogue in Capernaum.
Jairus’ position as a presiding elder in the synagogue made him one of the most prominent men in Capernaum’s Jewish community. He was neither a rabbi nor a preacher but was responsible for the order of the synagogue service. He was the keeper of the sacred books, which were the property of the community. He was responsible for appointing someone to lead prayers or read from the scriptures and comment on them. Jairus was, in a sense, the “president” or “administrative head” of the synagogue … which made him a man with high social position … a man known among the people … a man of prestige and power … but at this particular moment, none of those things mattered. His daughter … his little girl … the apple of his eye … was very sick and dying … and, unless you’ve been through it, you have no idea how terrified and desperate Jairus was feeling.
So … the first thing that Jairus does … and the first thing that we need to do as fathers and parents and Christians … is to seek out Jesus! Jairus did not send his wife or one of his other family members, a servant, or a neighbor … he didn’t send another member of his synagogue or some underling … as the father, he sought out the LORD himself. Regardless of his social position … regardless of what the townspeople might think of him … Jairus humbly knelt down before Jesus and pleaded with Him: “Please! Please come … my daughter … my sweet, innocent, beloved daughter … my only daughter … is sick and dying. Help me! If there is any way possible … help me.”
Fathers … husbands … men … it’s okay to let your family … your children … see that you have limitations … that there are somethings … well, a lot of things actually … that we can’t do … and that it’s okay to admit that we can’t do them … but we must also show our children and our loved ones how we handle our limitations and our setbacks. Let them see you get on our knees like Jairus before Jesus, amen? Let them see that you have faith in Jehovah Shammah … let them see that you have faith in the One … with a capital “O” … that you worship in church on Sunday … that you have real faith, abiding faith in the One that you sing about. Let your family, your friends, you neighbors, your co-workers hear you calling out in the name of Jehovah Shammah.
Fathers, husbands, men of the church … we must be seekers of Christ … seekers of wisdom … seekers of strength … seekers of guidance for the sake of our homes, our families, our church, and our community. We must let our children and families see and know that we are not ashamed of the gospel … nor the God of the gospels. We must lead by example. We must lead them to God … walk with them in God … experience God together as a family. I beg you not to miss out on making these kinds of bonds and memories.
The second thing that we learn as fathers and Christian men from Jairus’ example is the need to bring Christ into our homes. Remember, Jairus was a ruler … a leader … in his local synagogue … making him a prominent social figure … a person of power and prominence in the Capernaum Jewish community. Many of his fellow leaders and prominent citizens might have been deeply concerned that Jairus would let this upstart … this Galilean yokel … this friend of sinners … into his home. To many in the Capernaum Jewish community, this would have been unheard of and unacceptable.
Fathers … husbands … men of Christ … there may be people you walk with … there may be friends … people you associate with on a regular basis … who may not understand what you’re about or why you believe the things that you believe or do the things that you do because of what you believe … but as Christian fathers … as men of the cross … we must invite this upstart, this Galilean yokel, this friend of sinners into our homes, amen? Let me ask you … when was the last time you invited Christ into your home? Maybe never because we assume that He is already there and that we don’t need to give Him a personal invitation … and it’s true … He is Jehovah Shammah … God Who is There … but there’s something that affects the heart and affects our homes when we make the conscious effort to ininvite Jesus into our homes … not just on special occasion or when we need Him … but literally every day.
I truly believe that the one thing that our country really, really needs right now are Christian homes. Homes where Christ is welcome. Homes where Christ is more than just a picture hanging on the wall. Home is where Christ’s presence is invited in, where Christ’s presence is encouraged to stay. Home is where His name is honored and His Word is studied and obeyed, amen? As we are told in Psalm 127:1: “Unless the LORD builds the house, those who build it labor in vain. Unless the LORD guards the city, the guard keeps watch in vain. It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for He provides for His beloved during sleep” (Psalm 127:1-2). Does that sound like a lot of homes and families today … both parents rising up early, putting in 40, 50, 60 hours a week because they are eating the bread of anxious toil as they struggle to have the latest and greatest while they run the rat race in an attempt to keep up with the Jones, the Smiths, and the Browns?
Think back with me to the first Passover. When God sent His angle of death to “passover” Egypt and take the firstborn, it was the father’s responsibility to slaughter the lamb and wipe its blood on the door posts and lintels. It was the father who spared his family from death and tragedy. The safety of the family depended upon the father. If he failed in his duty, the angel of death would have killed the first-born male child … which could have been their only child or only male child as well.
Listen closely, my brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers. Satan’s angel of death is passing over our country. He’s coming for our children with drugs, with sexual disease, and rebellion. He is entering our homes through the TV, through cartoons, through music, through the internet. He wants to enter your home through your children’s or grandchildren’s classmates and acquaintances … so be selective of your child or grandchild’s friends, who they hang out with, the sites that they visit on the internet, the shows that they watch on TV. “Be alert and of sober mind. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour” (1st John 5:8). The devil is out to steal and to kill and destroy (John 10:10) … and families and homes and children are some of his favorite targets. He’s out to steal our children and grandchildren’s innocence … he’s out to steal our children and grandchildren’s dignity … their minds … their bodies … their souls … and they don’t even know it … which is why it falls on us as parents and as adults to protect them, to raise them up as good Christians who know the power of the Holy Spirit. “You shall put these words of mine in your heart,” says the LORD, speaking of the scriptures, “and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and fix them as an emblem on your forehead. Teach then to your children, talking about them when you are at home, and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. Write them on the doorposts of your home and on your gates, so that your days and the days of your children may be multiplied in the land that the LORD swore to your ancestors to give them, as long as the heavens are above the earth” (Deuteronomy 11:18-21).
The devil may want our children … the devil may want our homes … the devil may want this church … but he can’t have it, amen? He has been put on notice. He has been warned. In order to get our children, in order to get our homes, in order to get our church, he has to come through our prayers, amen? We will fight him with everything that we’ve got, amen? We are not going to idly sit by as he brings havoc into our homes, into our church, into our community, are we?
Fathers, men, your families will be attacked and destroyed if you do not take the blood of Christ and apply it over the lives of your children, the lives of your wives, your family. Regardless of what other people may think or do … let us stand with Joshua and declare: “As for me and my house, we will serve the LORD!” (Joshua 24:15).
Fathers, grandfathers, parents … let me ask you: If you are the head of your house, who is the head of you? I hope and pray that it’s Jesus Christ! When Christ entered Jairus’ home, Jesus chose who was to be let in and He ran out those who did not belong. He took authority in another man’s home. Are you letting Him have that same authority in your home? Is He able to bring in what He desires and get ride of what doesn’t belong? If there is anything that will hinder the ministry of God in your home, I hope and pray that Jesus will show it to you and that you will run it out of your house, amen?
When you took on the role of father, your heavenly Father gave you certain responsibilities. In Ephesians 6:4, Paul advises fathers not to provoke their children to anger, “but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the LORD” (Ephesians 6:4). He didn’t say “mothers.” He didn’t say “other Christians,” did He? He didn’t say the “school system” did He? He didn’t say the “government” did He? He said “fathers.”
It is the father’s responsibility to teach his children about God … but you can’t teach your children about God if you don’t know God or spend time with God yourself. You can’t teach your children about God’s Word if you don’t know the Bible yourself, amen? You can’t teach your children about God if you’re at work all the time or you’re never home. Many mothers and churches have had to take on the father’s pastoral or ministerial duties because the father isn’t there or refuses to do so.
It falls on us as fathers and grandfathers to give our children the kind of upbringing that prepares them for living the kinds of lives that are pleasing to God. Hear me on this! It is the family unit … not the church … that has the primary responsibility for the biblical and spiritual training of our children and grandchildren. Our job as the church is to assist you and reinforce the instruction and training that your children and grandchildren should already be receiving at home.
Here’s what we, as Christian fathers, as parents, and grandparents are called to do:
1. Dedicate your children to God. They are a gift from God. If you don’t believe that they are a gift from God, ask a couple that can’t have children. God has placed them in your care, so you better handle them with care, amen? And once you dedicate them to God, you better follow through on what you told God you would do for these children, amen?
2. Teach your children to fear the LORD … to turn away from evil … to love righteousness … to hate iniquity … to instill in them God’s attitude towards sin … and live before God the way that you would have them live before God.
3. As we already talked about … protect them from ungodly influences. Make no mistake about it, Satan is out to mislead them and destroy them if he can.
4. Establish them in church. If you see no need to faithfully be in God’s house, neither will they. If you drop them off at church and don’t go in yourself, guess what? When they get old enough, they’ll stop going too. If it’s not important to you, it won’t be important to them. That just makes sense, amen? Trust me, I’ve seen a hundred times.
5. Encourage them to remain separate from the world. This is a tough one. Install in them godly standards. There is still a word in the Bible called “fornication.” Sex before marriage or outside of marriage is still a sin as far as I know. Living together outside the bonds of marriage is still a sin. Believe me, I’ve taught these things to my own daughter and she is considered to be a freak by her peers, many of whom have shunned and ridiculed her because of her beliefs. Teach them to fear and to reverence God and His name … His Word … His house. Teach them that they are strangers and pilgrims upon this earth … that their true citizenship is in Heaven with Jehovah Shammah!
6. Teach them about the Holy Spirit.
7. Teach them that God has a purpose and a divine plan for their lives.
8. Instruct them on the importance of prayer and the Word of God.
9. Teach them not just by your words but by your actions, by your example, by the way in which you live your life.
Teach them that God loves them too much to reward their disobedience. Teach them that God’s love is unconditional but His promises are not. Teach them that they cannot expect God to bless them with:
• Finances without tithing
• Wisdom without the Word
• Freedom without forgiveness
• Victory without accountability
• Abundance without obedience.
Don’t just teach it … live it.
The last thing that we can learn as fathers and Christians from Jairus’ example is how to express our love towards our children. What would cause a grieving, concerned father to leave his dying daughter’s side? What would cause him to seek out the help of a relatively unknown Jewish teacher and healer? What would cause him to risk his position as a ruler in the synagogue and Jewish community? What would compel him to fall at Jesus’ feet and cry out: “I beg you … please! Come! Come now to my house and heal my daughter!” What would cause him to turn a deaf ear to the gossips and nay-sayers?
LOVE!
Love … pure and simple. He loved his daughter. His love for her was greater than his concern for position or power. His love was greater than what his neighbors might think. His love said: “I’ll do whatever I have to do … go where I have to go … sacrifice whatever I have to sacrifice … to save my child.” You might think, “Well … that’s the way every parent should feel about their children,” but as the statistics I cited at the beginning of this sermon sadly demonstrate, that is not always the case.
We don’t know how long Jairus’ daughter lived after that but I’m willing to bet that a day didn’t go by but what she didn’t think about the fact that she was alive because of what her father and Jesus did for her. Perhaps she grew up to have children of her own. Occasionally she would tell them the story of how their grandpa was willing to put everything he had on the line and allow some hick rabbi to come into their house and bring her back to life after she had already died. Her life … her healing … her salvation is a powerful, powerful example of God’s power … of God being there for her … of Jehovah Shammah, amen? She was alive because her father was willing to risk it all for her. She was alive because her father was there for her and was willing to go to any lengths for her.
Does that sound like another Father that we all know? A Father who is there for us … no matter what? A Father who is willing to do anything for us … go to any length for us? A Father who was willing to take our place and die our death that we might be brought back to life?
Please take this to heart. Love is not giving a child everything that they ask for. Love is not a closet full of toys or drawers full of clothes. It’s not a large allowance. As fathers, as parents, as Christians … love is living by God’s example, by God’s edicts, being there … “shammah” … for our children as a way of teaching them and showing that God is Jehovah Shammah … that God is always there for them. Love is teaching our children by our words and by our example that God is always there for them just as He is always there for us, amen?
Love is taking the time to sit down with our children or grandchildren, looking them in the eye, and saying: “We are Christians. That’s who we are. We love Jesus … and because we love Jesus, we serve Jesus. And because we love and serve Jesus, there are somethings that I will allow and there are some things I just won’t allow in this house. There are things that we will do … and there are things that we won’t do. You may not understand all this right now but I do it because I love you and want you to live. I want us to live eternally as a family. I cannot think of anything more tragic as being here together now but separated from you for eternity.”
I know that I’ve been talking to fathers a lot but I feel that we don’t encourage and support fathers enough … neither in society nor in the church. We have downplayed the importance of fathers and we are seeing the tragic results of that all around us.
Listen, fathers and grandfathers … you have a crucial part to play in the lives of our children. And that goes for the men in our church who aren’t married or have children. We have bought into the lie that we are unimportant or that we serve a minor role in raising up our own children and the children of our nation and we need to shake off that lie. We need to step up and own up to our responsibility to our children, to our families, to our church, and to our community as men. We need to let our children, our wives, our neighbors, our co-workers, our fellow citizens see us seek the LORD. We need to bring Christ into our hearts, into our homes, into our schools, and into our community. As men of God, we need to teach the Word and we need to be living examples of the Word … and we can’t do either if we don’t know the Word, amen? And most important, like our Father in Heaven, we need to be there for our children … we need to be there for our wives … we need to be there for our church … we need to be there for our nation and for this generation who are clearly lost and hurting right now … amen?
