Insights from the Life of David – Part 8:
“The Legacy of a Man: Solomon’s Father, David”
I Kings 2:1-4, 10-12; 3:3-14
A Michigan high school senior, Kara Hewes, entered a crowded conference room to face cameras and reporters. She was about to make a public appeal to her seventy-three-year-old father. She asked him to admit his paternity. "I’d just like him to be a father," she said. "I want very much to develop a relationship with him." Her biological father, identified through a reliable blood test, was Bruce Sundlun, World War II Air Force captain, Harvard Law School graduate, and second-term governor of Rhode Island.
Kara Hewes got her wish. Shortly after the press conference in June 1993, Sundlun acknowledged his paternity and agreed to pay Kara’s college tuition. She withdrew her paternity suit. Father and daughter dined together in the governor’s mansion, and he invited her to visit him and his other children at his Newport estate.
The case was a complicated one. The thrice-divorced governor was single at the time he fathered Kara. He had already paid $30,000 to Kara’s mother to settle an earlier suit, and Kara had been adopted by her stepfather, who later vanished.
As for the governor, he was reluctant to dwell on the past: "I think the important thing is not to look back," he later told reporters in a joint press conference with his daughter. "We’re here to look forward and try to create a relationship. You can’t wave a magic wand and have a storybook life."
Governor Sundlun’s unstorybook story, though a bit more public than most, has become increasingly common. It’s a story unfolding in countless courtrooms and welfare offices across the nation. Like the governor, more and more men are fathering children outside of marriage. More and more men are failing to support or even acknowledge their children. More and more men are simply vanishing from their children’s lives.
The story of Kara Hewes is a familiar one. A growing number of American children have no relationship with their fathers. Court and school officials tell us that many children don’t even know what to put in the "Father’s Name" blank on printed forms. An even larger proportion of children have only the slightest acquaintance with their fathers.
Fathers are also vanishing legally. More than one-third of all childbirths in our nation now occur outside of marriage. In most of these cases, the place for the father’s name on the birth certificate is simply left blank. In at least two of every three cases of unwed parenthood, the father is never legally identified.
When Governor Sundlun said that we "can’t wave a magic wand and have a storybook life," he implied that the storybooks may be unrealistic. But the sad reality is that even storybooks for children now reflect the story of our society. "There are different kinds of daddies," one book for preschoolers states, and "sometimes a Daddy goes away like yours did. He may not see his children at all." Another children’s book says: "Some kids know both their mom and dad, and some kids don’t." One child in this book says: "I never met my dad, but I know that he lives in a big city." Another says: "I’ll bet my dad is really big and strong."
So Kara Hewes and Governor Sundlun are, after all, something of a storybook story. It’s a story we all know. It’s becoming our society’s story. We see it everywhere around us. We tell it to our children. It’s the story of an increasingly fatherless society. The moral of this new narrative is that fathers are unnecessary.
Imagine something big, made out of glass, called fatherhood. First imagine it slowly shrinking. Then imagine it suddenly shattering into pieces. Now look around and try to identify the remains. Over here is marriage. Over there is procreation. Over here, manhood. Over there, parenthood. Here, rights. There, responsibilities. In this direction, what’s best for me. In that direction, what’s best for my child.
And off to one side, looking nervous, is a fellow society calls a biological father, filling out forms and agreeing to mail in child-support payments. Off to the other side is some guy the experts now call a social father, wondering what to do next and whether he wants to do it. And in the middle, poking through the rubble and trying to make sense of it all are mothers and children.
Ladies and Gentlemen: our nation is in a crisis. The institution of the family has been devalued and the role of a father has been belittled. The debate over homosexual marriage is a symptom of the problem that our country has been facing for many years now: the break up of the family. Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote a book entitled “It Takes A Village” in which it is her assertion that society must become involved in raising children. While I agree with much of her assertion I’d like to take it to the next level and suggest that It takes a Family to Raise a Child! It takes a mother and father to raise a child! That’s the way God designed it to be. And it’s the breakup of the family that has brought our society to the place where it is today.
Gentlemen, this morning I want to bring a challenge to us as men. You see, I believe that the most urgent problems of our society today, from crime to adolescent pregnancy, from child sexual abuse to domestic violence against women, are largely the result of increasing fatherlessness in our nation.
And I believe that the answer to our societies most pressing social problems begins in our homes. It begins when we as men take an equal share of the responsibility in the family and choose to make a difference in the lives of our children. Our society will not be transformed until we as men stand up and become the men God wants us to be.
Our scripture text this morning includes the last words of King David who we’ve been studying for eight weeks now. We’ve looked at a lot of different aspects of this man’s life. As we come to this passage today we find David on his death bed giving some final words to his son Solomon. He basically says two things. If you’re following along in your outlines I’d encourage you to fill them in…
First he says, Be Strong and Courageous some translations also include Show Yourself a Man.
That raises some questions in our culture today, doesn’t it? What is the role of a man? What does it mean to be a man? Over the past few decades we have developed a gender that is greatly confused. Men no longer know what their responsibilities or rights are. We’ve gone from inappropriate domination to the place we are today where we really aren’t sure who or what we should be.
Just watch any television show today. Men are confused. Take for example, “Everybody Loves Raymond.” If you’ve seen the show you know exactly what I’m talking about. Raymond is basically a pushover. He’s a nice guy but everyone knows that he isn’t really in control of anything. Both his mother and his wife lord over him. They make the decisions, Ray’s just along for the ride. Is that the way it should be? Who should the man be? What’s his role? What’s appropriate? What’s Biblical? Before we talk about that look at the second instruction he gives Solomon…
Keep God’s Commandments. David says, Solomon, my son, do what’s right. Do what God has commanded you to do. Basically he’s referring to the Old Testament Law of the book of Deuteronomy where we’re told exactly how the King of Israel was to conduct himself and how the kingdom was to be run. David says, follow that law and God will keep the promise he made to me. What was the promise? In II Samuel 7:12-16 God had promised David that he would leave his heirs on the throne and that his Spirit would remain with them unlike Saul who had the Spirit taken from him.
“Solomon,” David says, “Be strong show yourself a man and keep God’s commandments.” Some powerful last words. But as you all know it’s easy to tell your children to do something, it’s quite another to model it for them. You’ve heard the axiom “Do as I say not as I do.” You’ve also heard the saying “Like Father Like Son.”
By looking at the lives of both David and his son Solomon we discover two very important principles about fatherhood and about parenting in general.
The first is The Character of a Father is passed on to his children. Men, we must be careful to be men of the highest character because our children are watching us and for the most part will model their lives after us. Those of you who have come from painful backgrounds know how difficult it is to break some of those habits. And those of you who come from good strong families know how much was passed on to you.
As we’ve studied the life of David we discovered some amazing things about this man. One of the things you’ll remember is his relationship with God. David was said to be “A man after God’s own heart.” That love was passed on to Solomon. Solomon ruled the kingdom adhering to the laws of God. He was successful for that reason.
One of the other things that becomes very apparent is that David was also a very wise man. That wisdom was also passed on. As David’s lying on his deathbed he implores his son to use his wisdom to make the right decisions, which Solomon does. As a matter of fact Solomon is known throughout the Bible as the wisest man who ever lived.
Three boys were comparing notes about their fathers’ abilities. With an air of arrogance and pride, the first boy said, “My dad is so fast he can shoot an arrow at a target and catch the arrow before it reaches the target.”
“Not bad,” said the second boy, “but my dad is so fast he can shoot at a deer and tackle the deer before the bullet gets there.”
The third boy was listening quietly, and then offered his own view: “My dad is faster than both of yours. He can get off work at 4:30 and be home by 4:15.”
Not only is our positive character passed on to our children but our weaknesses are passed on to our children as well.
In Harry Chapin’s song, “The Cat’s in the Cradle,” a father is always just about to be there for his son, but never quite makes it. At various stages of his childhood and teenager years, the son asks, “When’re you coming home, Dad?” Each time the father replies, “I don’t know when. But we’ll get together then.” When the father is finally ready and eager to spend time with his son, the son has learned how not to be there for his father, for when the father asks his adult son, “When’re you coming home, son?” his son replies, “I don’t know when. But we’ll get together then.”
Our children are watching everything we do. And it’s a very strong possibility that the areas that we struggle with the most in life will be the same ones our children end up struggling with.
Just look at David and Solomon. Do you remember David’s biggest failure and the reason for it? We talked about it two weeks ago. It was his love of women. He increased the number of wives and concubines he had even though God had forbidden it. And finally his weakness manifested itself in his affair with Bathsheba and the premeditated murder of her husband. And Solomon was the second son of David and Bathsheba.
Guess what Solomon’s biggest weakness was – His love of women. The text tells us in I Kings 11:1 that he loved many foreign women and in 11:4 that his wives turned away his heart after other gods and his heart was not true to the Lord his God. In fact the kingdom ran into increasing difficulties in the latter years of his reign because of his lack of righteousness.
Men, the weaknesses and character flaws that you exhibit will more than likely be areas that your children end up struggling with.
Those two truths that we find in the life of Solomon and his father David are easily understood. You didn’t need me to outline them for you. You’re already aware of them. The question is: how then do we become the men, the husbands, the fathers, the grandfathers that make a difference, the kind of men that God wants us to be? In David’s words, how do we show ourselves to be men? And what is a real man?
In the lives of men who I respect I’ve discovered three simple Biblical truths. Here they are:
First, Real Men are men of Influence and Authority. The macho attitude that has been engrained in many of us has taught us to be strong but I believe there’s a big difference between being strong and powerful and being influential and a man of authority.
Real men don’t wield their strength over others in a dominating way but know how to influence others. They’re people who others look to with great respect. Men who others admire and emulate not because of their position but because of their character.
Both David and Saul were wise enough to understand the difference between sheer power and authority. I’ve always believed there is a difference. A ruler can demand respect of his subjects by wielding power or he can earn respect and be granted authority.
Fathers, the best way to influence your children as they grow is by earning their respect and influencing them to make the right decisions. There are times when we as parents must make demands but the kind of men that God wants us to be will eventually evoke voluntary respect because our children will look up to us.
And men contrary to the notion that you are to control your home, we as husbands should be working along side of our wives and submitting to each other. The Apostle Paul has some things to say in the book of Ephesians that are very controversial today. Whatever you think of his assertion that the husband is the head of the wife you can’t ignore the fact that while he spends two verses asserting the husband’s headship of the wife he spends nine verses telling a man how he ought to sacrificially love his wife in such a way that he will be respected.
Men if we would love our families the way that Christ loved us, there would be no issue of authority. Because when we love as Christ loved us the concerns of the other become more important than our concerns. I can attest to that truth. My wife I never argue over authority. I have a long way to go toward being the type of man that I believe God wants me to be but every morning I spend time praying that God would help me to love my children and my wife the way he wants me to love them. And the more I do the more my life becomes an influence in the lives of my family.
Second, Real Men are men of Faith. Do you know why so many of our homes are in such disarray? Because men don’t take faith seriously enough. Women, if you’re here and your husband is at home you need to be on your knees in prayer for him. Pray that he will realize how important faith is to your family and to his development as a father and/or husband.
Men, hear me: You will never be the man that you could be until your faith becomes what it should be! You will never be the man that you could be until your faith becomes what it should be! I hear a lot of men say things to me like, “The church is full of hypocrites.” Well then why don’t you stand up and show us how to live a godly life? Men, you have got to take your faith seriously. Husbands and wives, you will never experience the unity and peace and fulfillment that you desire, your marriage will never reaches its potential until both of you surrender your lives to Jesus Christ and get serious about living out your faith.
Third, Real Men Teach Integrity by Example. Do you know why Solomon failed to live up to David’s instructions to keep God’s commands? Because David himself didn’t keep God’s commands. We can’t say one thing and do another. Our actions speak much louder than our words. If you want to be a real man then teach integrity by being a man of integrity.
In Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth he wrote this, “You do not have many fathers. Indeed, in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. I appeal to you, then, be imitators of me.” Men, your children are going to imitate you, like or not. What kind of example will they be imitating? If you want to teach your children to be people of integrity then you’ve got to lead by example.
Repent of your sins. Clean up your lives. You know the things that aren’t right. If you want to be men of influence whose children look to with great admiration and respect then get your life right with God and take seriously his call on your life to be holy as he is holy. We only get one chance at this.
