A Dad's Legacy Part 1

good morning there's a lot of confusion these days regarding how a family should work and as a result many families don't seem to be working very well at all this is in large part due to fathers not understanding their God-given role to lead their families well or in some cases simply by neglecting those responsibilities altogether God has a lot to say to dads that can help them leave a spiritual legacy To their children if they in turn can pass on to their children today's scripture passages from the book of Deuteronomy please open your Bibles to Deuteronomy chapter six or follow along in your worship bulletin I'll be reading beginning at verse four Hear oh, Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength these commandments that I give you today are to be up on your heart's impressed them on your children talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road when you lie down and when you get up Tie them in the symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates good to be with all of you for those of you that may not know me My name is Joel and I officially oversee the worship arts ministries but the next couple weeks I get to be preacher so I'm excited about that and I'll take a moment to thank Veleta for directing the choir today And just because I don't get to do this very often let us just thank them for week after week all their work and I truly blessed because I really get a lot of help with the worship arts ministry to today could run well so I'm thankful for that, I know it's not father's day today there's been a little bit of confusion but I'm doing a two weeks series, starting today and ending next week which is father's day so for some of you because I know even though this service generally has the more mature people you are still are kids as well so if you haven't gotten that powerful tool for your dad he still likes power tools probably maybe the latest gadgets for maybe a piece of sporting equipment, there's still time to do that and then if you're going to get in some socks or a t-shirt or a tie he'll probably still smile because he loves you but he might appreciate that quite as much as you've already got it don't take it back just give him both and that's all right too but i get for particularly excited about father's day because it's a really the season of life I'm in right now in a couple minutes I'll be showing you a picture of the family and talking through that but but really fathers and how they affect their families has been something that's been on my heart for many years and before I got into ministry full-time I was a school teacher for about eleven years and I would wonder things like some kids seem to have a lot of security where did that come from and others seemed to really be struggling and how did that happen and then I started reading scripture I saw that from God's point-of-view there's a direct tie-in and fathers are just critically important in the development of their families and that doesn't matter if you've got kids at home or if you've got kids either they are thirty or forty or older, dads you still have a crucial role so I want a couple things first for those of you that are not A dad there are still going to be things for you in these messages because chances are you're married to one there may be some younger guys here are looking around a little bit because we could have a few sometimes aspiring fathers for the message is for you and your all children and what you'll find a little bit more next week is that wives and kids can help us become the dads that God wants us to be, so we'll talk a little bit more about that in some specific terms but today is a little bit more of an introductory message again in general about fatherhood and specifically about legacy how do I as a dad paint such compelling picture of faith that I pass that on to my children that then they might pass that on to their children that they might pass that on to their children because I think we can probably agree right now We are a little bit messed up In terms of our families we've got divorce rates are still very high statistics which suggest that some people that are Christians as well and we've got a lot of people living together before they're married we've got congressman that are thinking somehow they can send pictures out publicly and not get caught all kinds of things and there's a sense of what is a family even and there are so many different views what does that mean even to be a Godly father even to back up from there what is a Godly man what's a Godly wife what are Godly children and so I'm going to be sharing with you a little bit experientially from my family and I share my experiences please take those as only that Experiences, my experiences that's all they are however As soon as I picked this up and read from It, its authority is God's word God created fathers he created wives He created kids, He knows how we are supposed to live and we need to submit ourselves to his picture of the family rather than saying God, I'm not really that interested in what you have to say and I know as we Pull God back The equation the creator of families things can go well I'm not always the most Godly husband the reason I bring that into the picture is perhaps the best spiritual legacy we can give our kids is an intact Christian marriage kids see that and they will tend to model it I'm not always the best father trying to Learn as I go and I was thinking the other day I'm kind of the main one who changes the beds in my house of the got more kids I just have to do more around the house or things will go just chaotic you might remember several years ago all these car commercials and the idea was zero to sixty in two seconds or zero to sixty in three seconds and I was thinking because I have a little bit of a sarcastic side I thought where can you drive like that these days there be a policeman behind you saying I got there one second to give you a ticket But at any rate it seemed to sell cars that go From zero to sixty my house goes from zero to mayhem in about three seconds sometimes and so I've had to learn to do a lot more Around the house so I was putting the beds together, is there anyone else who does not like fitted sheets? I don't like fitted sheets because you get one corner on you can't put it all the way over because you don't have enough slack over here so you but about half way over the corner and his hope that when you go to the other corner that stays but it doesn't that flips up and the you are over here and so ok I'm going to get smart and you take both corners and you lay them over like that and these popup and I was thinking that so much like mine my life as a dad I've got my marriages in this corner the kids are here finances are over here my career over here as soon as I get one thing in order There is something up, you're all retired so I know it doesn't happen anymore but but that's the idea you get things anything you got three corners on and there is still one off and that recently for us and we had three appliances a refrigerator my dishwasher and microwave all headed south in a matter of weeks, so there are less than four years old I thought God what is that all about and so these things just happen and I acknowledge it's difficult sometimes to play all the roles and to be dads but we have to learn on how to do it uh... before we get into back into the Deuteronomy passage, I just want to show a little video clip here that I find very powerful I think you will too but I have to be a little bit sensitive about it because I realize as I'm talking about dads on that many of you who will have images of your father's come to mind is I'm talking in and for some of you that's a very good thing maybe your dad loved you and you knew that never had a question about that maybe your dad spent time with you if he had if I said and can you tell me a memory of your father instantly some things come to mind of others of you and this is my category by the way you have a dad that was physically present my folks were together when I grew up, divorced later but he worked for many hours he use to be a pastor and to be fair I think at that time the idea was that if you were a pastor your car always has to be in the parking lot you work all the time and somehow God will honor that and some how pick up the slack in your family and it doesn't work he worked at times seventy five eighty hours a week he was gone before anybody else woke up came home to watch the evening news with dan rather and give you a timeframe Then would go back to work until ten or ten thirty largely lost his family and he knows that he regrets that to this day and to the point where now he's still disengaged even in our grandkids live I'm not going to pick up my dad I'm saying that some of you have dad like that and I understand you For others of you this is even more tragic maybe you never knew your father maybe he was interested in the marriage but not living up to marriage and he took off early maybe had some health concerns in some cases maybe tragically lost your father and so I want to be sensitive to that as well because look at what we're going to see in just a minute is the difference between a dad in the home and involved and a dad out of the home it's tremendous it's almost unimaginable and so if you're in those categories Where it is sensitive my goal isn't to make you feel bad at all it's to let us All know together how important this is so that dads that still are engaged can stop this from happening and their families so I'm going to go ahead and play this video so pretty sobering picture I think that what happens when we have no fathers in the home now some of the statistics are not even talking about where kids might see a father every once in awhile maybe in a you divorce situation where they See the dad occasionally but some kids just not at all Some don't have a chance to spend time with their dad at all That's why I'm so passionate about this and I'm hoping that in my own family because that's where it needs to start for me that I can do the job of passing on this crucial legacy because the stakes are just too high if we don't lets go ahead back to this passage in Deuteronomy and then what I'm going to do is break it up a little bit and then talk about a few things dads again that those of you that are involved in again you might be sixty, seventy, eighty you can still have this impact on your kids dads need to be inspired now when I say inspired it doesn't mean you're jumping around with pompoms necessarily but I'd like to look up words sometimes to find out what's the deep meaning and if you look up inspired it'll say serve as the inciting cause of or supply the inspiration for and dads we need to be inspired about how we love God let's look at the first couple verses versus four and five hear o Israel the Lord our God the Lord is one love the Lord your God with all your heart with all your soul and with all your strength and dads need to be inspired about that so that their kids will be inspired to do the same, to truly loved God with all that we are, so my first question to dads would be how are you doing? if someone were to come in interview your kids or interview your spouse and say what's most important to this man would it be he really loves God he does his best to teach us about God we grew up in a safe Godly home or would it be Well, you know he's shaving a few strokes off his golf game on every time he goes fishing is kept in a couple more he spends a lot of time in front of the TV in front of sports center are all those things bad no but if we're not being Godly fathers it becomes a problem is kind of interesting comment please go to hear this is me being pious I absolutely love God's word and I want to know of the savior that bought me and save me and so I spend a lot of time in God's word on a regular basis and then I remember being in a conversation with some guys a few years ago about scripture memory which is something that I've done over the years and I don't do it all the time, and there are verses I forget but the point is that I'm in the word of God doing it and the Bible tells us that we should hide God's word In us so that we don't sin against Him and I tend, on my own, to just sin a lot That is why God has to put me in very public careers as a school teacher I think and because of what I do now I've got a lot of accountability there's too much to lose but on my own I make a lot of really bad decisions I don't think of God first so as I've put scripture in me when those temptations come the Holy Spirit brings it to mind which is exactly what God's word says it will do but here's the point I was talking with some guys and they said I couldn't even memorize one versus just too hard yet these same guys knew all the stats to their favorite baseball player they could probably tell you who won a sporting event a long time ago they could recall usually certain political speeches that they remembered it's not a matter of ability as a matter of priority Whether or not we're willing to do these things today as you need to be inspired about the way you love God there's no way that you are going to fake it so if you're a guy right now you realize my kids probably wouldn't be on the radar screen and you need to spend time with the heavenly father first and as you do that you become more like him your kids will see that in their life let's look at the next couple verses these commandments that I give you today are to be upon your heart's impress them On your children talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road when you lie down and when you get up and I could be you know when you're out at the ball game together when you're driving your child somewhere when you're drive-thru somewhere to pick up a cup of coffee it doesn't matter but all the time to be talking about these things Jesus on one of his teaching occasion said that out of the heart his mouth speaks and the idea at the heart of biblical is it it was a baby a little bit different than we would think about it was Kind of the essence of a person included our mind how we thought, so the heart had to do with the whole world view with the way they perceive reality and Jesus says whatever's in your heart that's going to be the thing that you talk about so if you're a person that may be enjoys movies a lot you're always thinking about what's the next movie it is coming who's going to star in it if your person that just is a news buff are thinking about catching the latest story and of course now there's so many twenty four hour news networks to discuss the over and over but you're thinking about that or maybe you're a guy likes to Build things so those of you thinking about and we will naturally talk about what we're thinking about so in our families in our home if we're not talking a lot about God probably because we need a little heart work ourself so dads you need to be involved in order to do this with your kids I remember maybe the mid nineties the late nineties there was a and emphasis on quality time I don't know if anybody remembers that but there are some psychologists realizing that down with dual income families people were coming and going all the time not eating dinner together that sort of thing and they thought we've got to make sure that when winter spend time with their kids that its quality and it sounds like a good idea but I want to step back and think about it a little more in depth so again many of your retired but dad let's think back to your job where he spent most of your career and let's say that your boss gave you a really important project to work on you spent basically no time on it but then sat down for a few minutes to finish it what is the chance really that you have any quality work I'm a lifelong musician and Guitar is my main instrument I do some other things but if I didn't play my guitar on some sort of a regular basis the chances of the sitting down and magically having quality are zero why would we think it was a different our families that will maybe every Thursday at the seven o'clock all sit down talk with my daughter it's not going to work that way in order to have quality time we have to have quantity time first because we never know when the qualities going to come I don't know for instance of my daughters a teenager is going to be struggling with things and which is going to open up and talk to me but whem I spend time with her they do often when I would least expect it often when I'm not doing much at all except being there I don't know when one of my kids is having other trouble or trying to figure things out unless I spend that quantity of time with them And it's kind of interesting I've been thinking about this lately because even preparing this message I was really torn with Micah just a few weeks And like most babies he doesn't Sleep that well at night So I haven't been getting much sleep and about a week ago I thought but I just don't feel ready for this I have not spent enough time studying or working out what I'm going to say and all this And I think God put the thought of my mind he said well why don't you go tell Miranda I know you need my help all day because you've got three kids under five at home But why don't you go tell her that you're going to spend time on your message about being a good dad for several hours Instead of spending time with her and I thought you know it doesn't work very well and I think that as we honor God at that time with our family he picks up the difference in sort of gives us time much like when we actually tithes to him financially he makes up the difference I just seen that is a principle we don't have to disobey God to get his blessing in some other area we try to obey him so so I just feel I made the right decision there and I just got a lot of time with the family and low and behold I had a few hours that I didn't think we're going to happen to prepare the message Alright so dads need to be involved and then also you need to be intentional let's go to the last couple of versus tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your forehead write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates and the idea here is that that the priest not just the priest but primarily actually wore scripture on their foreheads they were called frontlets and other basically a little leather bag called falactories and they would have scripture verses and it literally wear them around in the idea was that they would always have the word of God before them I'm not suggesting that you do that if you do that in this day and age they'll take you away to place by yourself for a long time uh... but always having this present always having in front of us and I've tried to do that with my kids sometimes successfully sometimes not of much but it's interesting when I've been intentional how much they've modeled my behavior and that the difference is that we're creating God's image because I want you to make this connection as were created in God's image and try to reflect him our kids are going to reflect us as earthly fathers Especially at a young age some people actually think that they will sort of see their father as God when they're little and that's why if you if you had a good model as a father like I talked about earlier it was maybe a easy transition for you to see God as a loving God if he didn't have that it creates a lot of confusion but the ideas that I knew my kids would see me as a kind of a God-like figure from a young age and so I spent a lot of time talking about things that it doesn't have to be difficult but we live in a beautiful place and just looking outside and seeing the moon and saying Lydia and Jeremiah do you know who made that? and they say God Who made the mountains, God Who made you, God made you so they've made a connection and with my daughter Lydia I was concerned that when she got to school and please don't hear me as being judgmental public schools I was a public school teacher for eleven years but realize the world view they're getting is not a Christian worldview it just isn't and so I talked to her about evolution just giving you an example of how she modeled this from a very young age because it they knew whether or not you believe that God created her or she grew up out of a mud puddle would significantly affect how she lived in how she treat other people including herself and so we talked about that one time she went to visit with a friend of hers I stayed home and the friends mom came back with her and said Joel you'll never believe what Lydia said, I said what did she say and sure enough they're looking at this exhibit with these monkeys and Lydia said in a really loud voice Some of you people actually believe we came from monkeys, don't you? so our kids really do model that And it's interesting with my son Jeremiah because his personality is really developing he wants to be just like me I vacuum sometimes at home and he's got a little toy he uses as a vacuum if I stop to move a piece of furniture he stops and puts his vacuum down I pick it back up he picks his back up if I'm reading a book he sits next to me if i stop reading to grab a cup of coffee or something he stops reading his book right at that point and one of things with him again to see this modeling it's kind of funny but he doesn't like his sister Hannah in his room he's getting a little better at it but then he'll be in his room and she would be sometimes not even in his room but just in the hallway and if you know Jeremiah he tends to be a very delightful boy but he's very serious he kind of at one pole or the other Very joyful or very seriously he gets this Furrowed brow when he's serious and he would just yell at her and say Hannah you no come in my room you no come in my room and I would have to say, Jeremiah you can talk to your sister that way do you ever go in her room, yes do you ever go mommy daddy room? yes then shouldn't she be able to go in your room? no you know and so it one of the things we do sometimes is that we put him on a time out that works pretty well for him he just need to sit and calm himself down and sometimes after I do that I'll read the Bible because I want him to see that my thirty authority isn't something that I just conjured up but something I've been given and so I have a my Bible to Ephesians six which is actually the main passage I'm using a next week it talks a lot about family relations and I got my Bible out I said Jeremiah it talks here about honoring your father and mother and I You were not doing that Then it talks about encouraging each other and you were not doing that so do you understand why you are on the timeout yes okay and so I thought that went pretty well and then about five minutes later he goes a sits on the couch and he pats the couch next to him like you do when you are inviting someone to sit with you and he says Hannah you come over here And he had picked up his little storybook Bible I thought I don't know what's going to happen here and Hannah has a little trampoline like this that she loves the jump on she would jump on all day if I didn't get her off to eat and that sort of thing and so I knew she wouldn't want to get off there and so I said Jeremiah, Hannah is having a great time she doesn't have to come over on the couch and sit by you but she's ten feet away why don't you just tell her So he turns the page of his little Bible and says Hannah my Bible say you no come in my room and so You know the ultimate point that I was trying to get at wasn't quite there but again the modeling was there and so they do really model that and that and terms of being intentional it's so important to do that because when we're just in default mode we tend not to be very focused about what we're doing so I want to look at a another couple verses of scripture here this is from second Timothy and it's also Paul kind of adopted Timothy as a son And he writes this to him here and he made the connection between Timothy's upbringing and the word of God so I share that with you this is second Timothy chapter three verse fourteen It says but as for you to continue and what you have learned and what you have become convinced of because you know those from whom you learned it said it's important to know the people that are giving us the legacy of faith and how from infancy you have known the holy scriptures which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus now in this case Timothy's dad actually was not a believer he was a Greek he would've been called a Gentile at the time it was Timothy's mother and apparently grandmother who had given him this rich legacy so there's nothing wrong with it coming from other people but again dads are the main ones who really need to be involved but it's interesting that connection there between knowing the scriptures from infancy and Timothy being wise about salvation in other words understanding what that meant understand the gospel that Jesus had died in his place and he could repent of his sin and that he could walk with Jesus and so that's another thing that I've tried to do with my kids from a very young age because I think and this is just my opinion a little bit but I've wondered again well, how does this happen how does a child come maybe even from a from a Christian home and even attended a good church but then many times after high school or so kids will still leave Why are they not sticking with the faith that I think if I have to pick one thing, it's not this one but it's the word of God and are they learning the word of God at home from dad because if they are learning it in other places but it's not reinforced It usually isn't going to stick, my good friend Tony just walked in Our youth pastor and I've been on a couple of events with him and he did a tremendous job he's got a great spiritual program with the kids but it is not primarily his responsibility to take care of our kids spiritually it's my responsibility as a dad dads make the difference in God has given me that charge when I see Lord someday he's not going to say how did Tony Toth do raising your kid spiritually He's not say how did the public school system or whatever school system it is how did they do? He's going to say Joel what did you do? To be honest that scares the heck out of me and it puts me on my knees a lot in prayer and I think that's exactly God's intentions that I know I have to rely on Him again the spiritual legacy is so important want to look at one more bit of scripture here and this is another scripture that when I first read it is just very sobering to me and it speaks to why this is so important for us to do and that I want to speak particularly to the service a little bit because I know that many of you don't have kids at home anymore many of your grandkids in your very involved with their lives I've gotten to know as some of the folks in choir quite well and I just love that you are so involved with your grandkids life because it's crucial but some of you might think, you know, I'm kind of already passed that point that I guess my word to this service particularly is it's not too late if you've got a relationship with your child that's not what it could be if you're concerned about them where they are spiritually sometimes I think we're too afraid of getting involved we think we don't want to offend them you know we don't we don't really know how to say things in the right way and so we say nothing at all when I can tell you again from my perspective not having a real close relationship with my dad I would absolutely love it if he would take the initiative and called me sometimes and see how I was doing at the asked about our grandkids and he encouraged me this is from the book of Judges and I talked about the Israelites a little bit earlier like us the Israelites sometimes would do what God asked them to do and image God well and other times like us they would just blow it and but here's a word from Joshua to the nation Israel it says after that whole generation have gathered to their fathers another generation grew up Here is what I need you to hear this other generation that grew up knew neither the Lord nor what He had done for Israel why didn't they know it? because their dad didn't tell them and people of that generation didn't tell them and sometimes I hear people I'm getting old enough now I'm taking a myself and we think you know America's kind of falling apart what's wrong with all these people it's more our fault that it is their fault because we haven't told them It usually comes back to us at any rate it says it's not a generation grew up and knew neither Lord nor what he had done for Israel and what happened then the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord and they serve the baals and the baals were the false Gods of that day I think we've got a few those around as well and I remember reading that and I thought just one generation that wouldn't you think it would take three or four generations or six generations no it is the one generation forgot Then the next generation did evil I think we're there I think we're there in this nation and I can't solve all of tis, this morning I realize that but what I can do hopefully is speak to dads who still do have influence and tell them please step up to the plate please make the difference that you can something I heard growing up was that one person can't make a difference just the opposite is true one person is the only one that can make a difference because if one person makes a difference than somebody else is encouraged to make a difference have you had one teacher that ever made a difference that he had one coach that ever made a difference that you had one boss than ever made a difference that you had one father who made a difference Of course so just one father can do it and again I just want to invite you to be back next week as well because we're going to put some nuts and bolts on this and talk about okay my dad I want to do that but I'm not sure How, how am I to relate to my wife help that happen how can I relate to my kids in a way to help that happen also for kids and wives and moms There are some things that you're going to hear to know how you can help Us as fathers because we need all the help we can get Let me close with a word of prayer heavenly father first of all I just want to thank you for revealing yourself as father we know that you are creator we know that you're absolutely sovereign we know that yes you're even judge and have every right to be but we see in scripture that most often you reveal yourself as father and that even as Jesus would talk to people about you he would say over and over your father's not like that he's like this he loves you don't you know how important you are as especially for those today who maybe didn't have this Godly example of an earthly father would you father them just encourage them to come to you and say heavenly father I need help in this and I know that you will and maybe there are some men here that would come alongside some of the younger men at this church here in the community that really need to hear some for somebody that knows that's been there before and God those of us that they have families where we can have an influence I pray that you will make this idea of having a spiritual impact legacy for generations to come you'd make that are number one priority and that we knowledge we need your help to do it and I just ask all this in Jesus name for his sake Amen