Message; Dad, We Blew It-Help. I Still Need You!
I was going to title today message; Dad I Wrecked the Car Again! To signify the first three weeks after getting my driver’s license, and coming home for the second time with news of another collision. The news went over as you might expect, and I stop listening to my co-pilot, my sister for help directing, positioning, or driving… for good. She had and has many great gifts, but navigation, direction, and shepherding are not in the running.
This Father’s Day morning, I wanted to make the best connection that I could about fatherhood, and its relationship to our Father of Heaven and the Universe beyond could and should be held in comparison. When thinking about all of the great thing’s fathers bring to the table of family life, I was filled with all kinds of warm thoughts. The more I thought about the perfect attributes of fathers, my imagination carried me into nonreality and the perfection of character.
Feelings of hope, stability, and integrity flooded my mind, and I even thought about those TV characters that I grew up watching. Individuals like Ben Cartwright of Bonanza, and John Walton of the Waltons streamed into memory.
As I tried to focus on reality, I began to realize that in modernity, we have made it impossible for people and fathers in particular to be real people. What boys and girls desperately need for their development in any healthy robust society, is a real dad. Praises that the family has even managed to remain somewhat intact in this dysfunctional time that we are living in, is a miracle of God!
And then, I began to think about a man, I hardly even knew when he was alive. I met him several times over the years, at family reunions etc… He farmed his family’s farm in a place called Mountain Green, and knew what a full day’s work was all about. Always kind and soft spoken, he seemed to me a very pious person, the kind that you never hear saying a bad word, or a negative comment against anyone, even those who deserve it.
I only really got a sense of this farmer of a man, at his funeral. This is where I learned about just how much his children my wife’s cousins, benefitted by his parenting, loving, and nurturing. The best eulogy of a life well lived, from children and grandchildren who were all certain that they were a favorite without diminishing anyone else’s importance. Due to when you were with him, he poured himself into the person he was with and gave them undivided, wholesome, unconditional love, and never at the expense of someone else.
Wow! You don’t have to watch a TV show or read a book to find fatherly love. And when fathers emulate God’s love in life, one gets a glimpse of the reality of healthy fatherhood. A nurturing father like the one witnessed up on the farm in Mountain Green.
This is the kind of unconditional, uncontested, unassailable love described in today’s Call to Worship reading from Paul’s letter to the church in Asia Minor (modern day Turkey). A province in the old Roman Empire two thousand years ago, where Paul’s words about God’s love and our place with and in Him, would have been as much a novelty back then as the description of the man I just described on the farm are here today. Reading again from, Galatians 3:23-29;
23 Before the coming of this faith, we were held in custody under the law, locked up until the faith that was to come would be revealed. 24 So the law was our guardian until Christ came that we might be justified by faith. 25 Now that this faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian.
Side note; It’s as if the human race has grown from learning right and wrong (the law from Moses), and now is ready to work on the deeper commitment of our attitudes in loving God with all we have. Living a real relationship with our Lord, which is reflected in His love for you and me, as revealed in the Gospel of John 3:16-17;
16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
When I am down and out, and recoiling from a world that sometimes is baffling to understand, and I am in need of hope that there is real goodness and care available in my reality, John’s words are a comfort. Continuing now back at Galatians 3, verse 26;
26 So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith, 27 for all of you who were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. 28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. 29 If you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.
And there is room for all the people we meet in this life to share the message of this incredible family in God. And let me quote Paul again; “28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” And if we belong to Christ, then we are heirs to Abraham, and his family in God. And in passing I would add, making any semblance of anti Semitism, completely abhorrent, nonsensical, and outright stupid to God, and God’s family, you and I!
You see there is no place in God’s Church for the self-righteous, in-crowd, prejudging, or elitism, favoritism, or anti Semitism. That fact is confirmed with God instructing us in His Scripture, that there is; neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Just us, the family of God, trying to be more like our Lord in our daily lives.
When we have an on-going relationship in and with our Lord, God’s own Holy Spirit guides us in lives that are more God centered and healthy. Simply put, my relationship with the Lord, instructs me how to be a better spouse, son, brother, friend, pastor, or even father. Because now I am beginning to understand what real love is, and where I have been falling short of my choice to be more like Him who saved me from me.
This is the Good News of the Gospel of God. And when you feel beat up by a world that doesn’t seem to notice your existence, when it seems like hour after hour the circumstances of life are delivering one gut punch after another, and there appears no relief in sight… God is there! The Lord has been there all the time, ready to walk with you, as the two of you work to build, or rebuild your life step by step together.
We have an example of the violence that this life offers, too often found in this world, and the deliverance our God offers through David’s writing, and today’s Call to Worship reading Psalm 22:19-28 where we have the one of God who has suffered horrible torment as depicted in the first two verses of the Psalm, where I’ll start this time;
Psalm 22
1 My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Why are you so far from saving me,
so far from my cries of anguish?
2 My God, I cry out by day, but you do not answer,
by night, but I find no rest…
Cutting in to say; When you have come to your wits end, and you are no longer thinking of making it tomorrow, because you are just trying to get to the end of the day… Your God, gets you. Your Lord knows what its like to walk a mile in your shoes, because he has. David will spend the next 16 verses describing the horror and torment your Lord would experience going to the cross, and how His deliverance like yours is found by calling on the strength of your ultimate Father, God the Father of Heaven and beyond, for rescue and relief.
Our tormented one rebounds from the assaults of life where we pick up His realization of God’s providence of love and all of our deliverance… at verse 19;
…19 But you, Lord, do not be far from me.
You are my strength; come quickly to help me.
20 Deliver me from the sword,
my precious life from the power of the dogs.
21 Rescue me from the mouth of the lions;
save me from the horns of the wild oxen.
Side Bar; Our Father in Heaven holds the power to overcome the dogs, lions, and wild animals holding the sword of destruction in this life. My Good News on this Father’s Day to you is that your Father stands ready to walk with you through His Loving,… Holy,… Spirit,… when we pray in His Son’s, Majestic,… Holy name,…Jesus!
Then may we all be moved and ready to proclaim His name and Good News to all of the willing He places in our lives, just as the Psalmist. Continuing now at verse 22;
22 I will declare your name to my people;
in the assembly I will praise you.
23 You who fear the Lord, praise him!
All you descendants of Jacob, honor him!
Revere him, all you descendants of Israel!
24 For he has not despised or scorned
the suffering of the afflicted one;
he has not hidden his face from him
but has listened to his cry for help.
25 From you comes the theme of my praise in the great assembly;
before those who fear you I will fulfill my vows.
26 The poor will eat and be satisfied;
those who seek the Lord will praise him—
may your hearts live forever!
27 All the ends of the earth
will remember and turn to the Lord,
and all the families of the nations
will bow down before him,
28 for dominion belongs to the Lord
and he rules over the nations.
I am adding the last two verses of Psalm 22 with David’s completion of the Psalm with our Lord’s deliverance with verses 30-32;
30 Posterity will serve him;
future generations will be told about the Lord.
31 They will proclaim his righteousness,
declaring to a people yet unborn:
He has done it!
Indeed, God has done it! Our Lord endured and delivered us from our sin in spite of our sin, and yours and my deliverance is played out day after day, challenge after challenge, through hardship, pain, and even ultimate joy that comes with our God’s ultimate victory in this cosmic battle of holiness over evil that we find ourselves a part of in our reality.
And so, my beloved family of God, when we are under siege and grasping for air, please remember that our Father never leeds us to places that His Spirit will not sustain us. We have Jesus the Son of God instructing us not trouble our hearts on things beyond our understanding and that there is a place prepared for you and me. Reading now our second part of today’s message reading from John 14:1-3;
1“Do not let your hearts be troubled. You believe in God; believe also in me. 2 My Father’s house has many rooms; if that were not so, would I have told you that I am going there to prepare a place for you? 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come back and take you to be with me that you also may be where I am.
When life is beyond our ability to understand why things happen the way they do, or when I understand why something happened, but am uncertain of the way ahead, our God stands as the roadmap, compass, and shepherd that will lead us through the storms of life to still waters and green pastures. Because this still our Father’s World!
And so, on this secular Father’s Day Holliday, which is under attack much like the rest of the family in our modern society, I would finish with this hope and prayer for you. If you find that for whatever reason that you have fantasized about what the perfect Dad in life is, just remember God places fathers in this life who are human. The only human that will never fail you is Christ, the only Father perfect, the Father, and its their Holy Spirit that helps us meagre people overcome.
To be better dads both actual and surrogate, and to appreciate those God has provided to mentor us, is today’s goal. May, He bless all of you richly as you apply His gifts in your life,
Amen!
Benediction; Based on Psalm 23
1 May the Lord be your shepherd, and you not want,
2 May He make you lie down in green pastures,
lead you beside still waters,
3 May He restore your soul.
May He guide you on paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
4 Even though you walk
through the darkest valley,
may you never fear evil,
for He will be with you;
His rod and your staff,
may they comfort you.
5 May He prepare a table before you
in the presence of your enemies.
anoint your head with oil;
and your cup overflows.
6 Surely your goodness and love will follow you
all the days of your life,
and may you will dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.
Amen!