Years ago I used to always preach about motherhood on Mother’s Day and fatherhood on Father’s Day. As I got older and wiser I began to figure out that those were often days of discomfort for many listeners. Painting a Biblical picture of the perfect Father often left fathers with a sense of total inadequacy and hopelessness.

After 26 years of fathering I can now say with certainty and credibility that being a Father is not easy… if you have never been a father it’s easy to pinpoint exactly how the perfect Father should/would act in every situation. But when you are actually there in the trenches ….trying to parent a “quiver full of” adolescents or teens with all the tension and raw emotions boiling over every third minute everything that the “ parenting books” say becomes mute.

Having said that in defense of Father’s I realize that in many of your personal backgrounds there is a father who short-circuited in the process, perhaps deserted you or acted in ways or treated you in ways that made you wish he’d deserted you.

What makes a good father?

Many of us would respond by stressing those things we admired in our father or some father figure…some of us would quickly stress the opposite of those thing we

least admired. The reality is…each person here would differ in what you think are the most needed characteristics in a Father.

Let me take you to the Bible… I’m going to give you a list for good fathering…from Scripture…but not from any list the Bible gives to you: There is no Biblical Ten characteristics of a good father…it’s not in there like that.

So what can we learn about fatherhood from Scripture?

We spent Wednesday evening here hammering out, from the Bible, the fact that Jesus was not “a son” created by God the Father, and sent to earth to save us from sin….

Jesus, the Son, and God the Father are the same….they are one! We have just one God! But how can that be?

Dick Knoch reminded us Wednesday evening that he is one person….. but he’s a father and acts in certain ways as a father…he’s also a son and acts in different ways as a son…and he’s also a husband and responds differently as a husband than he does as a son or father….. but he just one person. So it is with God.

While God is One he acts in three different areas of function:

Here’s your big question for the day: On Day One did the Son turn to the Father and say “Father…shall we commence creating”! Or… at that point in history was their no part of God that was functioning in the role of father and if not when did the father role of God kick in…and why?

What do you think?

We get a little confused about this begotten thing:

The word, begotten, has nothing to do with giving birth or creating children.

Jesus became God’s “only begotten son” when he left heaven and took on human form.

P.S. Old Testament never suggests that Jesus is going to be God’s son. In fact what He is called is kind of startling:

I don’t find any evidence in the first 3000+ years of Bible history that God ever revealed himself as Father to his created. We call ourselves “God’s children” but until Moses time 1500 years before Jesus God was El Shaddai, Elohim, El. Elyon.

You read a lot in Genesis about the “God of our Father” but never about Father God. (You need to remember that as much time passed from Genesis 1 until Exodus 1 as has passed from Exodus 1 right up to this morning.

I tried to find the first reference to God as Father of humanity and I have a feeling it was a shocking day for Moses who first heard it:

“OK, God let me see if I have this right…I’m supposed to tell them that Israel is their wwwhhhhattt?

If the second choice is true.. and I believe it is…if it’s true that God assumes the role of parent over his creation…. the place to find out how to be a good parent to our biological children or anyone we have influence over, would be to see how our Heavenly Father parents us. Remember, God is not male or female, in the human way, so his example would not be just for Dads, but for all who try to lead others to growth.

We do way to much ranking our Fathering abilities by comparing ourselves to other human fathers and not nearly enough aligning ourselves with our Heavenly Father.

Let me stress, all of history has been dependant on how children relate to their parents, yet there is almost no direct commands, in the Bible, on how to be a good parent.

There is one good command to Father’s in the New Testament about how to be a good Dad and its content is not what anyone would expect:

This is actually a tough one. What is the discipline and instruction approved by the Lord?

It is not hard for us to understand that God has authority. Much of the negative response to God from his children comes at this point. Those who resist God resist him right here.

I’m not going to submit myself to your authority!

Once God revealed to the Children of Israel that he was their Father…they then spent most of the rest of the Old Testament rebelling against their Fathers authority. They acted like spoiled brats. God chose them out as his very own, worked miracle after miracle to deliver them from their enemies and forge them into a nation and they responded like a rebellious 14 year old. (we don’t have to do what you say)

How do you think that affected the Father heart of God?

I’m not sure how this happened but we read in the Old Testament of a few times when God’s children got so sinfully out of control that he had to take decisive action to protect them from themselves. A few times he took some out to protect the many…

So many get the picture of God as tough-as-nails, unbending, un-yielding. If you mess with God he will take you out! I don’t want to under-paint that God is just and he doesn’t play around with sin, but the people God “took out” is Scripture were the “bad guys”…those who disowned their place in God’s family. God bent over backward to be a loving Father to his children.

As rebellious as the children of Israel were…I can show you exactly how God felt about them:

It’s a parental tightrope…knowing how much to show love and compassion and when to draw a line in the sand and warn the child to cross over. My children…particularly my sons, could tell you that I struggled greatly knowing how to prepare them for what life would throw at them and at the same time to show love and compassion.

In order to be a good parent we have to model the parenting of your Heavenly Father .If you want to improve your relationship to your children, you need to focus on your relationship to your Father. The more you understand his responses to your successes and failure the better you will relate to your own children or those God has cause you to have influence over..

I think the children of Israel finally caught on to that…. They kept rebelling against their Father and he just kept pursuing them trying to draw their affection back to himself.

I talk in wedding about the covenant God makes with his children and how he will never for any reason break it.

This may be the best piece of parental advice I can point you to, this morning. As I get older I am learning a valuable lesson. If you remain faithful to those God has caused you to have an influence over….. even though they make reject you for a season…God has a way of turning even the hardest cases around.

I’m certainly not just talking here (just) about giving children money. I’m talking about giving yourself away to them. When children are newborns, mother’s in particular give themselves unconditionally. Time changes the relationship, and sometimes we find ourselves (perhaps father in particular) placing a greater value on other things than we do on our children.

Here is such a perfect description of our promised relationship with our Heavenly Dad:

Conclusion: I had thought I would get to other categories:

D) Parental Affection

E) Parental Attentiveness

F) Parental Acceptance

You get the idea: