Gloria Dei Lutheran Church | Urbandale, Iowa

Father's Day: The Responsibility of Men in The Home As The Spiritual Leader

Pastor Meyer’s Sermon

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our heavenly Father and from our risen Lord and Savior, Jesus, our Christ.

I love this display. Oh, I love the tools here, especially the power tools. Oh, I can sense the possibilities here, the things I could build at home if I had these tools, the things I could fix at home if I had these tools. Oh, can you feel it? Can you feel the power? Can you feel the manliness? Can you feel the possibilities? I mean, there’s even duct tape here.

This weekend, we celebrate Father’s Day and we take an opportunity to pause and to give thanks to our heavenly Father for the fathers He’s blessed us with and for those that He has given us who are like fathers to us in our lives. But this display is not put up here to give gift suggestions on what you might be able to get your father for Father’s Day. No, the reason why this is up here is to help to remind us that God gives us tools throughout our daily lives to help us to live out our responsibility as Christians as being part of the family of God. And since this weekend is Father’s Day, even though He gives a tool to each and every one of us to use, I’m going to focus on fathers. I’m going to focus on men and men’s responsibility as being the spiritual leaders in their homes.

Now some of you may be saying, “Hey, I’m not a father so this message really doesn’t have anything to do with me.” Well, that’s not true because you see, the biblical understanding of father isn’t just locked into someone who is a biological father. No, it’s more locked into the idea of someone who is willing to take on the responsibility of a father, to be able to provide the guidance and to be able to give direction. And so it’s not just with your own children but it’s also with those who are in your family life circle, those who may be in your circle of friends that may need it.

And so that’s why Moses is known as our forefather because he was willing to take on that responsibility of giving guidance and being able to give direction to the people of Israel on how to use the tools that God has given them. And we see those same words, those same words of guidance and direction apply to us, that they can help us today as we strive to live out our responsibility as men, as fathers, as Christians here in this world.

Now looking at some of these tools here, I realize that there are some of them I don’t know how to use. This, I don’t even know what you call this and I don’t even know how to use it and I wouldn’t even know how to use this. This is a power sander. I only know because somebody told me and I wouldn’t know how to use it, though, and in order for me to be able to use it, I need to be able to get the instruction manual and kind of read through the instruction manual to figure out, “How do I use this thing?” Because I need to be educated in it in order to use it. I know, some of us men are like, “Instructions? We don’t need no stinkin’ instructions.” But you see, the idea though is the reality is if we don’t read the instructions, we might end up breaking it or we might end up ruining whatever we’re working on at the time. So it’s a good idea for us to read the instructions before using the tool.

Well, you see, Moses is essentially telling us the same thing in our reading from Deuteronomy. You see, the people of Israel are ready to take on the possession of the land that Pastor Phillips had mentioned earlier. They had been promised this land, ever since the time of Abraham and now they are at a position where they’re about ready to go into the promise land. But Moses, however, like a father, is very concerned about these people and about the fact that they may take these tools that God has given them and not even use them. Or maybe to use them in the wrong way and so he gives these words to the Israelites, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give to you today are to be upon your heart.” Now what does he mean by commandments? Well, just before he said these words, he went through the Ten Commandments, you know, the Ten Commandments, the guide of how to live life. It’s the instruction manual, if you will, of how we live life as godly people here in this world and upon your heart. Well, that’s Moses’ way and the bible’s way of saying to read it. Read the instruction manual. But the thing is he doesn’t just say read the instruction manual and then put it up on the shelf and let it gather dust. No, that “upon your heart” idea means a continual, continually upon your heart, meaning to read through this continually as you go through your life. And so that’s what he’s trying to tell us here. And, as we go on our lives, living out our responsibility as Christians, as living out our responsibility as fathers, as men, we continually read through the instruction manual.

Now some of us may be sitting there listening to me and saying, “You know, that’s not who I am.” You might be thinking, “That’s not who I am as a man. It’s not a part of me. It’s not what I do.” And maybe you’re thinking I know there’s something I need to do but how do I get started? Well, I have some suggestions for you. We have Portals of Prayer which is a great way to get started. It’s a little devotional. They come in two sizes. You either have the large print or the small print. The wonderful thing about these, though, is that it already has a bible reading set aside for you right in here. And then also it has a devotion and then a little prayer at the end. It’s a wonderful way to get started. Another suggestion is maybe you’re not a book person and you don’t care so much for books and maybe you want to be able to go to the Internet. Well, if you go to the Gloria Dei website, which is www.gloriadeionline.com, there is a little tab on the side for Daybreak and you can click on that and you can go right to a devotional page that we’ve provided that you can read through a scripture lesson and then you can go ahead and read what the devotion is. It’s a wonderful way to get started. Because the idea is not the methodology of what you do. That’s not what’s important. What’s important is that you have that desire inside to want to do and to be able to say, “You know, yeah, I need to be able to do this. I need to be able to go through God’s Word.”

Now what may work for one person doesn’t necessarily work for another. So there’s no one way of doing things. But keep in mind the idea that if you’re not doing anything, start small and be able to see how your life is enriched by going through the Word. Now maybe you’re thinking to yourself, “Hey, I do all this. I read through my Portals of Prayer. I already have a daily bible reading.” Well, I’d like to challenge you to take the next step, to step it up a little bit by maybe finding an accountability partner, maybe someone who you can talk to about how you’re doing on your bible reading, maybe even to discuss what you’ve been reading and what does it mean for me in my life. Or maybe in your own life you can read through a book of the bible and outline it to get an idea of what the themes are, what the author is trying to get through, what God is trying to show through the whole book. Whatever it is, again, it’s not the methodology that’s important. It’s the fact that you want to be able to grow.

You want to be able to learn more about God’s Word. Because, you see, God doesn’t want us just to sit back and read the instruction manual. First, it is not good enough for me just to sit back and read the instruction manual about the power sander but it’s also important that I use the sander. I’m not going to be able to get anything smooth any other way. I can read all about it but I need to be able to use the tool and that’s what Moses is trying to say right after he just said, “Read your instruction manual.” Because he goes on to say, “Impress them on your children. Talk about it when you sit at home and when you walk along the road and when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hand and bind them on your forehead. Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates.” Hum. Impress them on your children. He says, “Read the instruction manual and then impress them on your children.” Well, it’s not by coincidence that I picked the power sander because, you see, the word “impress” in the written language means “to sand.” It’s a carpentry word. It’s means to sand or to ingrain in the wood. So basically what Moses is saying is once you’ve learned the instruction manual, then sand it, then ingrain it into your kids to teach them that this is important. So in order for us to do that, we need to become well versed and what better way to sand into our children, to ingrain into our children than our parents, specifically this weekend. We think about our fathers, the role of being a father, as being able to live out that responsibility of men as the spiritual head of the home.

You know, I read a statistic the other day that said 93% of teenagers, when asked, said that one of the most influential people in their lives has been their parents. Now I’ve seen that in my own family. I don’t even have teenagers. I have young kids. But a couple of weeks ago, as Dale and Kay Readinger know, we went to the ice cream shop. I took my three kids. It was my night with the kids. We didn’t have Lynn with us at the time and so I thought we’d take them to go get ice cream. Well, we went ahead and got cones for the kids and we were sitting there eating the cones. Now Abby, our 3-year-old, she has never had a cone before. She’s eaten off of other people’s cones but she’d never had her own ice cream cone. And as she was eating it, she was biting into it and, while she was doing that, the ice cream was just dripping off of her hands. Well, I got a cup because I knew I was going to be busy with the three kids and I said, “Abby, take your cone and go like this. Lick around the cone to catch the ice cream.” Well, what she did then was she took a bite and then she took her finger and went [around on her tongue]. And then she took another bite and [went around her tongue with her finger]. And it was at that time I realized that it’s not the words that are important because I said the words. I said, “Lick with your tongue around the cone.” But no, she was looking at my actions of how I was doing it. And she was taking it in that way.

And so that’s what Moses is saying. He’s saying yeah, sure, talk about them as you go about your life, as you’re impressing your children, as you’re sanding into your children and those in your life that you are influential to but it’s not just talking about it when you get up and when you go to bed and when you walk along the road. But it’s also tying them as symbols on your forehead. How do you that? By your example, by what you do, your actions. Your actions are the symbols.

So I have a question for you. Dads or men, let’s think about this. What would happen if one of your kids or if someone who you are influential to in your life catches you reading the bible while doing a devotion in the morning? What an impact could you provide if, before you started on your trip this summer, you would lead your family in a prayer asking God to protect you? What message would you send if, instead of sitting your son down and saying, “Son, we’re going to talk about what the bible says,” that you would actually, in the midst of a conversation, just simply insert a bible passage that has something to do with whatever topic you’re talking about. These are things we can do to impact our children, powerful things we can do as we seek to live out that responsibility of sanding, of impressing into our children the instruction manual, God’s Word.

But as we’re doing that, I do have a word of caution. And we see that as we’re going through the instruction manual of God’s Word, there’s a word of caution in here. I don’t know if you picked it up but it was in our second reading from Ephesians 6, Paul was talking about honoring your father and your mother and what he says here, “Fathers, do not exasperate your children. Instead, bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.” In other words, what he is saying is don’t treat your children in such a way as to make them angry but to bring them up in the training and the instruction of the Lord.

Well, Paul’s not saying here to give the children everything they want in case you might make them angry. No, what he’s saying is as you go through the sanding, as you go through the impressing on the children, do not go against the grain. Because when you read the instruction manual for the power sander, one of the things it says is, as you’re sanding on the wood, do not go against the grain. Because if you go against the grain, what’s going to happen is you’re either going to make the wood start to splinter or you’re going to make it even rougher than it was before or you may even change the grain and it just won’t look right. You see, going against the grain is not the idea when you’re sanding. The purpose of sanding is to take something like this piece of wood. I don’t know if you can see it but it’s pretty rough here. And when you sand it, to be able to make it smooth and not only to make it smooth, I don’t know if you can see it, but the grain on there, to be able to highlight the grain. That’s the idea of being able to sand is to highlight the grain.

And so we do the same with our kids. As we are impressing, as we are sanding, we are trying to highlight the grain. Now what am I talking about as far as highlighting their grain. Well, I’ll give you an example. That’s exactly what Jesus did as He was here on this earth. Because remember, He says when He was here, “I have come to serve, not to be served.” And how did He serve? He went about building relationships. He went about encouraging and supporting and all the while He was doing it, He was sanding, He was teaching, He was impressing on the disciples, on the people God’s Word. And when He got onto that rough wood of the cross and He said those words, “It is finished,” it was then that He brought out the grain in us. Because you see, Jesus’ blood worked as a sander. Because all of those rough areas in our lives of sin, of thinking that I’ve made mistakes as a father, I’ve made mistakes as a mother, I’ve made mistakes as a son or daughter or a coworker, all those things we think about, Jesus’ blood just took it away, took away the rough areas and He made for us smooth so when God looks at us, He doesn’t see us as someone who is rough. No, He sees us as someone who is smooth, highlighting the grains of righteousness in us.

And as we think about Father’s Day, as we think about the responsibility of men in the homes as the spiritual leader, we think about our responsibility of being able to impress the sand upon our kids, our children so when God looks at them, He doesn’t see the rough areas. No, He sees the smoothness of our children and the highlight of the grains of righteousness. Amen.