God-Empowered Families - Part 6 - Fathers are God's Idea

Our current focus is on “God in the Family”, or “God-Empowered Families”.The family unit is the basic building block of any society or nationIf the family unit is strong then the nation will be strongIf the family unit is broken down, the nation will be broken down alsoThe seeds of family breakdown are many times sown in people’s lives during their childhood, through:Observing & adopting dysfunctional family dynamics Lack of proper child training & wrong child trainingToday is Father’s Day. In today’s message we will toggle between:Acknowledging & honouring God as our heavenly FatherAcknowledging & honouring our earthly fathers A son honours his father Malachi 1:6 (NASB95) “ ‘A son honors his father, and a servant his master. Then if I am a father, where is My honor? And if I am a master, where is My respect?’ says the Lord of hosts to you, O priests who despise My name… In the Bible, it is understood and expected that a father is honoured & respected. Honouring father (and mother) is enshrined as the 5th of the Ten Commandments. (Exodus 20:12)God says to the priests:   … if I am a father, where is My honor?… if I am a master, where is My respect?Then He tells them that they actually despise His name.In practice, a lack of honour towards somebody manifests either as indifference, or descends into outright contempt and distain for that person. Malachi 1:6–7 (Msg) “Isn’t it true that a son honors his father and a worker his master? So if I’m your Father, where’s the honor? If I’m your Master, where’s the respect?” God-of-the-Angel-Armies is calling you on the carpet: “You priests despise me!“You say, ‘Not so! How do we despise you?’“By your shoddy, sloppy, defiling worship.“You ask, ‘What do you mean, “defiling”? What’s defiling about it?’7“When you say, ‘The altar of God is not important anymore; worship of God is no longer a priority,’ that’s defiling.God interpreted their shoddy and sloppy worship as dishonour and disrespect.Their attitude of relegating worship as something unimportant, and their contemptuous words of demeaning worship of God as a low priority demonstrated their contempt and distain for God. Interestingly, in the Westminster Shorter Catechism, the most famous of its 107 questions and answers states: Q. What is the chief end of man?A. Man's chief end is to glorify God, and to enjoy him forever.Elijah’s preaching turns the hearts of fathers and children towards each other Malachi 4:5–6 (NLT) Look, I am sending you the prophet Elijah before the great and dreadful day of the Lord arrives. 6His preaching will turn the hearts of fathers to their children, and the hearts of children to their fathers. Otherwise I will come and strike the land with a curse.It appears that Israel’s culture during the time of Malachi had descended into dishonour and disrespect, which had even crept into families, affecting the relationship between fathers and their children. There is something about honour (or lack of) in the relationship between fathers and their children that God’s feels sufficiently strongly about, to warn His people about striking the land with a curse if honour is missing. The message is: Do not be flippant about things that God’s feels strongly about.In Malachi 4:5-6, God speaks about the prophet Elijah who would come before the Lord Jesus arrives, and his preaching would “… turn the heart of fathers towards their children, and the hearts of children towards their fathers”.Actually, from everything we see in God’s Word, all preaching should turn the heart of fathers towards their children, and the hearts of children towards their father. To do that, all preaching should:Include a strong “honour ethos”Affirm the position & role of the father in the home and in societyHonour fatherhood as “sacred” and not as “common” or “optional”The enemy of our souls knows that “honuorlessness” weakens families and nations. So he tempts people and societies away from any honour ethos, and deceives them into despising authority, beginning in the home.Luke 1:13,16-17 (NKJV)But the angel said to him, “Do not be afraid, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard; and your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you shall call his name John … 16And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God. 17He will also go before Him in the spirit and power of Elijah, ‘to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children,’ and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”John’s main message was: Repent. If you haven’t honoured your father in the past: Repent.Ask God to forgive you, and start to honour your father from today onwards. Fatherlessness lies at the base of family & societal breakdownBroken homes typically are fatherless homes. Multiple studies have shown that the outcome of children growing up in fatherless homes isn’t nearly as good as the outcome of children where the father is present, and actively involved in their day-to-day lives. Many mothers are doing a splendid job in raising their children without the presence or help of the children’s father. However, a mother can never be a father, in the same way as a father could never be a mother. (Nowadays, when many politicians and sociologist would have us believe that any configuration of family is as good as any other, and that any family configuration will produce equal results, we should to go back to the Word of God and study God’s original plan and intend for families.)Story of young juvenile elephants running amokAccording to a story in the Los Angeles Times in the late 90’s, a social experiment in Africa with young elephants went all wrong after some older elephant bulls were culled during the 1970s, ‘80s and early ‘90s in the Kruger National Park. The younger orphaned male elephants were translocated to the Pilanesburg National Park where they went out of control without the presence and mentoring influence of the older elephant bulls. In the end, the park authorities realised that the single biggest cause for these juvenile male elephants running amok was the absence of the older male elephants, so they brought in some older elephant bulls to sort out the younger ones.