As A Father Would His Own Children

So this morning, as I'm sure you've probably figured out by now, we're going to be talking about fatherhood, being Father's Day. This does not mean that if you're not a father, whether you're a man and not a father, or whether you're a woman or whether you're a child, that there's no application for you. As I said earlier, we all suffer when there's a lack of fatherhood, when there's a lack of manhood, when there's a lack of provision and care. And so whether you are a father and have children of your own, whether you're young and you think of your own father, You're single and you're thinking of the father you had who's older than you. Even as a grown man, we consider these things. My hope is that as we study the word this morning, we'll have our hearts strengthened to become better fathers and to be able to serve God and love fatherhood as he's written it through our society. I think you'd all agree with me before we come to our text that we do lack fathers in our nation.

And the fathers that we have barely know what to do. They say, oh, I'm going to be a dad. Or, oh, I am a dad. And the whites of our eyes get awfully big because we don't know what to do. It's my hope that our time this morning will be helpful to that end and that we would not be so intimidated or unequipped for the work of fatherhood, but that we'd be strengthened to do it and to delight in it, knowing that this is the very thing that God's made us for. Whatever the world would tell you about fatherhood, and your responsibility as a man or what a man is, I stand before you this morning to tell you that God's made you a man, he's made you a father. In the same way that I would say to a woman, if he's made you a woman, he's made you a mother. And that doesn't stop at the four walls of your house. And so to be a man is to learn how to be a father, and to be a woman is to learn how to be a mother. Our text this morning is 1 Thessalonians 2, verses 7 to 12. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord?

This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. But we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Having so fond an affection for you, we were well pleased to impart not only the gospel of God, but also our own lives, because you have become very dear to us. For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship. working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaimed to you the gospel of God. You are witnesses, and so is God, how devoutly and uprightly and blamelessly we behave towards you believers, just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and imploring each one of you, as a father would his own children, so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated.

So I want to explain to you just a little bit of the structure of what we're going to be talking about this morning. The umbrella, sort of the overarching theme of this passage, is the love that Paul, as a father, has for the people, for the church. And so love is sort of the umbrella over the top of it, or perhaps the foundation underneath it that everything else hinges on or is built on. Then we're going to come to the three ways he describes his fatherhood. So we're going to start out in the first couple of verses, 7, 8, and then we're going to skip down to verse 11, where he describes his fatherhood as exhorting, encouraging, and imploring each one of you. And we're going to look at those as being a definition or a way of explaining the work of fatherhood. But first, the foundation. I think that if we were to meet Paul, we would be quite surprised at the type of man he is.

I don't think he'd be the type of man we'd go, yeah, yeah, the Apostle Paul. I think we'd look at him and go, really? I don't think he was impressive. I don't think he's what we think of as a godly man. The way they look, the way they behave. From my study of Scripture, I think that Paul was probably a fairly unattractive man. I think he was probably a small man. And I think that he probably had bad vision, or in our days, big thick glasses. Not the kind of guy you'd look at and go, there's somebody I can get behind. He's a man's man. And add to that that Paul had no children, wasn't married, didn't have children of his own, and yet here he talks to us in the context of the church about motherhood and about fatherhood, and he understands that the relationship that Christians have with one another is identical to the relationships that we have in the family, mothers and fathers and children. And so he begins in this passage by...

demonstrating his love. He says, but we proved to be gentle among you, as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. And so the first thing that I want you to see from this text is that gentleness marks fatherhood. Now you might look at this passage and go, no, he's talking about mothers. And I say, no, he's not talking about mothers, he's talking about fathers, and he's using mothers as an example of the type of gentleness that fathers ought to have. We proved to be gentle among you. And then he gives the picture. As a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children. Now, those of you who have children, especially new little ones, consider the way the mother cares for the baby. The way she looks at them. The way she adores the baby. The way time stops when she looks on her baby child and delights in him. This is the gentleness and the kindness of a mother. It's a mystery if you're a man and you look at a mom.

with her baby, especially your first baby, and she's looking at him and she's studying the baby. And the baby's maybe squirming or is uncomfortable or something. And all of a sudden, mom decides that the baby is hungry or maybe they need their diaper changed or they're tired or something. And they get it just from looking at the baby. And dads sit there and go, what's wrong with the baby? But moms look and they study. and they're tender. And you understand it would be unnatural for a mom to take her baby and to say, I don't know what's wrong with the baby, and I'm not going to worry about it. That would be a failure of tenderness. Because mothers naturally love and cherish and are tender with their children. And Paul sets that out as an example to us of how he is with his children, the people of this church in Thessalonica. And so this tenderness that he uses, a nursing mother to demonstrate is something that comes natural to a woman. You would understand that if a woman lacked this capacity, we would say there's an unnatural thing going on because most women love their children. It's just an innate, natural thing. They go, look, all of the pain and all of the hardship and all of the sleepless nights and discomforts, past, present, and to come, are worth it because I have a baby.

And so what comes natural to a nursing mother has to be learned by men. That sort of tenderness doesn't come naturally to men, does it? We're more inclined to go, the baby's fed, and he'll be fine, and it's okay if he cries for a little while. And sometimes that is necessary to do. But you recognize that that statement is not motivated by your tenderness or your gentleness. It's often motivated by your selfishness or your laziness. Or your lack of knowing what in the world else you should do with a baby. And so men have to learn gentleness. The sort of gentleness that a nursing mother innately knows. And so first, men learn this gentleness from their wives. But I'll tell you what gives every man a leg up on understanding how a woman is gentle with a baby. And do you know what it is? It's that his father was gentle with him. That he has some context for the love of a father.

And the reason I think many of us don't know this is because we've not grown up with fathers who were gentle with us, who knew the things that we're talking about this morning. Perhaps we've grown up without a father of any sort. That would be me. Never tenderness, never harshness, just never anything. Some of you have grown up with fathers who were distant, who didn't love you and weren't kind with you, were quick to tell you what you did wrong, but not quick to appreciate or love you. And some of you grew up with good fathers, not perfect fathers, but fathers who worked at being tender and kind and gentle with you. And if that's your case, then you have a leg up on a lot of people in our society because you have a way of understanding what real manhood is. Real manhood is not what you see in film. Real manhood is not what you see on the sports field. Real manhood is not what you see in the club.

And real manhood is not what you see online. Real manhood is an older man loving his son, his daughter, the way that a mother loves and cares for her child. And if you think that that's somehow not manly, then I'm sorry. Because there's one thing that will disarm men better than anything else, and it's the kindness and the love and the affection of an older man. And I'm not saying anything sexual or perverted or anything like that. I'm saying the honest, kind infection and love of an older man is one of the most powerful things that God's put into this world. And many of us have lacked it, have not seen it, have not grown up with that love and that kindness. And so then we come to fatherhood ourselves and we go, I'm supposed to be a man. I've got to figure out how to be a man. And we get as far as, I'm supposed to be a leader. And you're right.

But somehow leading has this hard edge, this rough manner, this harsh tone. It lacks gentleness and tenderness. And so when our wives come to us and they say, I think you spanked the baby too hard or too often, or I think they need your attention, we as men go, no, I didn't. And then we learn from the tenderness of our wives how to be men. If you're a wife, I want you to know it's your job to teach your husband how to be gentle. He does not know how to. He just doesn't. It doesn't mean he doesn't want to learn, though sometimes he will get irritated at you telling him so. He needs you to teach him to be gentle, which means you have to be gentle first yourself, and then you have to teach him to do it. And you're not teaching him not to be a man. You're not teaching him to be effeminate. You're not teaching him to be womanly. You're teaching him to be a father. The same is true of older men. It's incumbent on us.

To teach the younger men. Through gentleness, through kindness, and through bearing with many, many sins. Tenderness and gentleness. Teaching them to be a man. That you're not threatened by their strength, by their youth. That you're not entirely disgusted with their pride. Though you do want to see them repent of it and grow and become humble. Wives, and I think often daughters, and older men teach. the younger men, how to be dads, how to be gentle, how to be kind. I think most of what we would call, or maybe you've seen, and we describe as cage stage men, is simply the result of a lack of fatherhood. That these are young men who've become zealous for truth, but have never had anyone teach them how to love people and the truth at the same time. And so they repent of their, in some way, of their...

rejection of the truth, but it's not mixed with or grounded by a love for other people. They've not had fathers and so they get real punchy and mean and they fight and they bite and they devour, thinking they're learning to be a man when it would be far better for them to shut up and to learn to love and learn how to be gentle and tender and kind, even when they're sinned against. And so Paul begins by saying, we proved to be gentle among you as a nursing mother tenderly cares for her own children, having so fond an affection for you, because you've become very dear to us. Too often manhood has this rugged sort of tough, isolated persona, that somehow that's what a man is. A man doesn't need anybody. He's not dependent. And it is true that men are leaders, but it's not true that they're independent. It's not true that they are without.

needs or without vulnerabilities. One of the things men need, I'm convinced that's lacking in our society and needs to be present in our homes and in our church is affection, and particularly physical affection. How could Paul say things like, we've grown, we have so fond an affection for you, how can you not, can you think of a father saying that of his son and not hugging and kissing him? How else would you demonstrate so fond an affection other than to Love and to care for and to touch your children. To demonstrate your affection. Physical touch is one of the primary ways that fathers teach their sons tenderness. You remember I just said fathers have to teach their sons. And now I'm telling you one of the primary ways you'll teach your children manhood, fatherhood, is through touching them. Hugs and kisses and snuggles and wrestling. Touch.

Without this, your children won't have the protection they need as they grow up in this society. And they need the protection and the care of their fathers being willing to touch them. Even as they get older. And even as they start to grow hair. And even as they start to stink. Because this is what happens with sons as they get older. And we think in our society that kids come of a certain age and all of a sudden they don't want or need affection anymore. Because they used to come to you and give you a hug and a kiss. Good night, mommy. Good night, daddy.

And then they get older and all of a sudden that's like, we don't know. I mean, that's when they need the affection the most. And it's when as a father I can tell you it's the sweetest to receive. When your teenage and young adult sons come to you and hug you and kiss you and you them, what better picture can we have of God's kindness and his love for us that he loves sinners and he comes to us and bears with us and not from a distance but right up close. We have so fond an affection for you. We were well pleased to impart to you not only the gospel of God, not only the truth, but also our lives, because you've become very dear from us. You'd almost be tempted to think that Paul needed those people, that he was dependent on them. If you were to read the rest of this book, you would find Paul saying, we've longed to come to you, but we haven't been able to. We've longed to come to you. And then he says, we couldn't bear it anymore.

We stayed in Athens and sent Timothy to you. We couldn't bear not to be with you. And we greatly rejoiced when Timothy came back and he gave us a good report of how you're doing and that you're loving Jesus. You'd almost think Paul needed them to encourage him and to strengthen him. And so you who are children, whether you're an adult child and your dad's older, or whether you're a young child and you still live in your dad's home, your dad needs you. He is not as tough as he wants you to think he is. I'll just tell you. He is not as tough and self-contained as you think he is. You need his affection, and he needs your affection. And it may be true that in the course of your life, it wasn't just you who didn't know how to give and receive affection. It may have been true of your dad that he didn't know how to hug you or show you affection. Don't let that stop you from hugging him. It may be awkward. He may be like...

I have a man dear to me who's like a father to me, and every time I hug him, it's like hugging a two-by-four. But I will tell you, over years, it's gotten better. And sometimes he even kind of indicates that he would be open to a hug. I haven't gotten to kissing him yet. We haven't gotten there. Fathers need the affection of their children, and so you children give it to your fathers. Teach them, along with your mothers, how to be a dad. We can all agree that dads don't know how to be dads today. And we all go, I don't know how to do it. I don't know how to do it. We can help the men learn how to be fathers. Wives can help. Sons and daughters can help. Older men can help. And we all have a responsibility to participate in this work of teaching one another how to be fathers. How to prepare men who aren't yet fathers of their own for that day. So that when they find out that their wife's pregnant, they don't go...

Oh no. Fathers also sacrifice for their children. Paul, in the middle of this passage in verse 9, For you recall, brethren, our labor and our hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we proclaim the gospel of God. He loved them and was a father to them by example. He wasn't the kind who sat by and said, do this and do that and I'm the dad so I'm entitled to it and you'll need to sacrifice for me. No, the opposite was true. He said, you saw by our example how we work night and day not to become a burden to you. And what he means is a financial burden. We didn't come and proclaim the truth to you and then demand that you provide for us even though we could provide for ourselves. His desire was to impart to them something spiritual, something essential to their salvation.

And his sacrifice for their good was a necessary part of that teaching in his fatherhood. And so it is true that fathers, you have to teach your children how to work. And you'll do a lot more teaching by example than you will by command. Show them how to be fathers by setting them a good example. And then trust God to use it. I think it's very difficult for fathers as their children come of age. My oldest is 14, so I haven't actually walked through this yet, but I've watched other men walk through it, and mothers as well, and they watch their sons come of age. They finally come out of their house, or they start to individuate, and their parents go, what's going to happen? Because the kid doesn't just take off and do well. Maybe some of the training that they've received falls by the wayside, it seems. They don't clean up. They're not as considerate. They're not on time. They do other things. They've been trained better than that.

The reason I bring that up is to say it's very tempting as a father to think that your work is in vain, that you train your children in a way, you train them up, and yet they won't continue in that path. But that's not what the Bible tells us, is it? The Bible tells us that we're to train our children up in the way in which they should go, and that when they're old, they will not depart from it. Now, this is not a perfect, seamless promise that they will never stumble, falter, have to stand up and figure out their own way. They will. And you'll watch them do it many times as they learn to take care of themselves. But I don't want you to doubt the work that you do among them. It's funny, in this passage, Paul talks about how he worked hard and labored so they wouldn't be a burden to them. But just a few verses later, what's he cautioning them against? Their laziness. Some of your busybodies not doing any work. Waiting for the Lord to come. Go and get to work is what he tells them.

And the blessing that he has is the example of his own conduct among them to say, go do what I did. And so Paul labored to set a godly example to his followers. Children, we'll imitate you from a very young age. You ever go into a crowd, maybe it's, you know, I have it happen when we're around people from our sending church. We haven't been there in a long time, and their kids have grown up. They've had kids, I don't know them. But you look at them, and sometimes you look at their face and you go. I know who your mommy and daddy are. But sometimes you look at their mannerisms or you listen to the way they talk and you go, I know who your mommy and daddy are. Why? Because children imitate their parents. So set them a good example. And when I say set them a good example, I'm not telling you, set them an example of perfection and always do it right. That's an unattainable goal. Strive to that end, but recognize I'm not standing here telling you you won't fail. You will fail. And when you fail, you have the best opportunity you could ask for to set them a good example.

Because you, unlike God, are not a perfect father. And God's not ashamed for you to bear the title father, even as you sin and are imperfect. In Hebrews, he tells us we had fathers who disciplined us as seemed best to them, which is basically a very nice, sweet way of saying they weren't always right. But if they loved us enough to discipline us, how much more so your father in heaven, who will never fail you or forsake you or do the wrong thing. Your children will learn from you. They'll learn to walk and talk the way you do. They'll learn your mannerisms. They'll learn all kinds of details. They'll be little yous walking around. And sometimes we moan over it and we say, oh, I see my sin in that child. But the kindness of God is that sometimes you see the gifting that he's given you, or even more sweetly, the gifting that he's given your spouse. Your children imitate you, so be mindful of that and set them a good example. And when you fail, repent and set them a good example of repentance.

Now we come to the works of fatherhood. Three things, exhorting, encouraging, and imploring each one of you as a father would his own children. So in this passage, Paul assumes what fathers do. He says, we do these things with you just like a father does with his own children. Now what's true of a father and his children? A father is not willing for his children to go astray and to disobey them. You understand that a good father is not willing to have his kids reject his counsel and his wisdom and be like, eh. Fine, go figure it out yourself. I suppose there's animals that function that way, but we have not been created to function that way. A father cares about his children. He ought to. And if he doesn't, it's as unnatural as a woman not knowing how to be tender with her baby. A father ought to care what his children do. And he ought to use every tool he's got in his toolbox to motivate his children. And so Paul describes those motivating tools here as exhorting, encouraging, and imploring.

And I want to start with exhorting because I think it's one area, probably the area where we really lack. By exhorting, I don't mean that you yell at your kids and tell them when they do wrong. You will tell them what they do wrong. There will probably be times when you raise your voice and you should. But I'm not talking about being angry with them and punishing them with your words. That's not exhortation. Maybe we would understand exhortation better. Through the rubric of a coach and a team. What marks a good coach? I would say, largely, him being very animated on the sideline. Now, women may be like, why is he yelling all the time? But the men understand that that's a necessary part of being a good coach. He has to push those kids. And part of his pushing is defined as him saying, you didn't do well enough. Try harder.

Many, many times I think men are afraid to tell their children, you didn't do well enough. You have to do better because you can do better. I know you can do better. And so I'm not satisfied with the level of effort you've put forth because I've seen you run harder, play faster, push yourself. And so if coaches understand this on a team, and you understand that it would be a bad coach who just stood on the sideline and never had anything to say, to his team as they played. It's bad fatherhood to never have anything to say to your children when they fail. You as a father have to determine, did my children do what they were capable of doing? And if they didn't, you need to tell them so. That's not to say you need to punish them or intimidate them or manipulate them or tear them down. That's not what I'm saying. But I am saying there's a way in which a father can come to his son and say, son,

Daughter, that's not good enough. You have to do better. One of the sweet things about having other adults involved in my children's life is that they tell my kids when they're not doing well enough. I think of their teachers, most especially at their school and their coaches. And I'm very quick to tell their teachers at the beginning of every year, you have my support. You will not get any pushback from us if you push our kids to perform at the... highest level possible for them. We don't have any spot in our heart that says, oh, our poor kids, we didn't want them to have to do hard stuff. No, we expect them to do well because we know they're capable of doing well. And their teachers are always thankful. Thank you. You're not going to be one of those parents that's unwilling to have your children exhorted. And the reason I tell their teachers that is because Vanessa and I are committed in our own home to not settle for our children's, the level of effort that they want to put forth.

We're willing to settle for the level of effort we know they're capable of putting forth. And when they do well, we tell them they do well. But when they don't do well, we figure out why they didn't do well and we tell them that too. And I think that's an essential part of fatherhood. Telling somebody that they failed is not a license for you to not love them. Even as you tell them not good enough, they should know that you love them and care about them. We've had fathers some of us that way. We've had coaches that way. People in our lives who said, no, no, do it again. Do it again because you didn't try and you need to try. The love and the affection that I talked about earlier are not opposed to you correcting your children. And fathers, it's essential that you correct your children and that you learn to do it without manipulating them, without browbeating them, without insulting them.

When you exhort someone, they ought to be motivated. Whether they love you or hate you for it, they should know that you love them as you said it. That love motivated you to say perhaps a very difficult or hard thing to them. But their good ought to be what motivates you to speak and to act as a father, even as you exhort them and correct them and say, no, better, again. In addition to exhortation, Fathers ought to encourage their children. And one thing I'll tell you is that if you don't exhort your children and if you don't correct them, your words of encouragement will be hollow. They'll think you're feeding them a line. They won't believe it. How are they supposed to... You ever had someone tell you you did a good job as an adult at work, perhaps, when you know you didn't? And you knew they were just lying to you? They were just saying, oh, we know you tried real hard. And you're like, no, I didn't. I threw that together last minute. And if you're impressed by that, then you're an idiot.

because I didn't try hard. Their encouragement rings hollow. And part of the reason you didn't work hard on that project is because they never told you that's not good enough. Get it done again by the end of the day. You're not going home until you've done better. Then if that boss encourages you, then you go, they're actually pleased with what I said and what I did. The work I've produced is satisfactory to them because they've told me when it's not. And so the same is true of fathers. If you never tell your children that's not good enough, then when you tell them that is good enough and you did a good job, they'll question whether it's true or not. And so exhortation and encouragement go hand in hand. A father is not just called to encourage his children and to be their cheerleader and to worry about their self-esteem. Don't worry about your children's self-esteem. Worry about their spiritual formation and their character, their humility and their willingness to be taught. When they don't do well, tell them. When they do perform well,

Tell them, hug them and kiss them, praise them and thank them to do even better next time. Hebrews 10, 24 tells us to consider how to stimulate one another to love and good deeds. And I would tell you that as a father, that's your job. As a mother, this is your job. How do you stimulate your children to love and good deeds? Exhortation, encouragement. And even as you do it, I want you to think of your exhortations and your encouragements as seeds planted. I think too often we get discouraged and use it as an excuse as fathers not to continue in the work because we say, well, it's not working. I exhorted him. He still isn't listening. I encouraged him. Didn't seem to phase him. You're planting a seed when you exhort. You're planting a seed when you encourage. Trust God to bear, to grow it and to turn it into a fruit.

It's very easy to think that the best way to stimulate children, and I think this is very common of men, especially those who haven't had good fathers, that the best way to stimulate their children is to chide and to discipline them, harshly, constantly. So much sin, we always have to talk about it. So much trouble, so much failure. And I'd ask you, fathers, is that how God deals with you? Does he grind you into the ground? When you're aware of your own sins and your own failures, isn't he kind to you in giving you a wife that, encourages you or a child or someone that comes along and gives you a hug or thanks you, isn't he good to you? Aren't you motivated by it? Stimulated, as it were, to love and good deeds? Go and do the same with your children. A few chapters later, Paul tells the Thessalonians to encourage the faint-hearted. And I think that's a pretty good description of fatherhood today. Many men are faint-hearted. They're supposed to be big and tough and all this stuff. They're faint-hearted. They're weak.

Remember I said earlier, children, your dad's not as strong as you think he is. Not physically, not emotionally, not spiritually. He's not as strong as he presents or as you think he is. And it's sweet that you think that he's so strong. And that in its way does encourage him to live up to your expectation. And yet, he's faint-hearted. He's tempted to turn aside. He gets discouraged about his own failures and sins as a husband and a father. Same is true of our children, isn't it? They get faint-hearted. They get weak. Paul tells us to encourage the faint-hearted. And so you fathers, as you look at your children and you want them to know that there's things you don't know how to fix, trust that there are things they don't know how to fix either. They may well not want to do the thing that you don't want them to do, and they may well be far more discouraged about it than they let on to you. Encourage them. Those who are weak and those who are discouraged,

Do not simply need their sins pointed out to them. Sometimes they know already. The mark of good fatherhood, growing fatherhood, is that you learn to discern when you're dealing with someone who's faint-hearted and who's weak or whether you're dealing with someone who's dug in and proud. And it's easy to confuse the two of them and to always think that your kids are just dug in, knee-deep, going to do what they're going to do. But really, they're very weak. And they need your gentleness and your tenderness. To stimulate them to good deeds, they need your encouragement, Dad. The third thing that God, Paul, calls fathers to do is to implore their children. Now, implore is not a word we use a whole lot, so what does implore mean? Well, it simply means to urge or to plead with. I think so often as fathers, we think if we can say it right, or mothers, you think if I could just say the right thing, it'll make sense to them. All the pieces will sync up in their brains and they'll get it. It doesn't work that way.

Some of the parents are looking at me kind of chuckling, going, we haven't figured that one out yet. And that's because sometimes exhorting and encouraging are not sufficient. Sometimes you have to plead with your children. You can exhort and not be vulnerable as a dad. You can even encourage and not be vulnerable as a dad, but you cannot plead with your children without being vulnerable. And if you have a principle as a husband or a father of... Not being vulnerable with the people that you love and that are dependent on you. You're giving up exactly one-third of the tools in your toolbox. Your children need to know your heart's desire for them. You're worried about them. Every parent worries about their child. Don't punish them because you're worried about them. Plead with them. You go, will it work? Will it work, Pastor Dave? And I say, it'll work when God has it work. Use the tool. Plead with them.

Let them know that you're grieved or that you're sorry or that you're concerned about them. Not just that you're inconvenienced by them or irritated by them. That's very easy to come by as a parent, whether your children are young or old, to get irritated by them. But how often is our irritation the result of our worry for them? I get irritated because you make me worry, and I can't control you. So fathers need to urge their children to plead with them, implore them, nudge them in the direction that you want them to go. Your children should know what you want for them. They should know why you sacrifice. They should know why you do the things you do, Dad. I think too often we look at our kids and we think, you know what I'll do? I'll set them off in the corner for a little while and let them think about what they did wrong. That's the dumbest thing in the world you can do with a child. And the reason it's dumb to do with a child is because if you did that very same thing with an adult, they wouldn't figure out what you're upset about. Why do you think someone who's far...

more immature, is going to be able to figure out what they did wrong when you can't figure it out when someone does it to you. Instead of setting them aside to wonder what in the world this is all about, tell them. They should know what your desires are for them and your expectations for them. In addition to knowing what those are, they should feel a little bit of shadow behind them, encouraging them, nudging them, pleading with them in that direction. You should never look at your children and think, well, your decisions are yours to make, as though you're neutral and don't care what they decide. Which parent doesn't care what their children decide to do with their lives, what they decide to love and what they decide to follow? We all care, so why wouldn't we tell our kids as much? No, that would not please me, and I don't want you to do that. And here's the reason I don't want you to do that, and here's what's going to happen if you do that. I love you. You may not do that. Please don't do that. I want good things for you, son.

daughter. We should never take an indifferent stance toward our children or the things that they do. We kind of have a joke about Jewish mothers and what they're like. They're really pushy. It's a good thing a lot of the time in producing what they want it to produce. Now, they may not always want to produce good things in their children, but our children ought to know our desires for them, and they ought to know that we really do want them to do it. Did Paul in his ministry Did he just say, here's the truth, guys. Just want you to know, here's the truth. Jesus, your sins, death, life over here, you choose. It's up to you. That's never how Paul deals. That's never how he writes. That's not how anyone in the Bible preaches. They tell you the truth and they say, you need to believe it or you're going to die and I want you to believe it. Fathers ought to implore their children to godliness and to obedience. Now, I said at the beginning of my sermon that

We're in desperate needs of fathers as a society. Some of us have children that need this from us, while others of us need help processing through our own childhoods, our own father's failures or absence. So far in my sermon, I've mainly addressed fathers with their own children, and we're all sitting here thinking about our own kids or our own dads and what we're going to do with the people that we're around. I'd like to take some time now to spend the rest of our time looking at fatherhood generally in society. When there's a need, think of it in terms of economics. If there's a need in the marketplace, what happens? Businesses get started. People decide, I will meet that need. I see a need. It's not hard to identify a need. And so what we have in our society is a need of fathers or a lack of fathers. And what has happened is that many men have stepped up to meet that need. In a sense, they've decided, I will be a father to these people. I will teach them how to be a man or a husband or father. Now, here's what I want you to know. All fatherhood comes from God the Father. In Ephesians 3, it says, Paul says, I bow my knees before the Father from whom every family in heaven on earth derives its name. Now, I just want to...

talk to you for a second about that word family. The word father in this passage is pater, okay, Greek word. The word for family here is patria, same word, different ending. And it would be a good translation for us, instead of saying family at this point, to say fatherhood. And it reads differently when you read, I bow my knees before the father from whom every fatherhood in heaven on earth drives its name, from whom every family, from whom every entity that exists that has a man at the top of it. Every man who bears the name father, title father, responsibility father, bears that title and has an obligation to demonstrate and to teach and to exercise his fatherhood the way God the Father does. And so the problem we have in our society today is we have people who reject that foundation trying to teach us fatherhood. And it is true that we can observe things that are true about good fatherhood. A lot of the stuff I've said to you.

about gentleness and tenderness, about telling people when they need to work harder, about encouraging them, about pleading with them. That can be said by someone who doesn't know Jesus Christ because they're true. What we need, though, is not just to know what is true, but why it's true. And so much of what's postured today as teaching on manhood and husbandry and fatherhood is bankrupt at this point. They don't give glory to God and they don't point back to his fatherhood and say, this is why you need to do these things. I can tell you, you need to love your children and you say, okay, but what happens when you don't want to? Then what? Why do you need to love your children when you don't want to love your children? If all you've ever been told is you need to love him, when that day comes, you will not have the tools and the understanding that you need to be faithful.

And that's what we're in desperate need of. It's not just, here's the list of things that define manhood. We need to know why those are the things that define manhood, fatherhood. And so while it's true that just about anybody could tell us something about manhood, only Christians are going to be able to tell you the why. So what happens if you only observe the what? Be this and do that. You're going to end up with two... at least two failures, and they're significant. The first is you're going to have missing parts. There are going to be parts of fatherhood that are missing because they're connected to Jesus Christ and to God the Father in such a way that the unbelievers don't recognize them or don't value them. There will be missing parts. You will open up the box of manhood, and there will be parts that are gone. They didn't get shipped to you because, lo and behold, the person who shipped them to you didn't know why they were important. And so they may come to you and say,

If you want to be a father, that's good. Here's how to do it. But they will never address the question of the person who doesn't want to become a father. That part will be missing. If you want to be a dad, great. This is how you should behave. But what do they have to say to the man who doesn't want to become a father and who, in that desire, is rejecting the fatherhood of God? He says, I want to get married, and I want all the pleasures of marriage, but none of the responsibilities. What does the ungodly have to say to that problem? Nothing, because they don't recognize it as a problem. There are missing parts. And so men who teach manhood, who are gurus, they trade on the weaknesses and the helplessness of the fatherless. Men who don't have fathers are vulnerable and weak. And those who would come and teach you how to be a man, divorced from the fatherhood of God, are trading on your weakness. In the Bible, Paul warns against the type of teachers that come in and captivate weak women weighed down with sins.

who are described as always learning but never coming to the knowledge of the truth, I would submit to you that that's exactly what the manosphere does. That's exactly what they do. Because they don't ever have to tell you. They don't acknowledge the weakness in a way that it needs to be protected and shored up. They say, yes, we have a way to fix it. We have a way to help that's divorced from God the Father. And they do you harm in the long run. In the short term, it may be helpful. Many times they have helpful things to say. They have enough to get you through the day. They may have enough to get you married. They may have enough to get you into the life you want. But when the hard times come as a man, you will find that they don't have what you need. And so in your consumption of their teaching, which I know many of you men do, you need to be very aware of what's missing. Often they say a lot of true things, but there's true things that they don't say, and they're important.

The second thing, the second abuse, if you only have the what of manhood, not the why, is that you miss the purpose of what it means to be a man. We can say, here are the actions of manhood, but as I said, there's no why you should be a man. Men who don't know or don't care what it means to be a man, made in the image of God, are just like the men who built the Tower of Babel. They'll use whatever wisdom, whatever resources, whatever gifts they have to get what they want. How much of this teaching on manhood is aimed at teaching you to get what you want out of life? And I ask you, is that what God has made you for? Did he make you to think, how do I get what I want out of life? What I think I deserve? Where in scripture are we taught to think that way? Men are not taught to think, how do I get what I want out of life? I want a wife, how do I get one? Well, I don't want a wife, but I want sex. How do I get it?

Nowhere in Scripture are we taught to think in terms of getting what we want. In Scripture, men are taught that their broad shoulders and their strength are meant for the protection and the provision of those who are dependent on them. They're called to a life of sacrifice and a life of giving of themselves like Jesus did for the sake of the people around them. And that, on the face of it, is not an attractive thing. If you were faced with the decision to sacrifice for the sake of others, Or to take from others the things that you want. Can any of us stand up and say consistently, I would choose to sacrifice for others. If I didn't know why, that's what I should choose. There's a right answer to that question. I can have what I want, or I can go without so they can have what they want. You have to be taught why you need to choose, I will go without for their sake. Because it's not in you to decide that on your own. And if you think that it is, you're lying to yourself.

Or the difficulty hasn't come and that question isn't in full focus in your life. And so instead, we end up choosing our own desires, our own selfishness, our own preferences. And we exploit those around us. We're taught, even, to exploit those around us to get what we want. And in so doing, we're barely half men who understand some bits and pieces of manhood, but not the real substance or why. Men who lack a deep and growing sense of what it means to become a man can never become what they say they want. And it's not all their fault. It's somewhat the fault of the people who mislead them. And so my exhortation to you is don't be misled. Paul says we exhort, we encourage, and we implore so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you. This is the purpose of fatherhood.

This is the purpose of him doing his work with his children, with his disciples and our work in our homes and with the people around us so that you would walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom and his glory. And so I'd say to you simply, I said this at small group and last week, I said, if this work is to be done, if men are to learn fatherhood, they have to learn it in the church or they will not learn it. Coming from wherever they've come from, Good fathers, present but bad fathers, or absent fathers. If you're to learn how to be a husband and a father, a man, you have to learn it in the church. And I'm convinced, and I said this at small group last week as well, that the manosphere, this thing I've been talking about, all the men teaching man, is simply the parachurch movement of a few decades ago, gotten out of the refrigerator and put in the microwave. Warmed up.

And being resold again. What the parachurch did, the whole parachurch movement, what it did was it recognized a failure in the church. And they said, the church is failing to make disciples. They are failing to reach the nations. They are not going to the lost and telling them about Jesus. That was true. Okay? Not disputing that. It was a problem. It is a problem. The problem is identified. And they're right. Then you determine that it can be done better than the church is doing it. Without the encumbrances and the reputation and the hassle of trying to get the church to do it, we'll go outside the church and we'll do a work to the same end, but without all that bother. The church isn't worth the reform, the effort, the time that it will take. So we'll just pack up and go do it somewhere, in another place. We'll go do it on campus or we'll go do it...

Through conferences, and nowadays we'll go do it online. And in the beginning, the parachurch movement, crew and navigators and promise keepers and all this, they paid lip service to the church. You need to go to church. You need to go to church. But in the same way that Billy Graham's crusades, where he'd come and he'd snatch people out of the churches and they'd all come and they'd get saved, there was no church for them to go to. Other than to say, you should go to church. You need to go to church. And the only way those people ended up at church was if, the pastors came to those events and connected with the people who were there, which is what, if that's what's going to happen, should be done. The pastor should go and say, hey, here, come here. But is the parachurch willing for churches to come? Were they willing for churches to come in and say, yes, okay, but this is not where it's at. You need to come and be made a disciple here in the church. And over time, the parachurch went away from that. In the beginning, the parachurch was very explicit in saying, we're not the church. We don't have the sacraments.

We don't baptize. We don't serve the Lord's Supper, but no more. It wasn't long until they said, you know what, we could do that too. I don't know why we couldn't. Why couldn't we? I think we will. And so they did. And the result of that was that Christian kids going off to college, having their lives uprooted and trying to figure out what life was going to be, they come in and they settle in, and these parachurch ministries are on campuses. They pull the kids in. And the result was they pulled the kids out of churches. Many, many kids that went to college didn't go to church. And the reason they didn't go to church is because they went to crew. And it was bad for them. Because what happens to them when they're done with college? They've been years out of church now. And they've only been for years, they've only been with people who are their own age and in their own season of life. And it was incredibly destructive. And in time,

The parachurch just ended up going along with the pressures that they felt on campus or in society. They ended up with the same failures that existed in the church before they existed. And the result was they pulled people out of the church in the process because they thought they could do it better. And now, which parachurch ministry, as your kids go off to college, would you say, go be a part of them. They do a good job. They'll guard the good deposit. What you ought to tell your children is, go to church and go to a church that will teach you these things. Well, should it be a Presbyterian church or should it be a Baptist church or should it be an evangelical? What kind of church? I'd say, go to a church who will teach you these things. I don't care if you're a Presbyterian. If there's a Baptist church in town that will teach you to these things, go there. Well, they don't have any people my age. So what? I know it's hard. We all need people around us that are our age, but there's things we need more than that.

We need a family. We actually need people who are older and younger and who are in different seasons of life far more than we need a huge clique of people around us who are identical to us and as a result are of very little help to us. Now all of this is about the parachurch, but the same thing I'm convinced is true of all the manhood gurus that are out there. They've seen a problem, and they're right. Absolutely right. The church has failed to teach men to be men. They've not guarded the good deposit. We've sucked in the worldliness and we've spewed it out of our pulpits and worked hard and proactively in the church, the broader church, to kill any male principle that exists in our men. And they said, well, we can do it better. We'll go outside the church and do it. You have unbelievers who didn't even start from that point who are just like, we need men. I think I'll teach people how to be men. But without the why, there will be missing parts, there will be missing purpose, and it will end as the parachurch ended.

having sucked people out of the church and having weakened her even more. But our commitment as Christians ought to be to the church of Jesus Christ because the church is his bride. The church is the one he came to save. And so our desire as we see these problems ought to see that the churches get online with this stuff, figure this stuff out. And I understand very well how dire that is and how hopeless it is. You go, is it possible? And I say, yes, it is possible, but it's not common. And so if it's possible but not common, it means that it's very, very important that you and me be in churches that do this work. We'll move all over the country for family and for friends and for work and for weather and for all kinds of things. Will we commit ourselves to being in a place that will teach us these things? That's what we need to do. And we won't do it perfectly. But if we won't do it,

As a church, it will not be done. No one will do it better in the end. These are the things that our church is committed to. We don't do it perfectly. I'm no perfect man. Our elders are no perfect men, but I can tell you that they're men of good conscience who are committed to teaching us these very things. How to be a husband, how to be a father, how to raise your children, how to love the lost. This is the battleground of our day and where we need desperate help. We can talk about... finer points of theology and all kinds of other things, and we do from time to time. But this issue, this is the core of what we're committed to as a church because it's where we see God's people being hung out to dry with no teaching and no instruction. So join with us in the work. Commit yourself to it. If this isn't where you belong, if this isn't where you're at, find a church that does. Find a church that does. Let's pray.