Father's Day - Romans 8:12-16
June 19, 2011

For those who might not know, I work at a private, conservative Christian high school teaching British Literature and a Web Design class. A blessing that comes from working in such an environment is that each class presents opportunities to not only grow academically but spiritually as well—we pray together before each class and we often read the Bible together. Last year, I was particularly challenged by one young student who would begin every prayer with, "Dear daddy in Heaven…" and I couldn't help but explain to the class that the way she opened her prayer was a lot more Biblical than people might have thought:

In Romans 8:15-16, Paul addresses a problem some new converts had been struggling with: most pagan religions in Rome instilled a great sense of fear in its followers, forcing them to do all sorts of things to appease and satisfy their gods but the Christian God is not like that at all because of what Jesus did on the cross. So, Paul tells the Roman Christians, "For you did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear, but you received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry 'Abba, Father' [or daddy, dad]. The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God's children."

So when we pray to God, addressing Him as, "daddy in Heaven," we are praying more Biblically than many would think because on the cross, Jesus Christ did more than take away our sins but He also gave us something—many things, in fact—one of which is His sonship: the right to be God's child and the freedom to address God not merely as YHWH or God of the Heavens but Father—my dad and my intimate daddy. So today, since it is not only the Day of the Lord but also Father's Day, I want to look at what the Fatherhood of God means to you and me, children of men and women, beckoned to become children of God in Jesus' holy and saving name.

So, to begin, let's ask the question… What is a Father? Well, the simplest definition would be the partial origin of a child; some fathers may not be parents but they are, nonetheless, fathers since they contributed to someone's birth. But how about on a more meaningful level: what does it mean to be a father?

In the Bible, we see many examples of fathers: We see Abraham, the father of Isaac, taking his son to a mountain top with the commitment to sacrifice his son. We see Jacob, son of Isaac, who loved his own son Joseph so much that he gave him a special robe—a robe so special, in fact, that it instills so much jealousy in Joseph's eleven other brothers that they beat him up, throw him in a pit, and sell him into slavery. In Genesis 19, we see a father of two daughters named Lot who is deceived by his own daughter to get drunk and sleep with them in order to prolong the family line—and long story short, they succeed. So, according to some of the stories found in the Bible, what does it mean to be father?

Well, it means that a father can be good:

Illustration: I never met my grandpa on my father's side because he passed away from cancer even before I was born. But one thing I will never forget about my grandpa is something my dad told me when I was about seven or so: there was a short period in time when my dad's family was fairly wealthy—wealthy enough to own a home. Now traditional Korean homes have somewhat of a quad in the center where you would do laundry and clean things and typically it would be made out of cement and leveled lower than the rest of the home. Well, during winter one year, my dad really wanted ice skates and to go ice skating. But ice skates were very expensive at the time and you would have to travel some distance to get to the nearest frozen pond. So, bummed about the circumstance, my dad asked his dad once and when he was turned out, he never brought up again. Well, about a week later, when the weather got cold enough for water to freeze, my dad woke up one day to find the entire quad area of the home layered with several inches of ice and a pair of brand new ice skates waiting for him—later my dad found out that my grandpa spent all night in the cold pouring water into the quad area, just so my dad could ice skate.

Some fathers, like some of our fathers and some of the fathers found in the Bible, can be good. But at the same time, this also means that a father can be bad:

Illustration: I used to work at a fairly large American church and often helped with the youth group there, counseling students and teaching when they needed it. During my time there I remember several—not just a couple but several—stories of students confessing that they've been sexually abused or molested by their own biological fathers or their step-fathers. The hardest part about this was knowing that most of the people who confessed were younger than 17 and had been going through the torture and turmoil of what their fathers were doing to them for years. One girl, who had it the worst, had been sexually abused for something 7 years by several people in her life, including her dad. And at the age of 18, all she ever thinks about doing is who she is going to sleep with next, where she is going to get her next fix, and how she is going to get through another day. I mean, this isn't movie stuff or some newspaper article about some girl thousands of miles away—this was a person right in front of me, who wanted help from the wickedness of her father.

Illustration: One of my closest friends once told me about an affair his father was having with another woman and while his entirely family, even his mom, knew about it but just to keep the family together, no one ever said anything… until one day, this friend called his father out, confessing years of pain and anger, and eventually pushed his dad to the ground. His dad then got up, got a baseball bat, and literally dried to kill him, destroying their house and chasing his own son for about a mile. My friend eventually had to move to Korea for several months and eventually to South America for about year just to get away from his dad because his own father swore that if he had the chance, he would literally kill his own son than admit he was and is wrong.

Some fathers, like some of our fathers and some of the fathers found in the Bible, can be bad.

But regardless of how good or how bad the fathers of the Bible were and regardless of how good or how bad the fathers in our lives are, our Father in heaven is firstly (a) always good and secondly (b) never bad:

Firstly, our Heavenly Father is always good: In Luke 18:19, Jesus says Himself, "No one is good but God alone." Throughout the psalms, various psalmists declare and exclaim, "the Lord is good" and "O give thanks to the Lord, for he is good" and "O taste and see that the Lord is good!" (ref. Ps. 100:5; 106:1; 107:1; et. al.) But not only is our Heavenly Father good but He always has and always will remain good because goodness—the entire notion itself—derives from Him.

One of my favorite pastors, J.I. Packer, says it like this: "Nothing can alter the character of God. In the course of a human life, tastes and outlook and temper may change radically: a kind, equable man may turn bitter and crotchety: a man of good-will may grow cynical and callous. But nothing of this sort happens to the Creator. He never becomes less truthful, or merciful, or just, or good, than He used to be."

But still, not only is our Heavenly Father good and always-and-forever good but everything He does is good: Genesis 1:31 says, "And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good." In other words, God saw what He did and what He did was good. Psalms 119:68 says, "You are good and you do good; teach me your statutes."

But most importantly, more than the fact that God is good and that He is eternally good and that He always does good, is the fact that the goodness of God is continuously directed and given to those who believe in His son, Jesus Christ: One of my favorite verses, Romans 8:32, says "He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, will he not also give us all things with him?" Think of the Gospel, which literally means Good News—who finds the news of Jesus' death and resurrection good? To those who have received it, who are being changed by it, and who are saved by it.

Unlike many of our fathers and many of the fathers of the Bible, God, our Heavenly Father, is, always will be, and always does good—and not just good for Himself but good to you and good to me and to those who believe in His one and only Son, Jesus Christ.

So if you do not believe today, if you know the faults of fatherhood all too well, won't you believe in Jesus Christ and receive a new sonship—receive the sonship that isn't bound to a bad father or even a good father but receive a sonship that is bound to the Heavenly Father who is good, who is always good, and who always does good to those who believe in Him by faith in Jesus Christ.

Now, some of us may have done that and feel confident in that faithful decision to do that and persevere in that faithfulness—for those of you who have received the sonship of Jesus Christ and love to call upon your "daddy in heaven," your encouragement today is to remember not only in God's goodness but in God's inability to do bad—because God is always good, He is never bad; He is always pursuing good, especially your good, even at the cost of Himself while resisting evil and that which is bad for you.

A famous Japanese violinist named Shinichi Suzuki once said, "Children learn to smile from their parents." And his point was that a good father makes a good son. Working at a school or in youth ministry will teach you that this phrase is very true: all of the students who not only do well academically but who are astute, responsible, wise, gracious, and promising all have at least one parent who is astute, responsible, wise, gracious, and promising. Meanwhile, all the students that are mean-spirited, quick-tempered, and disrespectful often have at least one mean-spirited, quick-tempered, and disrespectful parent.

But regardless of how good or how bad your parents are, if you've truly accepted Jesus Christ into your life as your Lord and Savior, you have a Father in Heaven that is perfect in holiness and eternal in righteousness, who saved you from your sin so that you too can become like (similar) to Him in holiness and righteousness.

This means that whether or not your parents are lenient or strict doesn’t matter: your Father in Heaven is strict in discipline because He is abounding in love. Proverbs 3:11-12 says this, "My son, do not despise the Lord's discipline and do not resent his rebuke, because the Lord disciplines those he loves, as a father a son he delights in."

When your parents tell you to come home at a certain time or not to do certain things and instead to do other things, hopefully, we all do them. Yet for many of us, this is not the way we approach God, our Heavenly Father—is He less of a Father to you that you don't truly obey Him when He commands you, through His Words, to do certain things and to refrain from other things If so, then He must see you less than a true son and therefore Christ didn't truly pay the entire price of sin on the cross. If you've truly received Jesus Christ into your life and declare God as your Heavenly Father, then this also means that whether you love what your parents do or hate what your parents do, it doesn't matter because you are called to do something entirely different:

In the beginning of our text, in verses 12-14, Paul says… In other words, you are to become like your Father in Heaven, not your fathers on earth or your mothers on earth—regardless of how much you want to be like them or don’t want to be like them, it doesn't matter because God, your Heavenly Fathers, calls you to be like Him, not them—regardless of who they are. And if you've truly received Jesus Christ into your life and declare God as your Heavenly Father, then this means that no matter how much your parents love you or how little your parents love you, God will always love you more:

There was a story that surfaced from the Tsunami in Japan where rescuers were digging through the rubble of the homes and buildings that were demolished and they found one collapsed building where a woman was found dead, face down on the ground, holding something like a football underneath her. When rescuers moved her aside, they found her infant child underneath her—the woman was battered to death by falling rubble just to save her infant child. We know that our Heavenly Father loves us more than any earthly father ever could because He gave His one and only Son, a son He would gladly cover in a tsunami and easily give everything for—the reason the Gospel is of a Father giving a Son is because that is how much God loves you and loves me: He was willing to take that Son whom He loves so much, and nail Him to a cross, so that He could save you and save me.

It's like a Father giving up one son to save another, which Jesus tells us a parable about in Luke—what father on this earth could do that? What father could give up his own son for someone who isn't meant to be his son, who doesn't deserve to be his son? No father, no mother, no parent on this earth ever could… but our Heavenly Father can and our Heavenly has and John 3:16 tells us that He has done this because of love.

Our fathers on this earth can be good and our fathers on this earth can be bad. But our father in Heaven is always good and always does good to those who receive Him by faith through Jesus Christ, His one and only Son.

And to those He calls sons and children, God, our Heavenly Father, beckons us to be less like ourselves and more like Him and to be filled, not just touched or taught but genuinely filled with His good, Fatherly, and eternal love in Jesus Christ. So on this day, this Father's Day, let's do more than remember our fathers who dwell on earth but let us remember our Father who dwells in Heaven, who gave His only Son to call you and I, sons.