Man Up: How to be a Godly Dad

Johnston, Dan

Holidays and Special Events • Sermon • Submitted 2 years ago

1 Corinthians 16:13–14

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For Father's Day we will examine what it means to "act like a man."

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Transcript

Announcements

Father’s Day

Chiefs game

Wed, July 13th

Starting Monday (not today) - place order for seats

Email/call church

Women's Bible Study

Both on Thursday

Jamie Sharpe at 10:00am

Candi Hallam at 2:00am

Both in 103

Next week outdoor service

9:00am only

Introduction

A month ago my son Ronnie graduated from high school

I’m officially an expert, right?

I mean, I completely raised a child! I did it!

The strange thing is even though I’m done, I keep seeing him in my house...

I’m still paying for a lot of his stuff!

I hear that being a dad never really stops, just looks different

Today, I want to talk about being a dad - getting to some basic stuff

We’re going to go back almost 3,000 years ago to a story

It’s a story about a dad and his son...

And the things he thought were important

YouVersion: Man Up!

In 1 King’s 2:1-4 and 1 Corinthians 16:13-14

When God made Israel, He didn’t want a king

He wanted to be their king, but Israel wanted to be like everyone else

So Saul became king, but he was selfish and haughty

He died in battle along with his son, ending the first line of kings after one

Then David became king

He was a man after God’s own heart - a good king, even a Godly king

But he wasn’t perfect

He had an affair, got her pregnant, tried to cover it up as her husbands son

But he was a good man, so David murdered Uriah

That son would not survive, along with many other sons

David had at least 21 sons… and the Lord chose Solomon to be king

This king was Solomon - the final king of Israel before the kingdom would split

Solomon would become insanely wealthy, have 700 wives/300 concubines, be the wisest man ever (besides Jesus), and build the first ever Temple to the Lord in Jerusalem

Today, I want to look at Solomon’s dad David, passing the torch to his son

Some of David’s last words - a Godly king encouraging his son

1 Kings 2:1–4 (ESV)

1 When David’s time to die drew near, he commanded Solomon his son, saying, 2 “I am about to go the way of all the earth. Be strong, and show yourself a man, 3 and keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways and keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn, 4 that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

This is a dad’s final advice for his son

He says to “show yourself a man,” or “act like a man”

What does it mean to “act like a man?”

Hebrew for “man”: is (ish)

It means man, like in English

But has tone of respect

Not just mankind (act like a human)

Or an adult human (act like a grown up)

Although there is a little bit of relationship there...

It’s respectful, like “he was a good man”

So what is David saying to Solomon? Act like a “good man, what a man is supposed to be”

But what is that?

Culture gives us ideas...

From Quora (edited for content), Usually when people talk about “acting like a man,” they’re talking about outdated, sexist stereotypes that really need to die.

Like how “boys don’t cry.” (that one gets on my nerves. “What, you’re crying? What a wuss! Be a man! Suck it up, princess!”

Or, you know, when a group of guys relentlessly hits on a group of girls, to the point where it could quite possibly be classified as sexual harassment…what do all too many people do?

They just roll their eyes and say, “boys will be boys.”

There is no one way that men act. Sure, there are ways that certain groups of men tend to act, but once we take these tendencies and apply them as blanket generalizations across all mankind, we get problems.

So, what does it mean to “act like a man?”

It means to act like an outdated, psychologically harmful masculine ideal that should be left in the dust.

That’s my two cents.

Maybe I’m old fashioned or biased… but I don’t think that’s what David was saying

David wanted some things for his son - to be a valuable, respectable, Godly man

That starts here:

Good dad’s care about their kids integrity

Solomon was about 15 years old

David is saying, “You can’t be an immature little boy now Solomon.”

You have a kingdom to run, you have responsibility, you have a God to serve...

A similar Greek phrase is used again by Paul

1 Corinthians 16:13–14 (ESV)

13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong. 14 Let all that you do be done in love.

There is a militaristic tone here

To have integrity, we are to “pay attention”

We talked about the Spiritual war around us before

Literally, we have an enemy watching us, looking for opportunities to strike

We like to pretend he’s not powerful, not trying, or not even there at all

That’s plain foolish!

Plato: “Better to be unborn than untaught, for ignorance is the root of misfortune.”

Paper mill: Overflowing pulpers while sleeping...

Took 2 days to break it down!

Why did it happen? He simply wasn’t paying attention

Sin is becoming more and more acceptable all the time

Because we’re sleeping while the enemy keeps setting up camp

It will catch up to us! Watch...

Talking to the men about every generation bringing more sin...

More sex on TV, more murder, same sex marriage, abortion...

It’s the frog in the kettle situation

Sin slowly builds and we don’t feel it because we’re not watching

To have integrity we stand firm in the faith

Part of this is recognizing Christ’s power in our lives

Galatians 5:1 (ESV)

1 For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Have faith and trust Jesus, don’t just do everything yourself

If you don’t have integrity you slip into some very bad things:

Legalism, judgment, pride, guilt...

No, we’re free!

Not free to sin, but free from sin!

To have integrity we must be strong

When we think of the good attributes of a man, strength is usually at the top

It should be...

Scripture tells us to be strong over and over again (Josh 1, Psalm 27, Eph 6, 2 Tim 2)

But how do you define strength?

Are you only a man if you play football? Own a gun? Drink whiskey? Been in jail?

“Me eat raw meat, drag woman by hair, fight others with big stick! I’m a man!”

No, you’re an animal...

That’s not a man, that’s a beast!

When I’m eating faster than everyone and get food in my beard...

Tash doesn’t say, “Yes, honey, you’re such a man!”

She says, “Calm down, you look like the beast!”

To be strong, you do the right thing even when it’s hard

To be strong, you defend the weak

To be strong, put others first and sacrifice your own needs

That’s what it means to be a man of integrity

To have integrity we must love

Love is 100% about putting other people first

John 15:13 (ESV)

13 Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends.

Sacrifice - not what’s good for me, but what’s good for you

So really, to “man up” means to have integrity, and not ignorance, pride, weakness or selfishness

Let’s head back to 1 Kings

After David says, “Be strong and show yourself a man...”

He says, “...keep the charge of the Lord your God, walking in his ways...”

Good dad’s are concerned about their kids relationship with God

We want our kids to walk with God, to love Him

Darlene Schacht (shocked): If we don’t teach our children who God is, some else will teach them everything that He isn’t.

Think about parenting, we are often battling 2 different forces

What happens when we see our kids doing something they shouldn’t do

A) We discipline them

B) We let them slide

Both of those things are good

When a child is wrong, we correct by distributing a punishment

Proverbs 13:24 (ESV)

24 Whoever spares the rod hates his son,

but he who loves him is diligent to discipline him.

Or we choose to show them grace and mercy

Matthew 19:14 (KJV 1900)

14 But Jesus said, Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.

That word “suffer” doesn’t mean torture your kids and make them suffer

Don’t worry Jesus, my children will suffer!

Suffer means to accept or tolerate

Requires patience to allow them to be kids

How often does Jesus teach us about grace

So our kids need both discipline and grace from us

It’s a balance

Got back from a flight when getting my pilot’s license

Landed, man can we end early? I’m exhausted!

Jeff asked why - I fought the plane the entire flight!

What? Ok taxi back to the start of the runway

Dang it… Now he’s going to make me build up my endurance...

I climbed up and departed back to the north

Are you fighting? Yeah!

Did you trim out the airplane? Oops, sure didn’t...

Explain what elevator trim is

If you trim it up too much, your plane wants to climb

If you trim it down, your plane wants to descent

If you’re not trimmed, the only way to fix it is to fight against what the airplane wants to do

If we “mistrim” our kids, they have to fight against everything you have conditioned them to do

Too much discipline, or too much letting them slide is not good

When we trim an airplane, we don’t set it to what we feel like in the cockpit

We set it based on the horizon

If we want to maintain a steady climb, we trim for a climb

If we want level flight, we trim for level

Oftentimes when we instruct our kids, our eyes are not on the horizon

We’re looking in the cockpit, we’re looking at ourselves

We over-punish because we are angry

Because we want vengeance rather than correction

We think, “that’s how it was for me, so that’s how you’re going to get it.”

Or we let everything slide because we feel guilty

We think an ideal childhood of ice cream and trampolines is our job

We think, “Well I messed up as a kid, I have to let them do it now too.”

No, we should have our eyes on the horizon, where we want them to end up

And where is that? In a relationship with God

Not just a good job, not just good behavior, not just a rule follower

We want them to be Godly adults

So trim them up so it’s easier for them to get where they need to go

When they know God and love God, they’ll care about the next part:

Good dad’s teach their kids about God’s rules

That’s why David says, “...keeping his statutes, his commandments, his rules, and his testimonies, as it is written in the Law of Moses, that you may prosper in all that you do and wherever you turn...”

As I already said, a relationship with God is the most important

Then you will not only follow God’s rules...

You will actually love them

Illustration: Playing my version of checkers with my dad

Every turn I added a new rule to the game

In the end, I won! Can you believer it?

You know who didn’t have any fun? The guy who didn’t know the rules

Sometimes we wish we didn’t have rules

But that’s only because we haven’t thought it through

1 John 2:4–5 (ESV)

4 Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 5 but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected...

To know God, is to want to please Him - so you obey

To know God, is to trust Him - so you obey

Then David says:

that the Lord may establish his word that he spoke concerning me, saying, ‘If your sons pay close attention to their way, to walk before me in faithfulness with all their heart and with all their soul, you shall not lack a man on the throne of Israel.’

David had a general desire for his son to obey God

But he also had a specific reason: it would maintain the kings of Israel forever

One some ways this didn’t work: Zedekiah was the last king of Judah

Fell to Nebuchadnezzar in the 6th century BC

However, there was another king to come later in David’s line

John 7:42 (ESV)

42 Has not the Scripture said that the Christ comes from the offspring of David, and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David was?”

It’s Jesus, the fulfilment of God’s promise, even though the earthly kings couldn’t keep it

Good dad’s want God’s will for their kids

David wants his son and all the kings after to seek God...

…That way he will see God’s promise fulfilled!

You might think, well Solomon had a special promise

God doesn’t promise us to be kings if we seek His will

But actually, Jesus made us a very similar promise

Matthew 6:33 (ESV)

33 But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.

If we put God first, God will handle the rest!

And that’s what Godly dads want for their kids

To trust God enough to do things His way, and to be taken care of by Him

But there’s one more thing I want to add about good dads here

Good dads model these things for their kids

Kids don’t develop character, put their trust in God, obey His commandments in a vacuum...

Kids replicate what they see

Proverbs 22:6 (ESV)

6 Train up a child in the way he should go;

even when he is old he will not depart from it.

So what kind of dad do you want to be?

Man, you’ve got a mean slider, where’d you get that? My dad...

Man, you make a killer steak…

Man, you rebuilt that 350 from the block up???

Those are things to be proud of, sure!

But what about, hey, you’re a man of integrity - just like your dad

Wow, girl, you always do the right thing, just like your dad

You know the bible through and through, where’d you learn that from?

Communion

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