It really is such a delight to be here today to open up the Word of God. And I want to begin with a passage of scripture that you can see up on the screen here. But in this passage you read about the heart of the Lord Jesus Christ and in His incarnation particularly and how He delighted to do the will of His Father. And I think, I believe after working through what the Bible says about fatherhood and sonship for many, many years, I've come to the conclusion that there are two words that sum up everything that God has said about what it means to be a father and what it means to be a son. And the first word is the word love.

Now the very first mention of the word love in the Bible is the love of a father and his son. When God commanded Abraham to take his son and sacrifice him, The very first occasion appearance of the word love is, take your son whom you love. And that's the very first occasion. And then the very first mention of the word love in the ministry of Jesus is at his baptism, where his father said, this is my beloved son. And so I think this word love sums up so much, but there's another word as well, and it's the word delight, and I take that from many places in Scripture you take the whole corpus of the doctrine of the Incarnation and how God the Son submitted His will to His Father and He did it in delight.

Teaches us so much about what it means to be a son. And so this passage of Scripture that you have up here on the screen, I'll just read it, please, let's stand for the reading of the Word of God. And as we read it, I want you to find your resting place at least momentarily on verse 8 because I think that's the heart of the matter. We won't stop at verse 8 but Let's just meditate in our hearts for a moment on verse 8 as we pass by it. Sacrifice and offering you did not desire.

My ears you have opened. Burnt offering and sin offering you did not require. Then I said, behold I come in the scroll of the book it is written of me I delight to do your will oh my god and your law is within my heart I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly. Indeed, I do not restrain my lips, oh Lord. You yourself know.

I have not hidden your righteousness within my heart. I have declared your faithfulness and your salvation. I have not concealed your loving kindness and your truth from the great assembly. Let's pray. Oh God, we pray that you would teach us by your Holy Spirit that your glory would be our greatest desire, that you would glorify yourself now through your word, that you would help us to understand what it looks like to walk in your ways.

Oh Lord, we pray that you would come and do the work through your word here now, amen. Please be seated. So in the next few minutes I'm going to deliver six passages of scripture that shows what it means to be a father and a son. And I'm going to drive these six stakes in the ground for us here today and I think that these things help us understand how a man makes his greatest impact in the world. I really do believe that these things explain how a man makes his greatest impact in the world if he has children, if he has a son, or if he's a father himself.

And a man's greatest impact is found in walking with Jesus Christ as he's walking with his sons and his daughters. And you know this this is so important and you know all of us are our ordinary men here in this room and you know we're very much like those men that were arrested by the Sanhedrin and they recognized that they were uneducated men but what was what was so unusual about them? They'd been with Jesus and that really is the heart of the matter when we talk about fatherhood and sonship and so our whole purpose in this father-son retreat rests upon this question. What does it mean to follow Jesus Christ? And what what does it mean to follow Jesus Christ when you're a father?

What does that mean? And I hope these passages of Scripture will help us to answer that question. But the first question is, are you a follower of Jesus Christ? And is it true of you that you have followed Jesus Christ? And, you know, in Matthew chapter 5 we learn that the person who follows Jesus Christ is poor in spirit.

He mourns over his sin. He's meek. He hungers and he thirsts for righteousness. He's a peacemaker. When he's reviled, he's a peacemaker and all kinds of evil is spoken of him against him falsely.

But who is he? He is a man who's poor in spirit. That's what a man is when he is a follower of Jesus Christ. And so the first question I think that we need to ask is, am I a follower of Jesus Christ? That's the hinge point upon which everything rests and without that foundation, this is just a bunch of legalism, okay?

And this is not an appeal to man up, this is not an appeal to power up and get it your life together. This is This is really an appeal to follow Jesus Christ. And that really is the heart of it. And so what does it look like when fathers and sons follow Jesus? And I'm gonna give you these six passages of Scripture to help us understand that.

First of all, when fathers follow Jesus, It's because their hearts have been miraculously turned. And here you have in Malachi chapter 4, the last prophet of the Old Testament, he's prophesying something that is going to happen and it's going to happen when Jesus Christ comes. And when Jesus Christ comes and a man follows Jesus Christ, he repents of his sin and he's transformed, he's born again, something happens to that man. There's a revival that takes place in that man. Something happens to his heart and his heart is like forcibly turned.

His heart is turned toward his family and the hearts of his children when they are saved are turned toward their father. It's the power of the gospel working in a man's heart, and a son's heart, and a daughter's heart, and a wife's heart. But when a wife is converted, or a daughter is converted, or a son is converted, or a man is converted, there's something that happens to his heart and it turns toward his family and it's the power of the gospel of Jesus Christ and as a result of that they delight to do the will of God. That's what happens to a man. There's really no hope for a man's family unless the power of the gospel is at work.

Now God may have not converted all of your children or maybe not even your wife, but that doesn't mean it's a hopeless situation, because that man has the power of the gospel in his heart, and he can endure anything, he can suffer any wrong, He can deal with any sin in his wife, in his son, in his daughter, in his environment. He can endure anything because he has the power of the gospel working in his heart. Because God hasn't called him to have everything work and be successful in his life. God has called him to glorify God when his wife is unrepentant or unconverted, when his son is unrepentant and unconverted, or his daughter, or in whatever circumstance he finds himself in. He has the power of Jesus Christ working him it's the power of love and so when fathers follow Jesus Christ it's because their hearts have been miraculously turned toward their family.

You know I've you know been with many men over the years who want to get their families together and they're discouraged about the brokenness they see in their family and they just want to have a better marriage and they just want to be a better dad. And I found guys like that but if that's their motivation it will all turn into a great disaster because they've missed the primary hinge point, and that is conversion. That is the channeling of the power of the Holy Spirit of God in every circumstance that they find themselves in. If their desire is not for that, if their desire is just to kind of get their wife and their children in order to get things the way they ought to be to man up and be the leader you were always meant to be if it's that it'll turn into a disaster because the primary issue is is a man's heart turned toward Jesus and it's his greatest desire to follow Jesus no matter what he faces, no matter what disappointments he has, no matter what. And so when fathers follow Jesus it's because their hearts are miraculously turned.

The next text is Deuteronomy chapter 6 verses 5 through 9. When fathers follow Jesus they walk with their sons and they teach them what they love. They teach them what they love. And here in Deuteronomy 6 you find these words, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your strength. Now, You might recognize this out of the mouth of Jesus.

He's quoting Deuteronomy 6 when he's speaking about the greatest commandment. And so the greatest is to love him with all of your heart and soul and strength. And if you do love him, something is going to happen to you and these words which I command you today shall be in your heart they're in your heart And you shall teach them diligently to your children and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, when you walk by the way, when you lie down and when you rise up. You shall bind them as a sign on your hand and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates." Here's a picture of a man who has met with God and God has set a fire in his soul by the Word of God and he takes that he takes it because it's in his heart he takes it because he has fire in his heart He is this word is changing him and so he picks it up and he opens it up with his family and he reads it to them but he reads it to them not because he's manning up not because he's trying to get her done, not because he's trying to be the dad that everybody thinks he should be.

He's doing it because there's a fire in his heart that's been lit there by God. And he loves those words. And he opens that book, and when he reads those words, he reads them because he loves them not because he's trying to put a number on his family or try to check his box or do his duty or make his wife think well of him. It's the fundamental issue. See, in the kingdom of heaven, God is calling men not to be fakers anymore, but to be real, to have something real in their hearts, and it bubbles up out of them like rivers of living water because the Spirit of God is at work and the word is Spirit and it's life.

The fundamental issue is always Are you following Jesus from the heart? That's the fundamental issue in everything here. And you know, you know men, men sometimes think it's just so complex to be a family shepherd, but it isn't complex at all. My encouragement to men is just be simple, just be a simple man and open up that book. I've had so many men come to me over the years and say how do I how do I lead my family spiritually and I say well I'm going to train you how to do it right now in 30 seconds because that's what we do in the men in our church we give them about a 30-second training course and here's how the training course goes.

You're with your family and there is a fire in your heart of love toward God and you love these words. And you open up this book, you flop it open and you read it to them and then you pray for each other, and you talk about what great things He's shown you in this book, and maybe you'll pray for the lost, and maybe you'll pray for the needs that are going on in your family but you're flopping open that book because you love that book and that's why Moses says you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart. Why don't we open up the Word of God in our homes? There's one reason we don't love God. That's the reason.

But when a man's heart loves God, he opens up that book because it's in his heart and he teaches his children when he sits in the house when he walks by the way when he lies down and when he rises up There's only one way a man can do that, there's only one way and that's if he's carrying it around in his heart. It has to be in his heart and so Jesus when he was teaching his disciples when they said what's the greatest commandment he quotes this text. Do you think that Jesus Christ was not implying everything in this text? He was implying everything in this text. When he delivered the greatest commandment He was also speaking simultaneously to fathers about what they do as family shepherds and whether they're opening up that book when they sit in them, when they walk by the way when they sit in their house.

He was implying this entire context here. Jesus wasn't taking a verse out of context, he never does that. He wrote the Old Testament, every word of the Old Testament is a word of Jesus. And he was quoting himself in the Gospel of Matthew when he delivered the greatest commandment. You know, this whole matter of walking beside your sons is so important.

I think it is one of the most important things a man can ever do is to keep his son by his side and teach him everything. Have him see everything, interpret everything for him, keep him by your side, work with him, walk with him, do not let him go, do not let him go be discipled by the other 13 year olds in this world. You walk with him and you walk with him every day and whatever is stopping you from walking with him, you get rid of that. That's my admonition to every man and walk with your children. And I don't know what you have to get rid of to try to figure out how to walk with your sons but you don't want to get to the end of your life and say well I was just too busy or there were just too many opportunities you don't want to you do not want to get to the end of your life and not have walked with your sons and your daughters.

And this all happens because because there's a man who's becoming like Jesus and Jesus says to his father I delight to do your will and your law is within my heart and I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly of my family and any other assembly that I'm a part of. So the second text is Deuteronomy 6, when fathers follow Jesus, They walk with their sons and they teach them what they love. And then thirdly, when fathers follow Jesus, they explain the greatness of God. That's Psalm 78. Asaph writes this Psalm, I will open my mouth in a parable.

I will utter dark sayings of old which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us we will not hide them from their children telling to the generation to come the praises of the Lord and his strength and his wonderful works that he has done for he established a testimony in Jacob and appointed a law in Israel which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children that the generation to come might know them the children who would be born that they may arise and declare them to their children that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments, and not be like their fathers, a stubborn and rebellious generation, a generation that did not set its heart aright and whose spirit was not faithful to God." So this is a picture of a man and what is he doing? He's telling the generation to come the praises of God. He's telling his children how good God is. He's telling God's his children how superior his ways are. He's telling his children what Solomon told his son in Proverbs 3, that all his paths are peace, all of his ways are pleasantness, and he's telling his children of the praises of God.

And the reason he's able to do that is because his heart is praising God. When he gets up in the morning, he's not filled with fear, he's not filled with the anguish of the trouble that's upon him, he's filled with the praises of God, He starts his day with the praises of God. This is, I think, one of the most important things for a father to do, is to set his heart aright, to set his heart praising God at the very beginning of the day, to set his soul in a frame of happiness, so that he can deliver the praises of God to his children. You know, you have this picture of fatherhood in your own mind, but look at the picture of fatherhood in the Bible. This is a picture of a happy man.

And why is he happy? He's filled with the praises of the Lord. This man is just like Jesus. Did you know that Jesus was the happiest of all the disciples? If you if you open your Bibles don't go there now but if you open your Bibles to Hebrews chapter one and find verse nine, and here's what you'll read.

"'God thy God has anointed thee with the oil of gladness above your companions." In other words, Jesus had the oil of gladness. He was always the happiest man in the room. And his gladness was above his companions. When you look into the face of Jesus, that's one of his faces, he has many faces, he's also the man of sorrows and he's acquainted with grief. You know, there is enough balm for every sorrow that you have in the face of the man of sorrows.

Now, I know, I don't know very many people here, but the small number of men that I know here, I know that there are a lot of sorrows in this room. There have been deaths of children in this room, multiple ones that I know of, just my own self. Unspeakable heartache in this room right now. Fears, trials, failure, and You just have to realize how important it is for you as a father to set your face toward the face of Jesus, and to behold His face, and to be transformed into His glory. We could talk a long time about the faces of Jesus Christ, but he is the quintessential face of gladness, but he's also the man of sorrows and he's acquainted with grief.

He's also the man who hates sin and his face is set toward Jerusalem to deal with the sins of mankind. But what a man needs more than anything else is to behold the face of Jesus Christ so that he can stand in the gap and declare the praises of God to his children and his and his wife so that his family is enveloped under this umbrella of grace of the happiness of Jesus Christ. God has appointed fathers for that kind of work. And then if you go to verse 7, why? There's a reason that the generation might know him in verse 6, but in verse 7 that they may set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but to keep his commandments.

And so a father's duty in this world is to sort of be a shifter of hope. All of all of all human beings set their hope on certain things. You can set your hope on how strong you are, or how wise and how erudite, or how much doctrine you have. You can set your hope on anything in this world. And you know what it's worth?

It's worth nothing. It's worth nothing unless your hope is set on God. Fathers are shifters of hope. Fathers are shifters of hope to teach their children not to set their hopes in this world. This world is passing away.

And sometimes the mountains move and the earth shakes and sometimes the floods come. And sometimes the center, you don't know where the center is anymore, and you're almost delirious trying to figure out where it is because things in this world are shifting sand. And if a man is not a shifter of hope, he will have a family that will always be subject in bondage to every shift of what they've set their hope in in this world if it's not in God. And I know many of you men are experiencing that right now, like right now, the things that you hoped in have shifted. And you realize that you have to make sure that your hope is set on solid rock and it's not like shifting sand, but that it's solid, it's eternal in the heavens.

Men, you know, men will experience unspeakable things. Here's what I think you're probably going to figure out when you get older. I'm older than most of you in this room. That there are going to be things that happen that you never thought could possibly happen to you, and they're going to happen to you. And when you get there, you need to understand where your hope is resting.

And this is why fathers need to be shifters of hope, shifting hope off of the things of this world. Brothers, you must do this. You must do this. You know, I've seen the sand shift under people really close to me, and I've seen them have their hope in God. I've seen it.

I've seen it with my own eyes. The fourth thing, the fourth text, Genesis 18 19. When fathers follow Jesus they take their sons on a journey of obedience to God. When fathers follow Jesus they take their sons on a journey of obedience to God, Genesis 18 verse 19. And here you have God speaking almost like kind of out of the corner of his mouth, not speaking directly to Abraham.

He's talking about Abraham. And He's in this conversation, kind of like a soliloquy, you know, there's this conversation on the side of the stage that the main characters don't really know about. And what God says about Abraham, He's saying, He's saying, Abraham, I've known him, here's why I've known him, That he may command his children and his household after him that they keep the way of the Lord to do righteousness and justice. That the Lord may bring to Abraham what he has spoken to him." And here you have the purpose of Abraham's life, which by the way is the purpose of every father's life. If you are a son of Abraham, this is the purpose of your life.

To command your children to walk in obedience to God with you. And it is it's appropriate for fathers to command their children to come away from disobedience, to call them out of disobedience. That's what fathers are supposed to do. They're supposed to call their children out of the inclinations of their hearts and take them into a better world, to take them to the kingdom of heaven, to take them into the sweetest and best kingdom that they can ever experience. And it's the kingdom that is established by obedience to Jesus Christ.

And fathers have a duty to draw their sons out of their disobedience. To see it, to identify it, fathers have to be with their sons enough to know what it is that they're struggling with, which typically means they have to be with them all the time because of this secret world that particularly is available for young men, particularly to be enslaved by, so they don't become screen addicts, so they don't visit the harlot every day when they are nine years old. Fathers must walk beside their sons and call them out of the life of disobedience and take them, Take them with them to justice and righteousness and the ways of the Lord. That's what was the purpose of Abraham's life, and that's the purpose of your life as well. There are a lot of fathers who are afraid of their sons.

And they're afraid to call them out of disobedience because they're afraid they're going to lose them or something like that. But they have a duty to call them out, to come out from among the harlotry of this world and the things that really will destroy them. And why do they do it? They do it because there's that thing there's that fire in their soul they're becoming like Jesus and they're saying I delight to do your will your law your law is within my heart and I must proclaim the good news of your salvation They do it out of delight in the Lord not because they're angry not because their sons are embarrassing them they're doing it out of delight in the laws of the Lord. Number five when fathers follow Jesus they nurture their sons and their sons honor their fathers and their mothers.

This is Ephesians 6, 1 through 4. This reads, children, obey your parents in the Lord for this is right. Honor your father and your mother, which is the first commandment with promise, that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord So this passage has a number of things I'd like to identify. First of all, fathers must watch over two things, two simple things, obedience and honor. Those two things.

A father needs to have the eyes of an eagle, the eyes of an osprey, to detect honor and obedience or dishonor and disobedience. You know, one of the great joys of my life right now is I have 16 grandchildren, all of them 10 years old and under, and I'm gonna have another one in probably another few days. But so what does that mean? That means that we're studying animals, right? And there are two remarkable birds that fly around our property.

There's an eagle and an osprey. And the eagle and the osprey are so remarkable, they can see. They can see for miles in some cases. An eagle can see a mouse from almost a mile away. And an osprey, you know, he eats fish, so the osprey looks into the water but you know how water is, there's refraction and if you look at where the image is, the actual fish is not, it's not right there.

But the osprey has a corrective mechanism in his eyes so that when he goes down, he hits the fish right on. And the osprey flies around our lake and then when that osprey sees a fish, he always does the same thing. He does this and he's watching and then he goes and he heads down and his claws come out like this and he is coming down and he'll go off and all the way into the water and all the way out. He can see, he can see And that's what a father needs to have. He needs to have sight.

He needs to be able to detect dishonor and disobedience or honor and obedience in his son. It's so critical that he does that. And so that's why these commands, children obey your parents in the Lord for this is right honor your father and mother which is the first commandment with promise. Now there are two elements to this that are critical that we understand. First of all this is this is on the one hand and this might seem contradictory on the one hand this is something that comes from the heart of a son.

He honors from the heart or he doesn't. You can't force him to honor you. You cannot force him to honor you. On the other hand, it's a father's obligation to help a son see his dishonor and his disobedience. Because in this passage, it's also implied that a father must secure honor and secure obedience.

He must secure it, but it's also something that he cannot force. So he has to be a wise shepherd in securing that honor and that obedience. And he must speak to it wisely in order to secure the honor and the obedience that will make that child successful. And there are so many manifestations of dishonor in a child. You know, when children are little, maybe not so little, they'll roll their eyes.

When they're really little, they might hit their parents or they might argue with their parents, they might be slow to obey, they may whine about things, this is nothing, nothing but dishonor and often disobedience. They might run away from you and pull away from you, This is just a sign of it. You need to understand what you're seeing. You've got to have eyes to see what is happening. They may be demonstrating negative behavior during discipline.

They might make excuses. They might have temper tantrums. There are various things that children do to express what really is a diabolical work in their souls. The devil wants their souls and he's going to get it through dishonor and disobedience. And so you have to watch for the warning signs.

There are warning signs in a father, you know, when you're like when you're exasperated and you're frustrated with your children, that's a warning sign. Or when you're, you know, when you're conditioning your children to respond to harshness because you're just reacting to their dishonor and disobedience and you're not handling it wisely, or you're bribing them or you're allowing them to make excuses, or you're inconsistent. Now, inconsistent is a nice word for unreliable and unfaithful. Inconsistency is a disaster. And Disobedience and dishonor are the most dangerous things in a boy's life because it won't go well with them.

It just won't. It just won't go well with them. And hey, I'm old enough to know how true that is. The men that I know that struggle with honor and obedience, it doesn't go well with them. It just doesn't.

And they bang their head against the wall year after year after year until they finally get reconciled with their father. And when they get reconciled with your father guess what it starts to go well with them by the way this is how God wired the world you you cannot you can't controvert it you can't overcome it it's the way it is God wired the world that way In the same way that he wired the world for gravity and things fall as a result of the force of gravity, it's the very same force that's at work in a son's life. If he does not honor his father, it's not going to go well with him and he's gonna go down just like everything goes down with gravity and the truth is the rebellion that a boy feels is really just rebellion against God himself and that's and that's really a boy's greatest problem is God. Your greatest problem is not your mama, it ain't your daddy, it's God. Because he's standing at the end of the line and you don't see him but God placed them in the way so that you would not offend God.

And every son needs to understand that. When you're insolent or rebellious against your father, you're not just looking at your dad. Almighty God, the ruler of the universe is standing there and he will destroy everything raised up against him. He will destroy it and he will destroy you in hell if you do not turn toward Him in honor and obedience. And so there's this promise in verse 3, two promises good life and long life that it may be well and that you may live long on the earth and then there then there are two very dangerous pitfalls for fathers here in this passage verse 4 and you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath There are two things that are very dangerous in a father's life, and that is to provoke their children, provoking and then neglecting to bring them up in the training of the admonition of the Lord.

Those are a father's two great dangers, provoking their children and not nourishing them and bringing them up. And, you know, fathers provoke their children to anger through harshness, by not listening, by not keeping promises, by not having enough time, by disciplining in anger. There are various things that fathers do to provoke their children to wrath. And some of the rebellion that you're seeing in your children might be related to the fact that you provoked them and they're acting and they're really just responding. You know one sin begats another sin that's how it works.

Fathers aren't sinless right And so a father may sin against his son and provoke him to wrath and to provoke him to disobedience and now you have a vicious cycle and who's going to break the cycle? Well, we know that God said that a gentle answer turns away wrath. So a father has to have compassion on his son. One of the greatest challenges of fathers who have sons who are in their teens is empathy, empathy with their sons. I cannot tell you how many times my wife came to me when my son was in 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 years old and she would say, Scott, Empathy.

Now that little word captured a lot of long conversations that she had with me. Okay, you know what I'm talking about? Anybody know what I'm talking about? Okay, come forward you can receive whatever. But it's easy, it's easy to provoke your children to wrath.

You know Martin Luther had a harsh father and he had a hard time praying our father because he understood the connections between God the Father and his fatherhood and his own father and his role as a son. He understood that he had a hard time praying, our father. And so when he was disciplining his own children, when he was bringing the rod to them, which he was right to do, he would put an apple beside there to remind him that he was also there to bring sweetness to his son as well. But it's easy for a father to provoke his son to wrath but often often that man is angry because he has provoked his son to wrath and that man needs to repent of his sin and you have an unrepentant father you have a hard-hearted self-righteous father you're gonna get nothing but the same in your son. He's just reflecting you and that's what sons do.

They reflect you. They become a mirror of you in the same way that Jesus Christ was a mirror of the love of his father and so it is with sons, they mirror in many ways their fathers. So the first danger is provoking the wrath and the second is neglecting the training and the admonition of the Lord. Now there really is a whole doctrine of child raising and fatherhood discipleship and not just fathers but mothers in the home. This is a passage about family discipleship and it's very clear but the Apostle Paul doesn't throw any words away every single word in this text is important he says bring them up bring them up that's a particular Greek word that he uses that speaks to the training of their mind and their morals and it's to nourish them up to maturity, to bring them up, you know, through the years, to take them one stage at a time and continue to walk with them all through the stages of life.

You know, a lot of troubles that fathers and sons have come because they've forgotten how old their son is. They've forgotten they're dealing with an eight-year-old, or, hey, maybe it's a friend of mine and I, we have a joke, he's 22, okay, he's 22, you have to recognize he's only 22 years old. He's going to act like a 22-year-old, okay? Like, is that okay? Can we tolerate that?

Can we pray for the pray for the man? Can we do that? Well it's hard to do that, isn't it? You know, I think anybody who's had older sons knows that that can be a real challenging thing, but It's to bring them up and nourish them. It's the same, he uses the same word in the role of a husband and his wife.

You know, a husband is to nourish and cherish his wife. And it's the same word, nourish. And of course with a wife, he does it with the washing of water by the word. And this is how a father does it as well. And so he nourishes them as they're coming up.

And then the second word is nurture and this has to do with the whole training of the full gamut of education of children their mind their morals everything in their life to teach them how to do everything. God has given fathers the responsibility to teach their sons how to do everything and there's only one way you can do that and that's if you walk with them. You can't train them to do anything unless you're walking with them in almost everything. And that's the wisdom of God here. And then there's the word admonition, the admonition of the Lord.

This is a term that has to do with words. Words, various kinds of words. It might be words of correction, it might be words of encouragement, it might be words of wisdom, it might be words of analysis of a particular thing that's going on in life, in the state, or in your home, or in your neighborhood, or something like words. Words that describe what's happening. Words that tell the truth about what's real, about what's going down in this life.

That's what fathers are supposed to do. They're supposed to be interpreters of everything, you know, and fathers are designed to teach their children how to be a marriage partner, how to be a worker, how to be a church member, how to be a citizen of the state, how to handle money, how to do everything, how to be a son, how to relate with a sister, how to relate with a mother. I mean a father is on deck for that when he sits in his house, when he walks by the way, when he lies down and when he rises out, to be the master interpreter of everything. That's why God made you a dad, by the way. Did you know that?

That's why he made you a dad. You know, you didn't choose these sons. He gave them to you. He gave them to you because he wanted you to have them, and he wanted you, yes, you, yes, uneducated you, yes, stupid you, to be the interpreter of everything in their life. He appointed you.

Isn't that amazing? Look what he put in your hands. He puts treasure in your hands. But he gives you instructions on how to deal with it and how to go forward in all of it. And so a father, a father who's walking with Jesus, they nurture their sons and their sons honor their fathers and their mothers.

And then finally the sixth, the last. When fathers follow Jesus, they become like Jesus. They become like Jesus. And John chapter five verse 17 to 22 And Psalm 40 verses six and eight are representative passages that teach this truth. It's taught all over scripture.

It has to do with beholding the face of Jesus and becoming like him, like Paul told the Corinthians in 2 Corinthians three, that we're being transformed from glory to glory by the face of Jesus Christ. And in one way we end sort of the way that we began and that is the most important thing for a father is to behold the face of Jesus and everything really flows from there and so we have this example in the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I end with this one because God doesn't just give us commands and He doesn't just give us principles to follow, He gives us persons. He gives us the person of Jesus Christ to walk in his footsteps, to become like him. So he doesn't just give us didactic instruction, he gives us a real person to follow, and that's Jesus of Nazareth.

And so Jesus says this, he says, my father has been working until now and I have been working. Most assuredly I say to you the Son can do nothing of himself but what he sees his father do for whatever he does the son does in like manner for the father loves the son and shows him all things that he himself does." In John 5 30 he said, I can of myself do nothing as I hear I judge and my judgment is righteous because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me. Now Jesus Christ did delight to do the will of his Father and that that very same delight that makes a man look in the face of Jesus and become like Jesus is the heart of fatherhood and that's why Jesus could say I delight to do your will oh my God and your law is within my heart I have proclaimed the good news of righteousness in the great assembly And so when a father follows Jesus, he becomes like Jesus. And that's really the heart of the whole matter. Now, I hope that if you came here to clean up your act or to try to figure out how to be a better father, or how to fix your relationship with your son, or fix your son.

If you came here for personal success, if you came here for yourself, if you came here because you just wanna get things better for yourself, so you'll feel better and look better and have everything better. I pray that you have been sorely disappointed by this message because our only hope really for any of those things and all and we want all those things We do want to become more like Jesus as fathers and we do want our sons to be delighting to do the will of their father. We want that with all of our hearts. We should want that. It's been implanted within us to want that.

But it really matters how you plan to get there. The problem with us is that we always want something for ourselves. We always want to glorify ourselves and a lot of times even religious things are really arising out of our selfishness. It's not that we want Jesus, we just want a better life. So I guess, you know, the big question is, are you a follower of Jesus?

And do you delight to do His will? Do you... Do you understand what Jesus said in Matthew chapter 12 where he said whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother? Do you delight to do the will of your Father in heaven? This is perhaps one of the greatest analytical questions you can ask about whether you're saved or not.

Do you know, have you entered into confession of sin? Do you hate your sin? Or do you continue to run toward your sin? If you don't hate your sin, you cannot say that you love God. A man must come to a place where he begins to hate his sin and he turns away from it.

It means that you've entered into the confession of Jesus Christ, you've confessed him because the Bible says if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and you believe in your heart that God has raised him from the dead you will be saved. But what does it mean to confess him? It's not mouthing the words, it's not confessing him with words, it's identifying with him. It's completely identifying with him, not being embarrassed with him, but identifying with him and being willing to suffer the shame of what it means to be identified with him. That's what it means to confess Jesus Christ and it means following him, it means that you're changing, It means that you have no righteousness of your own.

And your only hope for any righteousness is the righteousness of the Son of God. Because there is so much sin in you that you should be destroyed by the wrath of God, by a holy God, because God does not tolerate sin in His presence and He will punish every single sin in your life, every single one, even the ones you're not even aware of. And He's either going to punish your sins through an eternity in hell or he is gonna punish your sins on the back of his son and that really is the only way that you can deal with your sin either Jesus Christ atones for your sin either God punishes his son or he punishes you and if you believe in Jesus Christ with all of your heart and he will take the load of your sin and He will take it and put it onto the shoulders of His Son, and you'll go free. And when that happens, you'll delight to do His will, and you'll love His commandments, and you'll begin to hate your sin like you never did before, and you'll begin to change over time. It won't happen immediately, but he'll change you over time because he loves you.

So just to summarize here, When fathers follow Jesus, it's because their hearts are miraculously turned. Second, when fathers follow Jesus, they walk with their sons and they teach them what they love. Number three, when fathers follow Jesus, they explain the greatness of God. Number four, when fathers follow Jesus, they take their sons on a journey of obedience. Number five, when fathers follow Jesus, they nurture their sons and their sons honor their fathers and mothers.

And number six, when fathers follow Jesus, they become like Jesus and they delight to do as well. Would you pray with me? Lord, we recognize the beauty and the glory of your son Jesus and the perfections of your kingdom. We thank you for your love that you would redeem sinners, that you would actually perform a finished work for us and the work would be finished except that you're not finished with us for which we're so thankful. Lord all these things that are upon us now in our minds now all the troubles that are in this room oh Lord I pray that you would cover them all with this one principle of your son, I delight to do thy will.

Amen.