Please turn in your Bibles to Psalm 78. Psalm 78. Psalm 78 is an appeal to break free from the bad patterns of the fathers of the past. And breaking the inferior patterns of fathers is a challenge for all of us. Even the best fathers pass on some of their flaws to their offspring and none of us ever had perfect fathers and unfortunately they left their mark on us.

This was an act of the sovereign God. The tough part about it is that making new patterns, as we all know, can be painful and slow and often frustrating. You know, Amos reveals how devastating this problem can be. He said of the men of his day, their lies led them astray, lies which their fathers followed. Again, we mentioned earlier that some fathers trafficked in lies more than others, but when Amos was speaking here, he was speaking of a devastating condition in which the lies of the fathers were a tremendous force in the lives of the sons as they followed the lies of their fathers.

Imagine the frustrations and the roadblocks that come from trying to build a life on the lies of your fathers. And maybe some of those lies you didn't even know were lies. Maybe until it was too late and a lot of water had gone under the bridge. Zechariah in chapter 1 verses 4 through 6 he cries out for the people for the same problem and here's what he says, do not be like your fathers to whom the former prophets preached saying thus says the Lord of hosts turn now from your evil ways in your evil deeds but they did not hear nor heed me says the Lord your fathers where are they and the prophets they live forever Yet surely my words and my statutes which I command, my servants the prophets, did they not overtake your fathers? Think of Shem and Japheth who covered their father's shame when he was drunk in a drunken naked stupor.

The word that Moses uses in the story when they went and they covered him up is the word that in some other places can mean propitiate. Noah's sons were in a certain kind of a sense covering over the sins of their father. Maybe even figuratively propitiating and honoring their father even though they knew that everything was not right with their father. It is possible to honor your father even though everything is not right with your father. And this is a commandment of God that we would honor our fathers even in the midst of their weakness and maybe even their lies or whatever other devastating things that have been wreaked upon us.

But not only does the Lord encourage us to break the bad patterns of our fathers, He also offers really powerful instruction right here in this text in Psalm 78 for how a father can be a constant source of encouragement and inspiration to his family. Not only in this passage do you find the theme of breaking free but there's this added blessing of helping us know how to pump out the joy in our own time, in our own lives as fathers. And He speaks of the Lord's strength and His wonderful work so that the people would be brimming in hope toward Him, toward God. So in addition to this command To break the bad habits, to break free of the fathers' sins. Psalm 78 commands fathers to communicate certain kinds of things to their children and their children after them.

It calls them out of an uncommunicative lifestyle and into a very demonstrative, clear communication pattern that would crush the hopelessness in the heart of the children. You know, One thing I love about Psalm 78 is that instead of, you know, crushing us with the hopelessness of our situation, and you know, and just to instead of just pounding away at a reminder of all the baggage that we have as men from our past but he just gives really detailed practical beautiful instruction for how to go forward from here and it's really a wonderful wonderful wonderful testimony and it should make us just fall on our knees in thankfulness to God because we're people with a lot of baggage and so he comes to us in his mercy to keep us from being overwhelmed by whatever we're doing wrong today because we don't we don't always know exactly what to do. We're you know we're like we're like those that Jesus spoke to when he was on the cross when he said forgive them father for they know not what they do this is the mercy of God towards sinners and all of us you know Elvis in this room can probably check off a big long list of things that we're not doing right for whatever reason but we have to know that God is doesn't he doesn't crush us with this at all he calls us forward he calls us into a into a new life and he does he does allow his mercy to cover the intentional and the unintentional sins and even even those that we learned from our fathers that we might have a hard time breaking you know here's a reality some of the patterns that we have might never be broken in this life.

I mean that might be a discouraging thought but on the other hand to know that God is faithful all through your life to take you to the end. The Bible says he will complete it. He will finish the work that he began in you. You think about all the mercy that he had toward you at your conversion. Do you think his mercy is any less to you today?

When you first came to Christ, you know, how perfect were you? I mean, didn't you have stupid ideas on so many things? You were far, far less clear on everything. And look at what God just took you right where you were. And this is the mercy of God toward you even today.

Hasn't changed one bit. And His mercy is not dependent upon all of our performance and all the things that we do to shine up our lives and get our, you know, get everything together. You know, whatever your list is for what it means to get it together. But I love Psalm 78 because it's a call to a higher life, to be transformed by the Lord Jesus Christ and to throw off everything that hinders in terms of our past life and then to press on. Well, here we go.

Let me read Psalm 78. A contemplation of Asaph. Give ear, O my people, to my law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. 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 next 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 known that 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 set their hope in God and not forget the works of God but keep his commandments and may 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. Now this, I'll stop reading here, it's a very long psalm and there's much detail. It's the truth that's in here, it's just absolutely incredible. But this Psalm 78 is one of the great historical Psalms and you get a recounting of the history of Israel from there to the rest and the sins and the gaps of the fathers are identified in there.

When we get to the end of this, I'm going to just run through them in real summary form. But it's a historical psalm that recounts the behavior of fathers of the past. And then it casts a vision for the future and the psalm begins in the first eight verses that I just read begins with a charge to fathers and then the historical background data comes afterwards And a history of Israel is recounted and it identifies Moses's commands and principles that were violated by the fathers. Okay, that's the context here. Now Asaph, the author, is writing in the time of David, okay, and he's looking back into the history of Israel to the time of Moses at the writing in Deuteronomy 6, what we just went through.

So we're now at the time of David and he's looking back to the time of Moses and the crafting of these beautiful words we just read in Deuteronomy 6. And he looks back and he makes connections to his own day by prescribing certain behaviors that are consistent with Deuteronomy 6. This passage makes it perfectly clear that this child-raising discipleship teaching philosophy that Moses commanded to be in operation as the children of Israel were among the pagan nations was in force up until David for sure and I'm and it's easy to make a case that just continued on because everything about education and discipleship from here forward and into the Bible carries the same themes. So what patterns do you need to break? That's a question that would like for us to be asking through this.

So as you're on, as you're walking down the roadway, as you're charting your way you know down the roadway of biblical fatherhood, where are you here regarding breaking the patterns of your fathers? That's what we really want to think about now. So as we go through this material I just encourage you to be thinking in the back of your mind is there anything that I've acquired for my father that needs to be addressed and needs to be broken. Now in a very candid way the author identifies a number of problems in the lives of the fathers of Israel. In verses 17 to 22 We learned that they were stubborn.

You have a stubborn dad? Well, these guys, the fathers of Israel were stubborn. That was a problem. We learned that their idols clouded their priorities. We learned that they set their hearts on wrong things.

We learn that they were cowardly. And Asaph right here says, don't be like them. And the tragedy that's documented here in this passage is that when the heat was on in Israel they refused to walk in God's law and Amos's appeal is much like the appeal that was made in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 20 when he said do not follow your father's idols well that's exactly what was happening among the the the children of Israel they were following their father's idols and entertaining and you know living by the lies of their fathers. Okay, so every man every man needs to understand what what it means do not follow your father's idols.

So while you're on the, while you're charting your way in the roadmap of biblical fatherhood, it's a good question to ask. Which one of your father's idols do you need to avoid in the coming years, in the coming days? All of our fathers had idols. It's not a question. All of us have idols.

Idolatry is not something That was for back then. Idolatry is just as real today as it was then. So what patterns of your fathers should you eliminate? Yes, we do honor our fathers, but we also have to be honest that there are certain things in our fathers lives that weren't worthy of reproduction that doesn't mean we quit loving our fathers that certainly doesn't mean that we spend the rest of our lives in bitterness toward our fathers we must forgive our fathers from the heart and cover their sins and be like the sons of Noah who would cover their sins of their fathers. So the psalmist here is defining several activities of manhood that are of critical importance for these fathers.

Now, Asaph's words of example were meant to lead to a recovery of the principles of ancient fatherhood. Asaph says here, follow my example. Do you see that in the text? He's saying no, listen to me. Follow my example.

Because he lived in the midst of a culture where fatherhood was in collapse and there weren't very many men to lead the people out of the hole. And so he says, no, follow me. Here's where we're going. Here's what it really looks like. And he just gives us all this wonderful detail.

Now, I hope this is a really encouraging session because I find that we often, or I find that men often get discouraged when they think about the lack of training to be fathers that they had. Most men I know, they just wish they had learned how to be fathers. Even the men that had the best fathers, they still say, oh, I wish I had been trained better to be a dad. And because most men don't have good role models, you know, they really do, they really do desperately want to avoid the mistakes. And there's a feeling of inadequacy that men feel about, feel like as if, if I just had a good dad, everything would be beautiful today.

I mean that's how most of us feel. And so we might feel helpless to change and maybe that you never there's no way you could ever break the bad habits that you learn from your fathers. But hey you know this is where God comes in. This is where God's Word comes in for us. God is able to mentor every fatherless man.

Are you a fatherless man? You know there are a lot of fatherless man that had, you know, physical fathers, but most men in my experience feel like they were fatherless but God God is able to mentor every fatherless man who is ever born And passages like this are one of those ways that we get instruction from our Father in heaven for how to be fathers. So God gives us role models in Scripture to mentor us in fatherhood. We should take such great hope in this. We might not be able to look into the eyes of our earthly father and find a role model but we certainly can look at the word and say oh Lord oh father Abba father teach me your way so no matter no matter how badly your father treated you there's there's hope for breaking the cycle And you know the gospel of Christ is that the past is not prophecy.

Okay? The gospel of Jesus Christ is that He is able to do exceedingly abundantly beyond all we ask or think and we have help from heaven we can be made new we can be transformed by the renewing of our minds and all this is not going to happen just by our sheer willpower either unless the Lord builds the house they labor in vain our Lord The Lord is our only hope for this. We should labor, but if we think that our labors are everything, We've forgotten that only the Lord can truly build the house no matter what our labors might have been. You know one of my favorite passages of Scripture, 2nd Corinthians chapter 3, and it really I think it helps me when I when I think about the the poor role models that we might have had as in our fathers. Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there's liberty but we all with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory just as by the Spirit of the Lord you we have We all have a Heavenly Father to mentor us out of this pit that we found ourselves into.

And this is a blessing of the Lord. Now, Asaph is setting an example, okay? And he is saying, here's what I'm doing, take notice. Okay, you see this? I really want you to get dialed in on the language here.

He's saying, I'm taking the stories of the fathers of old and I'm declaring them to the next generation. You do the same. That's what he's saying in this in this text. Take the stories of old, see how I'm doing it, watch me and I'm declaring him to the next generation. He says watch me.

I will open my mouth in a parable. He's mentoring us now. He's leading the way. He's showing us how this is done. 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. So Asaph is mentoring us. He's actually setting an example for us for how this works. And he says, here's how I'm doing. He's just kind of exposing his method to us.

And then he says, 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. Well, Asaph is setting an example for how to break free of the ungodly patterns of our fathers. He takes action, he lifts up his voice to say really specific things for a specific vision of life. So he's a pattern. Asaph is a pattern for us here.

He's our mentor. God has given us a mentor in fatherhood in the form of Asaph and he's kind of like Paul. You know when Paul was speaking, or he's speaking of the same principle that the Apostle Paul was speaking of when he said that one of the qualifications for eldership is that they are men who manage their own households well. Why? Well, God wants to give to the church examples for how to do it.

So if a man manages his household well, he can become an example to the rest of the flock so that that man not it can be a type not a perfect not exactly like Christ but he is an example that's what God does he is a father he gives you his father to be an example to the church He gives elders who can be an example and lead the way. And this is what the Lord does for us in this world, to help us make our way through the problems of life and to help us to understand you know how life should be lived and Paul you know Paul demonstrates this principle when he was speaking to the Church of Philippi when he said brethren join and following my example and note those who so walk as you have for us a pattern, a type, a tupas, a you know a visual living picture. That's exactly what the Lord Jesus Christ was doing when he came to earth. The Word became flesh. And that's exactly what Asaph is doing right here.

He's saying, hey I'm leading the way here. Here's how you do it. And so it's a really neat passage in the sense that we get some direct mentoring from another man who stands under the authority of God. Okay, if a man would break the patterns of the past, there are several things that he needs to do. There are several things that he can do to break the cycle of disobedience.

And the first is he inclines his ears to the right media and message. Verses one through three. Give ear, O my people, to my law. That's the interpretive key right there. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth.

So the man who would break the cycle first of all has to get his ears tuned in to the right stuff. And so it's a command for men to get their ears inclined in a certain direction. This is something that all men need to do, especially in modern times, when there's just an absolute cacophony of voices coming toward us. It's really staggering when you think about all the voices that can come at a man in a day in this modern world. The voices are just crying out just with almost fever pitch.

Your car radio, your CD, your mobile phone, your internet before breakfast, your radio alarm. It's just unbelievable. You come home from the end of the day, and there's a movie or a news report or a sitcom or or a tape or an internet site or a satellite feed or it's it's email or it's some kind of other podcast or I don't know what else you know it's just absolutely unbelievable how dominated we can be. Everywhere we turn there's something for our ears or our eyes. The man who would break the patterns of the past is careful with his ears.

He's careful with his ears. And he's discerning about what he lets go in into those ears. All is not worthy to go into those ears. All is not glorifying to God that would come in. And it's really hard for men to truly glorify God if they let their ears be filled with unglorifying things toward God.

And so we have to be careful with our ears. You know, one of the things I tell the people in our church is that if you're not hearing some cuss words every week, you're not hanging around with all the right people. I'm not talking about being unable to be with normal people in the world here and becoming offended by worldly people who just don't even know, they have absolutely no idea, you know, what they're really even saying. But we're talking about what the ears intentionally acquire and how we set ourselves for what we listen to. Well, here, This man who would break the patterns, he inclines his ears to the right message.

And the command is really, it's very specific and unmistakable. He's to incline his ear to two things. It's really simple. He inclines his ear to my law and the words of my mouth. That's where men should have their ears inclined.

It's very simple. So when you think about all those CDs and podcasts and you know internet sites and all this kind of stuff, compare what's going into your ears with this. Incline your ears to my law and the words of my mouth. Men ought to just get rid of whatever stands in the way of inclining their ears to the Word of God. We just live in a culture that presents thousands of opportunities for involvement and Most families in their time together, the Word of God gets edged out by a lot of really decent things.

And when this happens, the true treasure is sacrificed on the altar of sometimes games or sports or some other lawful endeavor, you know, some other good thing out there that, you know, could lawfully be engaged. It isn't that we often so choose the bad things. It's that there are just so many good things that none of the superior things ever happen. That's the problem. And that's why we're not here to make laws you know toward people about what they can and can't listen to and how much and what's the godly number of minutes a day.

Forget that. You know, you're in charge of this deal but you just understand where are your ears inclined and you have to before the Lord and under the conviction of the Holy Spirit understand what he's saying to you. Listen to this statement by John Piper that he gave in a sermon recently. It means that the Bible is the Sun and the solar system of all that we teach our children. It will not be one among many books.

It will be the central book, the all-permeating book. The other books are dark planets. The Bible is the light-giving sun. All other books will be read in the light of this book. All books will be judged by this book.

All books will find their meaning in the world view built by this book. Which means that this book must be known first and known better than all the other books. Now some of you are going to come to our home on Sunday and you're gonna see a lot of books. So I'm not against books, but I will have to say that all those books can be very dangerous to every person in our house. And so we have to be careful that the Word of God is the main book.

We should make the Bible the Sun and the solar system of all that we teach listen to Richard Baxter Have you not many good works of charity to do? And will you leave the most of this undone and waste your time in plays and cards and feasts and idleness and then say, what harm is in all this? And are they all not lawful? The lawful thing replaces the perfect thing. Baxter understood the harsh reality of the consequence of this kind of indolence toward the souls of the next generation.

He says that it shows that quote, Many take more pains about their horses and cattle than they do about their children's souls. Leaders of families need to make sure that home life is inclined toward the Word of God. And it cannot be accomplished without the reading and the meditating and the memorizing of Scripture. And you know what? It takes a lot of time.

T-I-M-E time. And unfortunately, it means that other stuff is replaced by it. It's just a hard reality. You can't have it all. You can't do everything.

You can't participate in everything you love and have this be part of your home life. I just believe there's a famine of the Word of God in our days because people just don't have a taste for it anymore and the reason I have a taste for it anymore is mainly because not very much priority is really given to it. You know, well, we're all wired the same way. Whatever we look at, whatever we listen to, we fall in love with. You know, Did you ever end up liking a different kind of music after a while just because you heard it over and over again?

We're just, we were just built that way. We are built to fall in love with things. God made us that way. But it makes all the difference in the world what we fall in love with isn't it and here Asaph is saying incline your ears toward my law and my sayings he also inclines his ears to the things our fathers told us. Do you see that?

Verse 2, and they are represented in the dark sayings of old and the parables. Now in God's economy what fathers say matters and what fathers say should be repeated and given to the next generation. That's the point that he's making here. The drama of redemption is contained in the stories of the past and they're imparted to men so that they'll teach the next generation. It's not the next new thing that's important for the health of this generation, but it's what God did in the previous generation.

That's what's important because that gives the next generation a rock to stand on. You know fathers are God's appointed historians for the next generation. You know when we do our jobs well our children have a they have a sense of place in history. They know where they stand in the stream of humanity. They understand where they are in terms of culture and in terms of the passage of time.

They should see themselves between the first and the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in which there's a raging battle of darkness against the church of Jesus Christ, against the seat of the woman, where evangelism should be the greatest force at work among us and the equipping of the Saints for the work of the ministry. And our children should see themselves in the grand scheme of history according to the way that God would have them see themselves. You know there's a brilliant example of this in the book of Exodus. Two years after the exodus of Egypt when Moses is reporting the status of the households of Jacob in Numbers chapter 1 through 3, the people were so historically astute that they were able to document, they were able to recite their entire family history. And the story shows that Moses documents the numbers of the fighting men over age 19 for each of the sons of Jacob.

It's unbelievable. These people, you know, each son of Israel had 30 to 75 thousand fighting men over the age of 19 that were alive during that time. But, and of course that just shows the power of a household. It's unbelievable what came from Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Joseph. It's just stunning.

But the importance of this is that they remembered their family history. Numbers 1, 18 and 19, listen to this. They recited their ancestry by families, by their father's household, according to the number of the names from 20 years old and above, each one individually. These people were so astute about their heritage and what God had done in the past that they could recite it all the way back. You know, here's a really fascinating chunk of Scripture.

Every time our family reads through the Bible we say, oh no, here we go again. First Chronicles, the first ten chapters, ten solid chapters of nothing but father, son, father, son, father, son, recounting of the heritage. What's that in the Bible for? History matters. God works through families from one generation to the next.

That's one reason it's there, but it's to recount, it's also to recount the, you know, the scarlet threat of redemption in history and it's traced it's traced through lineage and we get we see it so much clearer in the New Testament when it's not just lineage it's something far bigger than that and our eyes are open to see even even a more glorious glorious picture that you know the faith of Abraham was the issue all along and anyone can have it even even those who've had bad bad family lines and of course the family lines of the Old Testament just demonstrate this. It doesn't matter about your lineage because God is able to come in and rescue you right out of the middle of your lineage and give you salvation. So, but there he's commanding us to use the things our fathers told us. So part of part of this part of this breaking, you know, breaking the patterns of the past is to do that same thing that he's talking about. Get the things that your father's told you and communicate them to the next generation.

That's the basic idea. What you see here are a number of things. He is engaged in the right activity. He's teaching his children. They're not hearers only, but they're communicators.

Verse 4, look at it with me, 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 may know them." So he goes back to Deuteronomy 6. There is a law in Israel. What was that? It's Deuteronomy 6.

That's what he's referring to. And they're involved in communicating. And it's the father and the son and the generation you have to be born. That's how a man needs to think about life. He's not just thinking about himself.

He's thinking about this generation that's not even born yet. There's this whole thing of training the trainer. A father's training his son to be a trainer of the next generation, of that unborn child. You know, what about daughters in this whole mix? You know, why all this emphasis on sons?

Why are there no daughters mentioned here? This is just, this is a travesty. Does he not care about women? Does he not care about daughters at all? God is, God must be a daughter hater.

He doesn't mention daughters here. This is what, these are the kinds of things that you'll hear people say when you just quote Scripture. Now, my view of this is, I don't believe that this passage of Scripture just categorically excludes daughters in the communication process of the family. Let's just say that first of all, but we need to be honest when we go through a text of Scripture like this, it's clearly and specifically directed to sons. Let's don't be embarrassed about that.

That's just the way the text reads, is it the Word of God or not? Do we have to qualify it ourselves and all? No, we don't. It's perfect in the way it sits. The daughters are not mentioned.

And if this fact makes us uncomfortable, then we have to grapple with the issue of why we're uncomfortable with the language of Scripture. Because the language of Scripture is clear here. And I would just like to suggest that the reason that he's speaking of the father-son interchange here and not the father-daughter interchange is because This is the language of the creation order. You know, God established headship to be provided through the male gender. That's the way God is working.

Does that mean that God doesn't work through women? Oh, crazy idea. That's not what it means at all. But in the way that God is orchestrating his kingdom, he works through fathers and he works through sons. This is his way.

And the blessing toward women is massive. But In the creation order, Christ is the head of the man and the man is the head of the wife and the man is the head of the daughter and that's just the way that God has it organized. It doesn't mean that daughters are an unimportant at all. It means that God has a way of blessing daughters that's different than you might think of and when you look at the things that God tells husbands to do for their wives and the commands of fathers toward their children, No one can think anything else that God so highly values wives and daughters or else he wouldn't ask so much of men in ministering to them. It gets so extreme that a husband is to love his wife like Christ loved the church.

Do you want to try to get any higher than that? In all of literature there's no higher view of women than in the Bible. But he does it through his representatives And here he does it with fathers who train their sons so that they will grow up to be woman blessing men. You know, I know some people who are in a unique time in life where They're training their sons to raise their own sons. In my own family, my nephew, who is 16 years old, just had his prayers answered and his baby brother James was just born.

And so he has a baby brother and of course he's just so delighted with this and you know his big brother Danny is going to take him everywhere he goes he'll be teaching his brother along the way under the supervision of his father and you know we it's funny just to joke about all the all the fun things that are gonna happen in this little boy's life because he has a an older brother who really will be assisting his parents in training him That's really what is going to happen. The 16-year-old boy is going to have an opportunity to co-labor with his father to raise that son. And that son will make some, the son will make some mistakes and the father will coach him and he'll learn how to do a better job. His father is going to be able to really teach his son how to raise a son. It's a remarkable kind of experience that I've seen happen a number of times in life.

This is one of the blessings of being fruitful and multiplying. If you keep childbirth going, you know, and keep it going and going and going, you get some very wonderful kinds of relationships like that that are developed. Generational thinking generates the right activity this involves a massive energy shift for us you know what what is it that keeps men from engaging in the right activity? There are thieves of this discipleship lifestyle here. Sometimes it's Bible studies, service in the church, even you know even all kinds of legitimate things that can be done in the community.

And I just think the remedy for some of this is just that we help our men refocus their energy. They got a lot of energy. They're pumping it into a lot of different places. But men have to rethink where they're putting their energy and make sure that they don't lose this aspect of it. It's so important that we get our own houses in order and all this.

It's so important that we get our schedules under control. I heard somebody say one time, The problem is not prioritizing your schedule, it's scheduling your priorities. And that's one thing that really needs to be done in the Christian community. Men need to get real about what's important and make sure those things happen first. And then if the lesser things of lesser importance don't happen, so be it.

Get the important things in there first and make sure they happen absolutely here's Charles Spurgeon describing this beautiful life around the fireside fathers should repeat not only the Bible records but the deeds of the martyrs and the Reformers and moreover the dealings of the Lord with themselves both in Providence and grace what happy hours and pleasant evenings have children had at their parents knees and as they have listened to some sweet story of old. This is a beautiful picture of family life, rich family life, and it's so easily obliterated by all the great things that are to be done out there. But what kind of activity are we supposed to be having? It's inclining our ears and then delivering the right message. Telling the generation to come the praises of the Lord.

Look at verse 4. The message is the praises of the Lord, number one. Number two, his strength. And number three, his wonderful works which he has done. So the godly man is a man with a message and he has something to say because he has something burning deep within him and it's it's defined by these things right here he communicates the praises of the Lord This is the kind of man that just spreads enthusiasm for the goodness and the greatness of God.

Hey, this is our job. If we can't do this as fathers, our children are not going to be happy. I'm constantly asking my daughters, are you happy? How you doing? I really, I mean, I really truly want to know.

If they're not happy, something has to change. Something is wrong. If they're not full of joy about the future and you know, hey, we're all tempted to despair of one form or another. Fathers need to understand that a big part of their message is the praises, the praises of the Lord. That means that we're men who are inspiring our families.

We don't come home from work and flop out on the couch and say, oh come and heal me baby, you know, to your wife. We've got to be pumping out the praises of the Lord. And there's no way we can do it unless we're full of it ourselves. It's not something that we can manufacture. You know, it makes a big difference in a household whether a man is singing the praises of the Lord all the time.

It makes a huge difference. You know how crushed your wife feels when you're coming home every day discouraged about some firestorm that you're in the midst of. You've seen this. I have in my own life. You know, I remember some time ago I come home and I was just absorbed with all this other stuff that was going on and she says, Scott I just don't think I can carry you anymore.

Does your wife ever say anything like that to you? Well God is calling men to rise above those things and to carry their wives, carry them and not be a burden to them at all. God is calling for a certain kind of man and he's communicating the praises of the Lord. The joy of the Lord is their strength. God is the strength of their hearts and their portion forever.

God is our only hope in any of this. We can't manufacture it. He is our only hope to lead our wives in hope and in joy. And you know what? God has given to our wives a man to do that.

You think God was crazy when He set things up like this, but this is the way He set it up, that we would live like this. And we would bring the praises of the Lord. You know, you can usually detect a godly home by how much joy is registered on the faces of the people in that home. Face reflects heart, okay? Fallen countenance means something, okay?

Do we get that? Do we understand that? The root produces the fruit. We just have to understand that. And it's our job as leaders of the home to manage and monitor that so that when countenances fall they bounce back where?

To the Lord. Unless the joy of the Lord is in a man or a woman's heart, something has gone off course. It's a tremendous bellwether for us to help us understand what's really going on in our homes. Here's what Norm Wakefield says, whoever gives hope holds the heart. I thought that was pretty wise because this is about a father who's pumping out hope.

Whoever offers the hope holds the heart. The only way you can be full of good news is to be full of good news. You know, you got to fill yourself up with it or you're not going to have anything to give. But the key is to fill the heart with the praises of the Lord and this is found in our affections. You know, if we would be filled up with the praises of the Lord, our hearts would have to have affection for the praises of the Lord first, right?

As family shepherds, it's so important where our affections lie. When Paul spoke to the Corinthians, he said, oh Corinthians, oh Corinthians, our heart is open wide, but you are not limited by us, but you are limited by your own affections. That's really what holds us back in this enterprise of pumping out the joy into our families. The second message he communicates is his strength. His strength.

This describes a valiant man who understands the power of God. This is a fearless man in the face of opposition, in the face of fear. You know how many men don't have something to fear here today? Every man here has a bunch of goblins out there ready to devour him. I've never known a man that didn't have a lot of problems hanging out over his head.

And we all have them. We're all sitting in here. We look so nice, but all of us, all of us have some threats against our lives. What are we going to do about it and well we need to understand the power of God and we need to and we need to understand who is in control so that our hearts are not pumping out fear but faith in God. Faith is the substance of things that are hoped for.

What faith does is it takes the promise and it drives it deep within the heart and it's substance even though you can't see how everything's going to turn out. Belief in the promises of God, plunging them into your heart, internalizing them and let that be the substance of your life because you have nothing else to cling on to. There's no earthly evidence of safety and help. Only God can do this. You know, I have daughters that are growing up and, you know, I've had the wonderful experience of talking to some suitors or potential suitors of my daughters.

So I've done a lot of thinking about what kind of men I want to expose my daughters to. Because I don't want my daughter to just marry any old guy off the street. I want to know who this guy is. One of the things I want to know is where's he parked on the sovereignty of God? You know, nobody's going to get to marry my daughters, not with my permission, unless they have a really big God.

Because I don't want my daughters marrying a guy who's always wringing his hands about life, about what's going on, because it'll just infect her. So I'm looking for a man with a big God, bigger than all of his problems. So, you know, I have doctrinal discussions with these guys. The doctrine of sovereignty of God is another one. Well, you know what?

There's another one. I don't want to offend anybody here, but, you know, I always ask the charismatic question. You know, I'm not making a big statement about every form of charismatic theology and the whole range of the charismatic movement. I just want to be held totally harmless right now for what I say here. But here's the bottom line.

Here's the bottom line. I just don't want my daughter to marry a God-told-me kind of a guy, okay, Who's just blown about by God told me to do this, God told me... I want my daughters to marry a man of principle who sees the principle and he lives by the principle regardless of his feelings. Now, I do believe that God, you know, God leads us through a number of different things, his word, impressions, good counsel, you know, direct, I mean I do believe that the Spirit of God can give a man a certain kind of conviction that nothing else could give him. So I believe all that stuff.

But I just told my daughter to marry a guy who at every turn God told him to do it because it can get very confusing because who knows why we have this internal disposition about this certain situation? I want, I just, hey I just want to find a guy who's driven by principle. We'll do what's right, just like Abraham did when he had 50 reasons not to take his son Isaac and put him on the altar. Think of the shame and the murder and all the stuff that would happen to him. I mean, he just blew by all the cultural pressure and he did what God...

He was a man of principle. But hey, it matters. You know, do you have a hand-wringing family? You know, is the culture of your family a hand-wringing culture? Please lead your family out of that.

You do not want to lead your family there. This man here in Psalm 78, he's communicating to his family his strength that God is strong enough to take care of anything and there's nothing, there's no hole too deep that God isn't there. Where can I go from thy spirit? How can I hide from you? Nowhere can you hide from the Lord.

He is there and He is mighty and He loves me with an everlasting love. You know, you may have a background of hand-wringing in your family and where, you know, there's always worry about the dangers of the future. There's always sorrows for the things that happened in the past. All the people who offended, all the people who did things they shouldn't have done, and hand wringing, you know, year after year, and just carrying all this burden of, you know, weight. It's, ugh.

And you know, you spend meditating about how you'll speak to those people who did you wrong. You spend time and energy nursing the hurt feelings and unpacking them and writing about them and sending emails back and forth about him and obsessing about all the problems. No, that's not the kind of man here. This is the man who knows that God's in control and he's confident and he's pumping out the strength, the message of the strength of God and He's not worried about what any man might say. Or what did David say?

What can man do to me? He said, The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear? The Lord is the strength of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid? When the enemy came against me to eat up my flesh, my enemies and foes, they stumbled and fell.

The war rise against me, my heart shall not fear, though an army encamp against me, in this I shall be confident. One thing I have desired of the Lord, that will I seek, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple. For in the time of trouble, He shall hide me in His pavilion. In the secret place of his tabernacle. He shall hide me.

He shall set me high upon a rock." Well this is the confidence of the man that's spoken of here. His message is his strength and he's not a, you know, He's not a self-confident man at all. He's a God-confident man. He's not placed His hope in man. He hasn't placed His hope in His own abilities to do anything.

He says like David, my heart and my flesh may fail but God is the strength of my heart and my portion forever. I put my trust in the Lord my God that I may declare your wondrous works. Well that's the second message is that this man pumps out the strength. So in the road, so where are you in the roadmap of biblical fatherhood here? You know, are you a hand-wringing father Or are you pumping out the message of His strength to your family?

Well, the third message that He communicates is His wonderful works. This describes a man who, he knows the details of how God worked, and he speaks of it. This is why I think it's so critical that families memorize Scripture together. They need to know the details. They've got to have them in their hearts so that in the time of trouble, they've got it there.

It's ready in their hearts to communicate so that they don't default into hand-wring but they default into the great stories of the goodness and the providence of God. You know how fathers interpret history makes all the difference in the world in their families. I've known dads who just they unconsciously or they unwittingly teach their children to be angry and bitter about all the things that ever happened to them and they're filled up with wrongs committed toward them. The inadequacies of the people that are around them are the conversations around the table and while they're driving in the car. The sorrows that have come upon them and how stressful it all is and just repeating it over and over again the same old dumb stories that take you nowhere.

But there's a better message. His wonderful works. These should be the messages of a father in the midst of the reversals and the trials of life. I love the way Doug Phillips speaks of this. Listen to this.

This is a great quote. Only by understanding the greatness of God, His mighty acts, His noble character, and His plan for the ages, can we as His people prepare the next generation. For our sons and daughters to be mighty in the land, for them to succeed in the work of godly restoration, they must have a sense of who they are in Christ and their hearts must be infused with hope in the part that they play for God's glory as they walk in the steps of other men and women of faith. So where are we in the roadmap for biblical fatherhood on this issue? Number four, he recognizes the right results in his children.

He recognizes the right results. So what are the, what are the, How do you know if it's going good when you're teaching your children? What are the observable results of a father's good teaching? Well, ASAP says there are four things that should be observable in your children's lives. And this is a very helpful section because it helps you to understand how it's going in your home.

It helps you to evaluate the results. Notice that the results have nothing to do with career. They have nothing to do with financial security. They just say they have to do with attitudes. It's the only thing they have.

It's the only asset they have. Believe me, it doesn't take much to wipe every earthly thing away, and all you're left with is what you have in your heart. And that's all we're left with at the throne of God anyway. It's the only thing that matters between now and heaven. But fathers, they need to be on the lookout for the right results.

They need to be able to see their expectations need to be right so that they understand what's really going on in their children's lives. Well, here are some of the results. The first is that they hope in God. That's the first result. That they set their hope in God.

And that means that these children are so God-confident that they're just brimming. They're brimming with hope. You know, if your daughter, if your 15, 16, 17, 18 year old daughter is not brimming with hope, she needs your ministry. She needs your help. Go rescue her.

Be with her. Memorize Scripture with her. Take her places. Walk with her. Talk with her.

You are her daddy. Help her to hope. Give her a hope. God has given you to her to help her hope in what? Not in you.

In God. God alone. You know I see so many daughters they just they just languish because they don't even they don't know what they're doing. They don't know what their goals should be. You know, they're confused about what the world says to them.

But it's a father's job to help a daughter maintain her hope. It is her only hope. Okay. How many of you have daughters who are over age 15? Okay, it's showtime guys.

It is absolutely showtime. Every day you've got to dial in to your daughter's heart and find out where she's parked if she's losing hope. It's the worst thing that can happen to her. A daughter who's lost hope is a disaster getting ready to happen. So you've got to monitor her hope.

Well here this says wisely that they set their hope in God. Second result is that they would not forget the works of God. The works of God. These are the specific things that God has done. We can know if we've been good shepherds if our children remember the works of the Lord.

And as a result, they're fearless, they're obedient, they're happy. They're free. They're not obsessed with their weaknesses and their difficulties. The third result, that a father should see that his children would keep his commandments. Keep his commandments.

Yes, we should be vigilant to see if they're obedient. We should Monitor obedience, even though it's out of style and in anything goes kind of a world. In this culture, everything is acceptable as long as you feel good about it. That's the culture we live in, but this is not the culture that God is telling fathers to create. It's a culture of obedience.

Fathers need to understand that the hearts of their children are obedient. If they honor the Lord and they honor man and they honor their father and mother, they must walk in obedience to these things. And fathers have to be vigilant to see if they are obedient. And then the fourth result is fathers should see in their children that they break the bad patterns established by their fathers. Verse 8.

Well the rest of the psalm here, we've just gone through the first eight verses, but the rest of the psalm fills out what this looks like and what the fathers were like and what had to be broken and we just kind of click through a few of them. Stubbornness and rebellion was one of the patterns. They were cowardly, verses 9 and 10. They were forgetful, verses 11 to 18. They doubted God's power, verses 19 to 33.

They were flattering with their tongue but their hearts were far from Him, verses 34 to 39. They provoked the Lord, verses 40 to 55. They acted unfaithfully like their fathers, Verses 56 to 66. Well, this very long section makes it clear that the fathers of old were stubborn and cowardly and forgetful and doubting and they were idolatrous. They were unfaithful, just like some of our fathers were.

And this is not a new problem and it's in our generation. Men have always had problems repeating the faithlessness of their own fathers. So the plea here is for fathers to break the cycle of rebellion against God. It's a marvelous ministry to break the cycle, isn't it? Many of you are doing it.

Most crowds of people that I speak to have, most of the people are breaking the patterns. They're a new generation. How many of you are new generation believers here? All right, so most of you, right? You're breaking the patterns of your fathers.

What a blessing. What a marvelous work God has given you to do. This is redemption. This is salvation for everybody that follows you. God has appointed you to an unbelievable, blessed task.

You're restoring the breach. You're building up the broken down walls. You're taking what's been destroyed by Satan. And it's there in an ash heap. And by the grace of God, it's rising.

And it's becoming something new and wonderful. You're experiencing the blessing of it even today, I know it. But this is the grace of God. This is the beauty of the gospel of Jesus Christ toward us. Well, we know that all parents are flawed, but as one generation succeeds another, the succeeding generation can improve on the work of the previous.

And the plea in verse eight, that it is for sons to break the cycle of rebellion against God. How does he do it? He does it by filling his heart with the knowledge of the faithfulness of God. And then he spreads enthusiasm about God everywhere he goes to his children to his children's children for the children yet to be born would you pray with me Oh Lord that you would be the strength of our hearts, that our lips would be full of the praises of the Lord Jesus Christ, that we would lead vigorously, victoriously, confidently in you. In Jesus' name, Amen.

Okay, we actually have a few minutes for questions. Well, only a few minutes, But anyone have anything they'd like to ask? Yes. How do you find the balance between hope and instruction? Maybe because I'm starting out from a low level to I like to give hope and encourage lift, but also instruction.

I try to put with the instruction I don't know what the balance is. Forget the balance, there's no balance at all in this sense that if you're gonna fall off the horse, fall off the side where hope is. That's just my opinion. The instructions can come. You know, think about this.

Think about the Lord in your own life. What's the balance of the Lord in your life? Is it hope or instruction? Has God revealed everything that's wrong with you? Do you think if you think if you knew if you were instructed in everything you needed to be instructed in, do you think you could even stand up?

So what's the balance with the Lord? I think the balance with the Lord, it's way overwhelming on hope, isn't it? I mean, yes, God does point His finger at us and He tells us who we are, we're sinners, but that's not the end of it. He is. It's a tsunami of hope.

We're open up the Bible, it's everywhere, you can't, you can hardly read, read the Psalms, you know, you just get covered up with hope. I don't know what the balance is, but I know what the Lord is to me. He's a billion times more on hope than He is on instruction. If He revealed everything about me I would just be crushed. I know that.

You