Latest / Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive / June 21, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Family, Pt 1

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June 21, 2020 | [re]START - Restart Family, Pt 1 · Topeka Bible Church Audio Archive

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Good morning.
0:02
SPEAKER_00: I know we're back at church now because we have donuts and coffee.
0:07
SPEAKER_00: This is the real thing.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: I'm so happy.
0:12
SPEAKER_00: And kids are back.
0:14
SPEAKER_00: So about once every half dozen, maybe 10 years, I preach a real Father's Day message, which is what I get to do today.
0:23
SPEAKER_00: One of my favorite subjects, obviously.
0:26
SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that.
0:30
SPEAKER_00: In fact, the opposite.
0:31
SPEAKER_00: What I'm gonna say today is that we dads make a lot of mistakes.
0:34
SPEAKER_00: In fact, this picture reminds me of, you know, some of the things we say get us into trouble.
0:39
SPEAKER_00: You know, the father and his and his son were were fishing and there wasn't much happening, and the boy points to, he's bored, he points to a dead bird sparrow laying in the water, asks his dad what happened to it, and his dad, being a Christian, dad of course gave gave the right answer that the bird just passed away and went to heaven.
1:00
SPEAKER_00: Silence for a while, as the boy thought, and asked, and then why did God throw it back?
1:05
SPEAKER_00: So sometimes we get ourselves in trouble, and people make fun of us.
1:13
SPEAKER_00: Uh, dads, uh, for a good reason, I suppose.
1:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh Jerry Seinfeld, you can tell what was the best year of your father's life, because they seem to freeze that clothing style and ride it out.
1:26
SPEAKER_00: Dave Berry.
1:27
SPEAKER_00: Remember what dad really wants is a nap.
1:31
SPEAKER_00: Really?
1:32
SPEAKER_00: So remember that this afternoon.
1:34
SPEAKER_00: So um now I we're in a series, a summer series called Restart, and today, because it's Father's Day, I'm talking, you know, my title's gonna be Restart Family.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: So, and I'll start with a statement that I guess is not controversial, or maybe it's controversial, it's painful, and that is that in some ways the global pandemic of COVID-19 has been a blessing.
2:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm afraid I don't want anybody misunderstanding me.
2:04
SPEAKER_00: Like you, I have shuddered as schools and businesses and borders, especially since we have a daughter across the border in Canada and three granddaughters up there, as borders have closed and travel is canceled, along with sporting events and church services and vacations and eating out.
2:24
SPEAKER_00: It's nice to eat out again, isn't it?
2:26
SPEAKER_00: So uh and like you, I've hated and grieved at the at the virus's carnage.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: That is the loss of income, unemployment for so many people, businesses shut down forever, lifelong, small businesses shut down, death, of course, sicknesses, worldwide fear, panic, which appreciate Mark's last song there.
2:54
SPEAKER_00: We're no longer slaves of fear.
2:56
SPEAKER_00: And I so I would not minimize any of the negatives, but I'm just saying that in some ways, am I right?
3:03
SPEAKER_00: We can see God's sovereign hand operating behind, or even in the pandemic.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: I mean, C.S.
3:10
SPEAKER_00: Lewis, wasn't he right when he said that God whispers to us in the good times but shouts to us in the bad times?
3:20
SPEAKER_00: Suffering, he said, is his, I'll modernize it, is his loudspeaker to rouse a deaf world, and I would say a deaf church.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: So I'm asking, why might a sovereign God allow a virus to jam on the brakes and bring the entire world to a grinding halt?
3:45
SPEAKER_00: And I would ask a rhetorical question what if, in an act of severe mercy, our Heavenly Father is taking a terrible evil and bringing out of it some good?
3:55
SPEAKER_00: What if, like a good parent, he is putting us in a time out in order to help us take stock and reevaluate our lives and expose some things that we need to change?
4:06
SPEAKER_00: After all, hasn't God revealed during these last three months that we worship some false gods?
4:15
SPEAKER_00: And hasn't he undermined our worship of those false gods?
4:18
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna mention two of them.
4:20
SPEAKER_00: One is the God, admit it with me, that we worship of fun.
4:24
SPEAKER_00: That is the God that makes, that drives us always to the next experience to look forward to the next really, you know, exotic restaurant or great movie or hot concert or a perfect cruise or weekend party, and he just casually pushes the pause button or maybe the cancel button and cancels all of that for three months.
4:49
SPEAKER_00: Something you and I would have never thought possible just six months ago.
4:54
SPEAKER_00: And have never imagined that March Madness, you know, could ever be called off, you know.
5:00
SPEAKER_00: Or the other God that I think about is the God of activity.
5:05
SPEAKER_00: We've worshipped the God of activity, right?
5:07
SPEAKER_00: So that in a sense we're on a we're on a you know the treadmill, and we've got to keep up with everyone else and keep our children up with everyone else, and so we choose, we have chosen the fast pace of the rat race over the slow pace of the family meal.
5:26
SPEAKER_00: We have chosen the hectic life over family life, noise over quiet, speed over simplicity, fun over family, treadmill over the home cooked meal, noisy business chauffeuring over sitting on the couch and having conversations at home.
5:44
SPEAKER_00: So I'm just saying that out of this horrible thing, this pandemic, God may be doing something in a severe mercy, pleading with us to stop being conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of our minds so that we might test and experience what the will of God is, that which is good, well pleasing, and perfect.
6:08
SPEAKER_00: So I ask you, would you start today by agreeing with me that the lockdown has been good for the family in many cases?
6:19
SPEAKER_00: Have you seen more couples, more families walking in your neighborhood or riding bicycles?
6:28
SPEAKER_00: Well, you and I aren't the only ones to notice this.
6:31
SPEAKER_00: Many magazines have published articles about it.
6:35
SPEAKER_00: One international magazine titled an article, One Blessing of Coronavirus Quarantine Enforced Family Time.
6:44
SPEAKER_00: The writer writes that she was at a conference a year ago on family, where one speaker stood up and said, Our kids are overscheduled, our families are underconnected, simple conversations in the home have almost completely disappeared today.
7:02
SPEAKER_00: Family meal times are uncommon and very short.
7:06
SPEAKER_00: What we need is just one night a week when families can be home together, connecting.
7:13
SPEAKER_00: Everyone at the conference cheered, but it seemed, as they split into groups, it seemed impossible to change the trajectory of modern activity.
7:25
SPEAKER_00: Even good parents, the best parents, had outsourced almost everything their children did, from soccer practice to music lessons to tutoring to swim team to art lessons to karate.
7:39
SPEAKER_00: But then all of a sudden, in 72 hours, three months ago, everything changed.
7:45
SPEAKER_00: The coronavirus absolutely eviscerated or evaporated the problem of overscheduling, and home became suddenly the focal point of everything, the safe place to be.
8:00
SPEAKER_00: Another article is entitled Quarantine Quality Time.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: Four in five parents say the coronavirus lockdown has brought family closer together.
8:10
SPEAKER_00: And I would stop here and say that counselors are busy because the one out of five of those, you know, there is abuse and there is a lot of screaming going on in some homes and so forth.
8:21
SPEAKER_00: And yet there are so many stories of families playing board games or putting together jigsaw puzzles or reading together for the first time in years or starting a garden.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: So I wouldn't downplay the fact that, as my wife who's a counselor, says, there are so many stories of conflict, but the majority of parents today report that they are happier with their with their partners and happier with their kids than they were before.
8:52
SPEAKER_00: And just in a humorous aside, readers of fairy tales are not surprised that the lockdown is good for family life.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: It always has been, after all, it was when Rapunzel was in lockdown that she met her future husband, right?
9:09
SPEAKER_00: So just just had to say that.
9:13
SPEAKER_00: So I want to talk this morning about, in some senses, what was regarded as the most fundamental home relationship in ancient times, in ancient Israel, in the Older Testament.
9:28
SPEAKER_00: And that is the father-child relationship.
9:31
SPEAKER_00: And of course, the husband-wife relationship and the mother-child relationship are just as vital.
9:37
SPEAKER_00: But it's interesting and significant since daddy, dada, papa is the first word that oftentimes a child lists out in the Old Testament.
9:49
SPEAKER_00: The word for father simply took the first two letters of the alphabet, A and B, and that's the word for father.
9:57
SPEAKER_00: It was pronounced Av, though today, you're more familiar with the New Testament word Abba, and that's the word used in Israel today for father.
10:06
SPEAKER_00: Av was the word in the old times.
10:08
SPEAKER_00: They still use Av, but when calling their father, they call dads Abba today.
10:15
SPEAKER_00: So this is just such a simple word, and my point is that this relationship is absolutely fundamental, and it's simple, and it's in some ways the most basic relationship, and that's why God, our father, unlike the gods of all other religions, tells us I'm your father.
10:40
SPEAKER_00: It's why Tony Evans, a friend of mine, says the first place that you ought to be known as, and he doesn't call it a Christian man, he says a kingdom man.
10:50
SPEAKER_00: First place you ought to be known as a kingdom man is not the church house, but your house.
10:54
SPEAKER_00: And that's why, that's why I think that's the point, even with this word.
11:00
SPEAKER_00: It's just so fundamental that every one of us men should say, Ash for me in my house, we will serve the Lord.
11:06
SPEAKER_00: Now, question is, what makes a good dad?
11:09
SPEAKER_00: No two dads are alike.
11:12
SPEAKER_00: Every father is one of a kind, unique.
11:17
SPEAKER_00: Mine was especially unique, uh, not because he had 12 kids, because others have done that, but he was so into classical music and so not into television that he was the only man I think I ever knew who could uh listen to the William Tell Overture without once thinking of the Lone Ranger.
11:41
SPEAKER_00: Okay, he'd never seen it.
11:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
11:45
SPEAKER_00: So listen, when a young man becomes a dad, he knows he's unique and he's a little scared, he's a little insecure, and when he has his first child, he begins to worry that he won't be a good dad.
11:58
SPEAKER_00: He won't measure up to the standard.
12:00
SPEAKER_00: His kids will see through him, they'll realize that he's that he's just nothing special, not a hero at all, and that's when he wonders, new dads do, what is the secret of good fathering?
12:13
SPEAKER_00: And if there is, can I do it?
12:15
SPEAKER_00: Now, different cultures have different standards of what makes a good father.
12:19
SPEAKER_00: Fathers in Jesus' day, the Jewish boys were taught by their rabbis that you'd be a good Jewish daddy if you did five things for your son.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: If you circumcised him, if you converted him, if you taught him Torah, if you found him a wife, and if you taught him a trade, then you would be a good father.
12:39
SPEAKER_00: But when you come to the scripture, you find that God cares hugely about fathers, too, because he cares a lot about families.
12:50
SPEAKER_00: And he uses this word Av for father, he uses it well over a thousand times in the Old Testament alone, twelve hundred to be even closer, and he uses it twenty-six times in the book in the Old Testament, which is the book of family wisdom.
13:05
SPEAKER_00: It's called Proverbs.
13:06
SPEAKER_00: And it's kind of fun to look up those 26 uses of Av, which I did.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And you find it doesn't fall into five things, it falls into three things, three secrets of being a good dad in Proverbs.
13:19
SPEAKER_00: All right?
13:20
SPEAKER_00: I'm just gonna talk about one of them, but you find that good fathers care, good fathers coach, good fathers correct.
13:26
SPEAKER_00: The other words used.
13:27
SPEAKER_00: So you find there are 10 of the 26 times in the in Proverbs that uses words like good father, you know, the father is glad when his son does well and he's sad when his son or daughter do poorly.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Good fathers coach, word used is often teach or instruct.
13:43
SPEAKER_00: And they also correct so that when the kids go astray, uh then they discipline them and they correct them.
13:49
SPEAKER_00: So those are the three categories in the book of Proverbs.
13:54
SPEAKER_00: Now, sometimes, let me just mention something about this.
13:58
SPEAKER_00: This is not the one I'm gonna pick, I'm gonna pick the coach one, but the first one care.
14:02
SPEAKER_00: You know, it's always sad.
14:04
SPEAKER_00: You hear about fathers who are absent fathers, right?
14:06
SPEAKER_00: You hear about fathers who are uh who choose not to play with their children, who choose not to talk with their children, they don't come in and say, Hi son, how are you doing today?
14:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, they don't really delight or take joy.
14:19
SPEAKER_00: They don't have an emotional feeling, they're aloof, right?
14:22
SPEAKER_00: They're insensitive.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: They're uh psychologists call them narcissistic parents.
14:26
SPEAKER_00: They're really as sensitive about their own self and their own feelings that they're just unsympathetic, basically, toward people outside of themselves, including their own children.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: And they're very charismatic and popular with their friends oftentimes.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: You you and I know uh dads like this, uh, but they're not good fathers because they don't they're they don't fit this category of fathers who have a deep emotional investment in their children.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Just thought I'd mention that.
14:54
SPEAKER_00: So um the correction, by the way, is um so so Norman Rockwell pictures for each of these.
15:04
SPEAKER_00: So, so let me just summarize that before I leave it.
15:07
SPEAKER_00: Good dads care.
15:08
SPEAKER_00: They care deeply, they're glad, they're sad.
15:11
SPEAKER_00: The words are used in Proverbs, there's joy, there's grief, there's delight.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: All right?
15:16
SPEAKER_00: For their entire kids' entire lives, the fathers feel that way.
15:20
SPEAKER_00: Good dads also coach.
15:21
SPEAKER_00: They coach, they teach, instruct, and they counsel so that the kids can learn.
15:25
SPEAKER_00: And third thing is that they correct.
15:30
SPEAKER_00: I love this old old picture, you know, of a dad wearing a white shirt and a tie.
15:35
SPEAKER_00: Those are the days, right?
15:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, so you have discipline, and the discipline falls in two categories in the book of Proverbs.
15:41
SPEAKER_00: One is verbal, and so you have words like correct or rebuke, and the other is rod of correction, and that's physical, and we're not gonna go there this morning.
15:50
SPEAKER_00: But those are the three categories, all right?
15:53
SPEAKER_00: So um I want to talk about, and by the way, I was interested, I was looking uh uh uh on success resources online about good fathers, and I was really surprised that the first two of them had to do with this one.
16:08
SPEAKER_00: The very first one was that good fathers don't cop out on correcting and disciplining their children.
16:14
SPEAKER_00: Uh they they said online, a good father loves his children but doesn't let them get away with murder.
16:20
SPEAKER_00: He strongly disapproves of his children's misdeeds, uses tough love to prove a point.
16:25
SPEAKER_00: He does this through the power of his words, not his fists.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: He doesn't reward, etc., etc.
16:30
SPEAKER_00: Though, number two, he does allow his children to make mistakes.
16:34
SPEAKER_00: So, anyway, I'm just uh rambling about this, but I really want to talk to you about number two, and the coaching has a key passage that I want to take you to, and that's Proverbs 4, 1 through 7.
16:47
SPEAKER_00: It's not gonna be a long sermon today, but I want to show you the cool stuff in Proverbs 4, 1 through 7 about good dads and how good dads are coaches.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: Now, by the way, have any of you ever, did any of you ever grow up where your dad was your coach at a time in your life?
17:05
SPEAKER_00: Did you?
17:06
SPEAKER_00: Or anybody ever been a coach to your son or your daughter?
17:09
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:10
SPEAKER_00: Wasn't it great?
17:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I I don't have many regrets about my parenting, but I do think back at the times when when uh schools or other things asked me to coach my kids, and I said, I wish I could, but I can't.
17:24
SPEAKER_00: I'm too busy, you know, with the church.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: I wish that I could do that over.
17:28
SPEAKER_00: There's just something special, right, about being a coach to your kids, because then they they treat you better than they do otherwise as a father.
17:36
SPEAKER_00: They they respect coaches more than dads, but that's not the anyway.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: So um, so notice the coaching things here.
17:44
SPEAKER_00: Verses one and two, the father gives uh uh a pep talk to his kids with four statements.
17:52
SPEAKER_00: Listen, sons, to a father's instruction.
17:56
SPEAKER_00: This is a coaching word, okay?
17:58
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention and gain understanding.
18:01
SPEAKER_00: Literally, pay attention to knowledge that will give you insight.
18:06
SPEAKER_00: For I am giving you good learning.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: In other words, this rely, this is good stuff I'm gonna give you, okay?
18:12
SPEAKER_00: Don't abandon my teaching, don't leave it the moment you know you leave the uh the baseball diamond or the moment you leave our home.
18:20
SPEAKER_00: Right?
18:20
SPEAKER_00: So this is sort of the introduction, and it's a coach's pep talks.
18:25
SPEAKER_00: Good dads give their kids pep talks, okay?
18:29
SPEAKER_00: That's what dads do.
18:31
SPEAKER_00: They they pump us up, and you'll notice that uh that that that these four things are the kinds of things that dads say.
18:39
SPEAKER_00: They say, listen up, listen, sons, to a father's instruction.
18:42
SPEAKER_00: Pay attention, pay attention and gain understanding.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: This is important, for I'm giving you good learning.
18:47
SPEAKER_00: Don't forget it, don't abandon my teaching.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: Doesn't it sound like a dad?
18:52
SPEAKER_00: For heaven's sake, I mean, this is so relevant, okay?
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And constantly through life, fathers uh have this good fathers, as their kids are growing up, have this sort of stance toward their children.
19:05
SPEAKER_00: And they're going, listen up, pay attention, this is important, don't forget it.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: Listen, pay attention, this is important, don't forget it.
19:12
SPEAKER_00: And they do that, of course, in many ways with many topics, but especially with Christianity, right?
19:19
SPEAKER_00: With the Bible, with morality, with ethics, with how you treat other people, relationships, how you treat your mother, stuff like that.
19:28
SPEAKER_00: So that's the pep talk at the beginning.
19:31
SPEAKER_00: Co-gadads are coaches, they give us pep talks.
19:35
SPEAKER_00: Then, and by the way, Paul would agree with this.
19:39
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, We dealt with you as a father deals with his own children, encouraging, comforting, and urging you.
19:45
SPEAKER_00: This is a pep talk.
19:46
SPEAKER_00: Paul says, when we came to you, even as a science school teacher, as preacher, whatever, this is what you do.
19:52
SPEAKER_00: You you give pep talks.
19:53
SPEAKER_00: You don't just dry teach, you give pep talks, right?
19:57
SPEAKER_00: You say, listen up, pay attention, this is important, don't forget it.
20:02
SPEAKER_00: Encourage you, comfort, you urge.
20:04
SPEAKER_00: 1 Thessalonians 2, 12.
20:06
SPEAKER_00: So, good dads are coaches because they give pep talks.
20:10
SPEAKER_00: And secondly, they tell us stories.
20:12
SPEAKER_00: They tell us stories.
20:14
SPEAKER_00: Wow, yeah.
20:15
SPEAKER_00: My kids just loved it, I can tell you.
20:18
SPEAKER_00: When I began a sentence with the words, when I was little.
20:22
SPEAKER_00: Oh my goodness.
20:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, dad, please, no, not at the table.
20:27
SPEAKER_00: We can't get away.
20:28
SPEAKER_00: So, but then other times they'd come, they'd come to me and they'd go, Daddy, tell us a story.
20:33
SPEAKER_00: Daddy, tell us a story.
20:34
SPEAKER_00: Tell us about a story when you were little, you know, because they knew a lot of those stories were embarrassing.
20:39
SPEAKER_00: So, but dads tell stories, and that's what happens here in verses four through, actually all the way through verse nine.
20:45
SPEAKER_00: When I was a son, so father is speaking to his son, and he says, When I was a son with my father, tender and precious to my mother.
20:55
SPEAKER_00: Such a sweet statement here.
20:57
SPEAKER_00: Such a sweet statement.
20:58
SPEAKER_00: In other words, so uh in the ancient Near East, uh uh children were breastfed until the age of three.
21:05
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so at the age of three, they were weaned, and pretty much at that time the the girl stayed with the mother, but the boy went out then with the father, whether he was a shepherd or whatever else, and the father then had him.
21:16
SPEAKER_00: So this is a three-year-old or four-year-old boy, this is a very young boy, and and the mother is you know, she cherishes him.
21:27
SPEAKER_00: That's what your translation probably says.
21:29
SPEAKER_00: This is more literal, but she's he's tender.
21:32
SPEAKER_00: He's he's only three years old, he's only four years old, and he's precious, right?
21:37
SPEAKER_00: This is such a beautiful home picture.
21:40
SPEAKER_00: So when I was a son with my father, tender and precious to my mother, dad's talking, he's saying this to his son.
21:46
SPEAKER_00: When I was a son with my father, then he taught me, he taught me, just as I'm teaching you, and he said to me, Your heart must hold on to my words, keep my commands and live.
21:57
SPEAKER_00: So he's passing on granddad's lecture.
22:00
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this cool?
22:02
SPEAKER_00: And there's just something about this that we've forgotten today, and that is the importance of heritage and the importance of remembering the past, so that, as G.K.
22:11
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton said, did I put it on here?
22:13
SPEAKER_00: We give the dead a vote.
22:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, that we, yeah, yeah, I did.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: G.K.
22:17
SPEAKER_00: Chesterton, this wonderful man, this is now 120 years ago, but uh famous British guy.
22:22
SPEAKER_00: Tradition means giving votes to the most obscure of all classes, our ancestors.
22:28
SPEAKER_00: It's the democracy of the dead.
22:31
SPEAKER_00: Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking around.
22:37
SPEAKER_00: You get this?
22:38
SPEAKER_00: Isn't this good?
22:39
SPEAKER_00: So, in other words, you you remember the past, you remember the grandparents, the great-grandparents, and you pass that, those what they said on to the kids.
22:48
SPEAKER_00: I don't know why it was, but even when I was young, you know, when we'd have huge family reunions, my dad came to a big family, everybody got together.
22:56
SPEAKER_00: I remember even in my 20s, you know, getting hold of my grandfather's diaries.
23:01
SPEAKER_00: I'd never met him, he'd died before I was born, and reading his diaries from the tens and twenties, 1920s, 1930s, and then standing up in the evening meetings, you know, and and and reading excerpts from his diaries.
23:14
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, you know, I got to take the diaries one day.
23:16
SPEAKER_00: I have this huge collection of of old stuff, you know, from my ancestors, you know, in my home.
23:23
SPEAKER_00: I'm always trying to perfect it.
23:25
SPEAKER_00: And uh because there's just something uh that I was raised to like about ancient things, and now I'm ancient.
23:34
SPEAKER_00: And and and you know, and it is too bad that because of digitalizing everything, a lot of our kids and grandkids don't care much about that.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: But I hope, uh kids, if you listen to me, I hope, kids, that you will remember to give a vote to the most obscure of all classes, your uh grandparents, great-grandparents, the people of the past.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what's happening in this verse.
24:02
SPEAKER_00: That we're having granddad's lecture to dad, and dad's passing it on to us, and granddad said, get wisdom, get understanding, don't forget or turn away from the words of my mouth.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: So this is command number one in Proverbs.
24:17
SPEAKER_00: There's something you need to get, by the way, the word kana, which is used five times right in this context, means to really buy, to put out money.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: This is like going into the marketplace.
24:26
SPEAKER_00: And the and no matter what else you buy in life, he's saying, even if you have to exchange everything else, even your flat screen TV for it, this is what you need to buy.
24:34
SPEAKER_00: You need to buy wisdom, you need to buy understanding, and you and you mustn't leave it or ever turn away from the words of my mouth.
24:41
SPEAKER_00: Proverbs 4, verse 5.
24:44
SPEAKER_00: And then he he moves on.
24:45
SPEAKER_00: Coaches not only, right, they not only give us pep talks, they not only tell us stories, passing on, you know, what happens in previous days, they teach us how to win in life.
24:58
SPEAKER_00: Uh, what's the famous book by Blankenhorn or whatever?
25:01
SPEAKER_00: He says, you know, mothers, uh, and it's called uh uh absent fathers or something, which is pointing out the tragedy of uh of how most significant loss in a home is is if you have an absent father.
25:15
SPEAKER_00: But anyway, he says in there, he says the tendency, mothers are really most concerned about the safety and survival of the children, whereas fathers, you'll notice, are always concerned about the success of their children.
25:30
SPEAKER_00: Isn't that interesting?
25:31
SPEAKER_00: And you find that precise psychological observation right here.
25:36
SPEAKER_00: Because it's all about this is gonna work for you.
25:39
SPEAKER_00: I want you to be successful.
25:41
SPEAKER_00: I don't want Wagenhorn goes on to say, fathers are always terrified their children are gonna turn out to be bums.
25:47
SPEAKER_00: And that's what you find here.
25:50
SPEAKER_00: Get it, and don't turn away from it, don't leave her.
25:53
SPEAKER_00: So the picture is, by the way, that you actually, this is the wisdom is a woman, that beautiful woman you need to marry.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: And if you don't leave her, and she will keep you, she'll protect you.
26:05
SPEAKER_00: Love her, and she will guard you.
26:08
SPEAKER_00: You'll be successful in life, you'll win in life if you'll get wisdom.
26:13
SPEAKER_00: And then verse 7 the beginning of wisdom, some of your translations uh uh use a different letter in Hebrew and say the supreme thing in life is wisdom.
26:23
SPEAKER_00: It could be, my my my decision on this is that the beginning of wisdom is getting I think I just lost, oh I got it back.
26:33
SPEAKER_00: Um the point is there's a decision you have to make in life.
26:38
SPEAKER_00: What is it you're gonna prioritize?
26:41
SPEAKER_00: What are you gonna use your money to buy?
26:43
SPEAKER_00: Okay, because because it's this this is really financial in the background.
26:48
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna prioritize becoming wise?
26:52
SPEAKER_00: And that is in a Christian circle, the fear of the Lord's beginning of wisdom?
26:55
SPEAKER_00: Are you gonna prioritize with your children, teaching them to become believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, the fear of the Lord, teaching them to grow?
27:02
SPEAKER_00: Or will you be happier, would you be happier having a child who wasn't a fervent Christian but but was extremely wealthy or famous or something like that?
27:13
SPEAKER_00: And and the priority in Proverbs 4 is son, I'm telling you the advice my dad gave me.
27:20
SPEAKER_00: He said the most important thing in life, you should trade everything you have for it, is wisdom.
27:25
SPEAKER_00: Beginning of wisdom is make that decision that you're going for wisdom.
27:29
SPEAKER_00: Whatever else you get in life, whatever else you get, get understanding.
27:34
SPEAKER_00: All right, so that's the priority.
27:37
SPEAKER_00: Our dads, our coaches, they teach us how to win in life.
27:42
SPEAKER_00: All right, those are the three priorities.
27:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh, just to review the three, the the three uh definitions of good dad in Proverbs, remember, are they a good dad cares, good dad, the second C is he coaches, and the third is the good dad, successful dad, also um corrects.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Under coaches, good dads coach in in a couple ways, three ways in this passage.
28:07
SPEAKER_00: Good dads coach in that they give us pep talks, okay?
28:10
SPEAKER_00: Good dads coach in that they um um um good dads, what is it?
28:20
SPEAKER_00: They they uh third is they teach us how to win in life, but they they they tell us stories.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
28:26
SPEAKER_00: Coaches do that, dads do that.
28:28
SPEAKER_00: Tell your kids stories.
28:29
SPEAKER_00: When I was when my kids were growing up, I knew the one time, the one time in life that they would listen to me read to them.
28:38
SPEAKER_00: For sure.
28:39
SPEAKER_00: I could never get them sit down, was after they were in bed, because they would prefer not to be in bed and they would prefer to stay awake.
28:46
SPEAKER_00: So I'd try to get them to bed a few minutes early and then I'd sit down.
28:49
SPEAKER_00: I I got to read through, uh, and you won't be surprised to hear that I read through all of the books of the Lord of the Rings, you know, to my kids while they were in bed.
28:57
SPEAKER_00: So scared them to death, but it was fun for me.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: So they tell us stories, so you tell your children stories, read good stories to your books.
29:07
SPEAKER_00: I was uh uh Melan and I were cleaning out a home for her makeover ministry yesterday.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: You know, we we take furniture that's donated, and she gives it to folks who are who need furniture who are poor in town.
29:19
SPEAKER_00: So we're cleaning out a home yesterday, and there was a book there.
29:22
SPEAKER_00: I couldn't believe it.
29:23
SPEAKER_00: William Bennett's huge, The Book of Virtues.
29:25
SPEAKER_00: Get that book.
29:26
SPEAKER_00: It's got a bunch of little stories, and it's all about virtues.
29:29
SPEAKER_00: Read those stories to your children.
29:32
SPEAKER_00: Anyway, it's all because I forgot the second point, and I go back, and now I'm talking again.
29:38
SPEAKER_00: And third, they teach us how to win in life.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So that's that's my message to get uh today.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: Uh let me add, though, that um on Father's Day that I am, you know, being a father and now being a papa, grandpa is just so great for me.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: But I would tell you that I made so many mistakes, you know, that I um, you know, that I said the same stupid stuff you did, like uh when I say no, I mean no.
30:09
SPEAKER_00: Why?
30:10
SPEAKER_00: Because I said, boy, that's why, you know, I'm dead.
30:13
SPEAKER_00: Or if you don't stop crying, I'll give you something to cry about.
30:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, or you're gonna sit there until you eat your dinner.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: I don't care if you sit there until next week, you know.
30:20
SPEAKER_00: Brilliant, brilliant parenting statements, just brilliant.
30:24
SPEAKER_00: But maybe I asked Melly, I said, I said, you think back over my father, uh, you know, I I said I was listening to Tony Evans this week and he was talking about blowing it when he took his kids to the Grand Canyon.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: And she said, Oh, yeah, do you remember taking our kids to to uh taking us to Disney World?
30:48
SPEAKER_00: I said, Oh, stop.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: So I you know, I'll tell you the story uh just so you know that um making mistakes, fortunately, if you have good kids, they'll forgive you for them.
31:01
SPEAKER_00: So so our kids were this is 1988 and it's spring, and and Melody and I had this idea, we're gonna really thrill the kids during spring break, we take down to Disney World.
31:11
SPEAKER_00: Now she's just had a baby, so we need to can't take the baby.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: So we drive down to Dallas.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: This is not this is the trip from purgatory.
31:21
SPEAKER_00: So so we drive down to Dallas to dump off to to gently drop off the baby with Papa and Grammy, and then drive east.
31:31
SPEAKER_00: We drive east across eastern Texas, Louisiana, and Alabama, down to Florida, and then down, down, down, down, down.
31:38
SPEAKER_00: It's a long trip in our van.
31:40
SPEAKER_00: It's a long trip.
31:41
SPEAKER_00: But we're excited, the kids are excited, the older three, one is eight, she's eight, she has a brother who's going on seven, and uh the youngest one uh in the car then, uh Doug was going on uh five.
31:56
SPEAKER_00: So we're going to Disney World, but I didn't have money, you know, we didn't have we were tight, so I'd made arrangements to stay at an RV park, couldn't afford a motel down there, but I told the kids I had a swimming pool, so they were excited.
32:10
SPEAKER_00: And also to afford going to Disney World, which is like$100 per person, um I made arrangements.
32:17
SPEAKER_00: I told Melody, who nearly killed me when I told her, I made arrangements with one of those timeshare sales things where they'll give you free tickets, you know, to uh like Disney World or something, free passes, if you'll go listen to like a two-hour presentation.
32:32
SPEAKER_00: She hates that.
32:33
SPEAKER_00: I'd been a salesman, so I can just look at them and say no, but she hates that.
32:38
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, this is this is not good.
32:40
SPEAKER_00: So we drive down, and it turns out to be really hot in March in Florida.
32:45
SPEAKER_00: It's just hot.
32:46
SPEAKER_00: So we drive in uh with an inactive air conditioner into um the RV park in a seedy part, seedy, seriously seedy part of town.
32:57
SPEAKER_00: Okay, and we have a place.
32:59
SPEAKER_00: So we park there, kids jump in the pool, but soon we realize there are big kids in the pool, it's it's an old, old pool, and so they have to stay in this one little corner as I'm with them, and then uh then this girl, anyway, I won't tell you, but Melody wasn't happy about that.
33:15
SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, we're in the van and we're gonna sleep in the back of the van, okay, with no air conditioning, and it is seriously hot.
33:23
SPEAKER_00: Now, it happens to be the beginning of March Madness, which I normally like, but that year, you know, KU had a bad team at one point.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: And you know them as Danny Mad Danny and the Miracles, but we didn't know them as that then.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: We knew them as a huge disappointment.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: They had lost eight of ten games at one point and gotten spanked so bad by K-State at home that, you know, there was I told the boys who were KU fans that that we were gonna deliberately miss March Madness that first week because, you know, we I just you know I didn't want them crying.
33:52
SPEAKER_00: So anyway, so we're staying in the back of the van and and we're telling the kids to stay out of the pool unless we're there and they're in this little square thing, and it's just kind of a mess.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: And and but and then we take this uh then we take this this sales thing where Melody and I uh, you know, uh take the kids and they have a place where they'll watch the kids while we go do this two-hour thing.
34:14
SPEAKER_00: And I told the guy right up front, this is not it.
34:16
SPEAKER_00: I want the tickets, I want the free passes for a day at Disney World, you know, and he made us pay for that.
34:22
SPEAKER_00: I mean, you talk about a hard sell, and Melody's crying by the end of it, you know, and so forth.
34:28
SPEAKER_00: And it was horrible.
34:29
SPEAKER_00: She's looking at me like you are the worst husband in the world.
34:32
SPEAKER_00: And and I'm thinking, but we just saved hundreds of dollars.
34:36
SPEAKER_00: I don't care.
34:37
SPEAKER_00: And so we go back, and we go back, and then and it's so hot, and we don't then we lose our kids.
34:46
SPEAKER_00: We lose the boys, the two boys.
34:48
SPEAKER_00: Adrian, of course, is perfect, so she stays with us, but the boys are just gone.
34:52
SPEAKER_00: And we are getting a little frantic and we're walking around, we're asking nothing.
34:56
SPEAKER_00: Then finally we see the boys run out of a trailer and run over to us after a couple hours when we're terrified.
35:02
SPEAKER_00: And the boys go, Daddy, mommy, this this man invited us into his trailer to see his snakes, you know.
35:10
SPEAKER_00: And Melody's looking at me like, what did you do?
35:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, I mean, I mean, anyway.
35:16
SPEAKER_00: So, and then of course it wasn't after after we're driving back that I find out that KU is actually won its first two games.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: They didn't lose again.
35:25
SPEAKER_00: You know, that was the year in 1988, they won the whole thing.
35:27
SPEAKER_00: So this is not, this is not, you know, whatever, this is not a situation where dad can look back and say, man, I ne I knocked it out of the park on that one.
35:36
SPEAKER_00: So, and if you've been to Disney World, you know that's not a great experience in and of itself, anyway, right?
35:42
SPEAKER_00: With you wait an hour plus, you know, to go on a 30-second write.
35:48
SPEAKER_00: Why did I tell you that?
35:49
SPEAKER_00: I told you that for this reason.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: Told you that.
35:51
SPEAKER_00: I am so happy that in Proverbs, it's really simple.
35:55
SPEAKER_00: It's really simple.
35:56
SPEAKER_00: Give pep talks to your kids, tell them stories, tell them about the Lord when you tell them stories, right?
36:05
SPEAKER_00: Teach them how to be successful in life.
36:08
SPEAKER_00: And that's Father's Day.
36:10
SPEAKER_00: Let me close this in a word of prayer.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Heavenly Father, thank you for our dads.
36:14
SPEAKER_00: We love our dads.
36:15
SPEAKER_00: They weren't perfect.
36:17
SPEAKER_00: But this morning, as we think about how we're not perfect either, we we cut them some slack and we recognize that, Lord, you you blessed us when you gave us dads, and you proudly take the name Father yourself.
36:29
SPEAKER_00: And we're so happy for that.
36:31
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' name.
36:33
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
36:34
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for coming, folks.