Sermon Tone Analysis

By Pastor Glenn Pease

Being a father is one of the greatest causes for suffering in the world.

Someone said, "Becoming a father is easy enough, but being one can be rough."

D. L. Moody, the great evangelist, experiences his greatest suffering as a father.

When his son Will neared 18 he rebelled against the Christian faith, and he wrote to his father and told him so.

Moody wrote back, "Of course I am sorry you were ever tempted to smoke.

I was in hopes it would never be a temptation to you, but the thing that hurts me worse is that you have desire to know Christ.

Sometimes my heart is so heavy and sad to think that you such contempt for one that has done so much for your mother and father, all that we are or have has come from Him, and you have been saved from an early grave I think in answer to prayer, and now when you have strength and health given you and are now in a position to do good you turn against the truest and best friend you will ever have.

For the life of me I cannot see why you should have taken such a dislike to Christ."

Later in the letter he wrote, "The thing that shames me is that I am preaching to others, and my son does not believe in the Gospel I preach."

It was a long hard battle, but eventually Will came back to the faith, and Moody had great joy to balance out his deep grief.

It is hard to be a father because you rule over a kingdom just like God does.

It is a kingdom where the subjects do not always do your will.

Adam did not want his son Cain to kill his son Abel, but he did it.

From then on almost every father in the Bible had children who did not do what they wanted them to do.

Priests like Levi had sons who were immoral.

Kings like David and Solomon had sons who were rebels in the kingdom.

Lot had daughters who got him drunk and forced him into incest.

Even the New Testament father, who is a picture of God, the father of the Prodigal had two of the rottenest kids on record.

Neither of them is anything to be proud of, but he loved them both.

Because it is so hard to control free willed creatures like children there is the constant temptation of fathers to lean toward tyranny.

Mothers do not have this temptation like fathers.

Paul warns fathers not to irritate and provoke their children.

He never warns mothers about this, and so from Paul's perspective we can say that dad is the most irritating member of the family.

The Greek word here in Eph.

6 is parorgizo.

It means to irritate beyond measure.

Some translations have do not vex, do not fret, do not harass, or do not rouse to resentment.

Because fathers are the disciplinarians they run the highest risk of being too severe and strict.

This was apparently a problem in the early church where Christian fathers came out of pagan living.

They were trying to keep their children from the ungodliness all around them.

Paul's advice fits our day and culture, and we want to focus on the two points that Paul stresses to fathers.

First of all we will focus on the negative.

I.

A FATHER'S DANGER.

It is dangerous to be a father for the same reason it is dangerous to hold any position of power.

Power can be abused.

The father is the authority figure in the home, and just as politicians can abuse their power and exasperate citizens, so fathers can abuse their power and exasperate children.

Power abuse is one of the most common causes of suffering because almost everybody has power over somebody else, and so almost everybody has an opportunity to abuse it.

Human nature tends toward dictatorship, and fathers have an above average opportunity to play this role over the kingdom, which they rule.

They may feel that theirs is a benevolent dictatorship, but in a culture where democracy is highly esteemed, even children expect to be listened to and have some input into their government.

When our government leaders try to pretend that they are all wise and all knowing, and they should have the right to make all of our decisions, we get provoked, and rightly so.

Paul's point here is that fathers make the same mistakes with their children when they assume a position of all-knowing infallibility.

A father who refuses to admit that he too is a child under God, and that he too is learning, growing, and striving to overcome his weaknesses, will become a father who never admits to his own mistakes.

This easily leads to a tyrant of a father who feels he has to rule by force, and never have to admit he could be wrong.

He is teaching his children that might is right.

He is to be obeyed because he is stronger and not because he is wiser.

My father use to joke and say, "I may not always be right, but I am never wrong."

Many fathers believe this in all seriousness.

Mark Twain in his typically humorous fashion describes how his father would obstinately insist on his own infallibility and refuse to ever admit he made a mistake.

He wrote, "I vividly remember how my father who was one of the most rigid and successful of disciplinarians-quelled the aspiring egotism that prompted me to correct his careless remark (when he was reckoning a problem...) that 5 times 12 was 62 and a half.

"So," said he, climbing over his spectacles and surveying me grimly, "ye think ye know more'n yer father, hey?

Come 'ere to me!" His invitation was too pressing to be declined, and for a few excruciating moments I reposed in bitter humiliation across his left knee, with my neck in the embrace of his left arm.

I didn't see him demonstrate his mathematical accuracy, with the palm of his right hand on the largest patch of my trousers, but I felt that the old man was right; and when, after completely eradicating my faith in the multiplication-table, he asked me how much 5 times 12 was, I insisted, with tears in my eyes, that it was 62 and a half.

"That's right!" said he; "I'll larn ye to respect yer father, if I have to thrash ye 12 times a day."

The good old days were not all bad, but they didn't do much to enhance the image of dad.

The modern approach is to be more intimate, and by this I mean more real, honest, and fallible with your children.

Gordon MacDonald in his Action Guide For The Effective Father says that one of the keys to good fathering is to reveal to teenagers one's weaknesses.

Smaller children need the security of a strong father, but older children need a father who is not afraid to acknowledge his weaknesses.

This makes him more realistic and easier to know.

Intimacy is based on sharing weaknesses as well as strengths.

MacDonald says to let your children know that you don't know it all, and that you can even learn from them.

That is positive weakness.

Let them know that you respect their right to privacy, and that you will not burst into their room without first knocking.

You will also not to try to squeeze out of them what they do not desire to reveal.

Charlie Shedd got a letter when he wrote a column for a teen magazine that illustrates a father's positive weakness.

A doctor and his family had a very strict family rule.

The last one going to bed was to lock the garage door.

There were many thefts in the community, and they had a lot of power tools in the garage.

One morning the doctor got up and went to get the paper, and he found the garage door wide open.

The family was quickly assembled and the lecture was about to begin when his daughter Beth stopped him in his tracks with a lecture of her own.

She said, "Daddy, you left the garage door open yourself.

I know it had to be you because I stayed up late studying and I locked it before I went to bed.

You were not home yet, and so it had to be you.

Some of us around here are tired of being blamed for things we didn't do!"

Dad could see that the evidence for his guilt was quite substantial, but he still had the power to cut her off.

He didn't do it, however, but instead he apologized for assuming that everything that went wrong was the fault of the children.

He did not become less in their eyes by the positive weakness of saying, "I am sorry."

It is a great fallacy of life to think that children will not respect a father if they know his weaknesses.

The opposite is the case.

They respect him more when he admits them and does not foolish and cruel things to hide them.

Dr. James Dobson spoke very highly of his father when he gave the eulogy at his funeral, but he concluded with these words: "It would be unfortunate to eulogize him in a way that would embarrass him if he were sitting among us.

My father had a generous assortment of flaws, even as you and I.

But I loved him.

Perhaps as much as any man ever loved a dad."

He loved him no less for knowing of his flaws.

It is folly for a father to follow that fallacious feeling that he must never be fallible.

Be honest with your children about your flaws.

They will love and respect you all the more.

What is irritating and exasperating is a father who pretends that he knows it all, and that he can make no mistakes, and so has every right to be a dictator over the lives of his children.

It is not easy to avoid this because exasperation is a two way street.

When children do not obey, fathers are put to the test.

I was deeply impressed in reading James Carroll's book The Winter Name Of God.

His father worked for the FBI.

One of his sons refused to go to the war in Viet Nam, and he applied for conscientious objector status.

The board turned him down, he appealed, and he was again rejected.

He had one last chance.

Dennis and his father had fought over this issue for a year, and the whole family was brought to a near breaking point.

When Dennis was informed of his last appeal, he asked his father to go with him.

His father was a lawyer, and even though he disapproved of his son's choice he went with him.