Sermon Tone Analysis

2 sam 18

TITLE: CONFESSIONS OF AN ABSENT FATHER

Science suggest that we learn better from failures rather than from getting it right.

The say Thomas Edison spent 5mo and over 9,000 experiments before he figured out how to make a battery…and he would fail many more times before improving upon that design.

No one likes to think that they’ve failed…that feeling of defeat, of seeing what seems to be wasted efforts, and in some cases letting people you care about down.

This morning, rather that asking you to think about a time in your life, and near miss of success, a place where your faith was challenged to continue moving forward,.....I’d like to sit at the table with one of God’s favorites (King David) as he wished he had a do over.

In our focal text, David has just been told that his son is dead.

If you started reading the biblical narrative from this point forward and never read the back story, one might conclude that this was the voice of a loving and present parent.

EXPOUND…how many people know that everybody that weeps at the funeral is not weeping from a place of love…some weep out of regret....

Many have read this and considered it to mean that the father does something that impacts the children and grandchildren, but there should be equal consideration given to the idea of the father’s doing nothing having impact on the children and children’s children, and their children.

(BACKGROUND)

ILLUSTRATION #1 / SUMMARY OF STORY LEADING UP TO THE DEATH OF ABSALOM.

David wasn’t present at the most important times of his children’s lives.... Don’t get me wrong....he was physically present but emotionally & cognitively, he was MIA

ILLUSTRATION #2

Most Frightened Man in America

Thomas J. Watson, Sr., died six weeks after naming his son as the new head of IBM, the company the elder Watson had led for more than forty years.

The junior Watson said his promotion made him “the most frightened man in America.”

But he took the helm and led IBM into the computer era and ten-fold corporate growth.

His success was made possible, he said later, by his dad’s confidence in and acceptance of him during his college years, when he was more interested in flying airplanes than in studying or applying himself.

Today in the Word, February 7, 1997, p. 14

I believe David’s absenteeism started at home with his father....The bible doesn’t say much about his relationship with his father Jesse but during one of the most significant moments for that family (The prophet Samuel coming to Jesses house because the Lord told Samuel the 1st King of Israel would come from that house, Jessee (David’s dad) never even considered David as a candidate!!!!!

We’re left to wonder if Jesse’s lack of confidence broke something in David that would play out in his failures?

So what does the text tell us about what is important in being an effective parent?

He Failed To Say Anything

Sometimes we stay silent to not lose favor/popular with our kids.

We fear losing their respect or having them cut off the communication line.

He Failed to Do Anything

There is a story of the Priest Eli who knew his sons were dishonoring God in the sacrifices, but failed to take action...

1 sam 2

Here, we see David commit the same sin of inaction/omission.

When David understood what had taken place with the rape of his daughter by her step brother (one of David’s other sons), the bible doesn’t record him doing anything to rectify the crime.

From this inaction, Absolom (David’s other son and brother to Tamar) takes matters into his own hands and orchestrates the death of the other brother Amnon who committed the rape.

He Failed to Stay Down

King David would move on from this place to take the throne, but his troubles would continue.

Its after this point early in his reign as King that we find him on the rooftop looking across the way to another roof top where Bathsheba is bathing.

That gaze leads to adultury, fornication, murder and deceipt by King David.

FCF: Its at this point of failure when the enemy does his best convincing and often recruits your own voice to put you down.... EXPOUND can’t believe you did this again....was your confession for real or did you get caught up in the moment....did you make the right decision?....

“More than virtually any other factor, a biological father’s presence in the family will determine a child’s success and happiness.”—U.

S. News and World Report

• “Committed fatherhood would do more to restore a normal childhood to every child, and dramatically reduce our nation’s most costly social problems, than all of the pending legislation in America combined.”—National

Fatherhood Initiative

• “The plague of fatherlessness is a painful inheritance of poverty and illness that is passed down from one generation to the next.”—University of Texas Sociologists

• “The most urgent domestic challenge facing the United States at the close of the 20th century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a social role for men.”—David

Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values.

• “Some 46% of families with children headed by single mothers live below the poverty line, compared to 8% of those with two parents...Studies show that only 43% of state prisons inmates grew up with both parents and that a missing father is a better predictor of criminal activity than race or poverty...Social scientists have made similar links between a father’s absence and his child’s likelihood of being a dropout, jobless, a drug addict, a suicide victim, mentally ill, and a target of child abuse.”—U.

S. News & World Report

• “A good father does these basic things: provides for his family, protects his family, and gives spiritual and moral guidance.”—David

Blankenhorn

Community Impact Bulletin, July 7, 1995