Fathers are extremely important to God. The word father is used 145 times in the NASB version of the Bible. One hundred forty five times. One of His first Commandments is to “honor your father…” (Deuteronomy 5:16). In our culture, we have set aside a special day each year to do this.
Again and again, our attention is directed toward fathers, their role in our lives, what is expected of them and how we are to treat them. What may not be so obvious at first glance is that all these references point us to our Heavenly Father.
In Deuteronomy 6:5, Moses tells us, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might.” The only way to truly do this is to make every day of our lives Father’s Day. We will reap the benefits of His love in amazing ways if we are willing to do this. That’s His promise to us in the remainder of the verse I quoted above. It says, “…that your days may be prolonged and that it may go well with you…” (Deuteronomy 5:16)
Moses had a great example to follow. Abraham followed YWHW from his home in Ur (near Babylon if you look on a map) across to modern Israel and down into Egypt before he returned to the land God promised to his offspring (Israel). Now the interesting part of this story is that during all this following where God led him, Abraham had no children.
God didn’t bless him with lots of children. He gave him 2 sons in his old age. The Bible tells us that Ishmael was born 13 years before Isaac and that Sarah was 90 when she bore Isaac.
Abraham’s faith in God was passed to his son Isaac who became the father of the Israelites. Ishmael fathered other peoples of the middle east.
Abraham stands as testimony to all fathers everywhere. His steadfast faith in God’s promise in Genesis 12:2 “I will make you a great nation” resulted in the founding of the Israelite line. In Genesis 12:3 he was told that “in you all families of the earth will be blessed” and so we have been through the birth, life and death of Abraham’s descendant, Jesus.
As the verses in Deuteronomy indicate, when fathers’ follow Our Lord they are able to lead their own children in God’s path, “that [their] days may be prolonged and that it may go well with [them].”
Please join us Sunday morning at 9 or 10:40 a.m. Pastor Ann will be bringing fathers a special message this weekend that will enrich families.
We will be livestreaming on FB at approx. 11:00 a.m. and will have video posted to YouTube as soon as possible (for those of us who don’t do facebook).