Sunday, June 15, 2008Scripture reading: Matthew 7:7-11
7 ‘Ask, and it will be given to you; search, and you will find; knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened. 9Is there anyone among you who, if your child asks for bread, will give a stone? 10Or if the child asks for a fish, will give a snake? 11If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Sermon Title: "THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND THE UGLY" Sunday, June 15, 2008
PASTOR HUDSON: Our sermon title this
morning is the good, bad and the ugly. You remember that,
of course, as a Clint Eastwood film.
As we think about the good, the bad and ugly, we
Also know there is the whole range of parents; good, bad, and ugly.
Today we're really focusing on dads, so let me take a
moment and talk to Dad, (but Moms, you listen in
because this is yours, too).
What would it look like for you as a dad if you were to
take the high ground with your
children by using God as your
role model? What would you prioritize? How would you
teach your children or spend time with them? What
would you do in your interactions with those children,
or yes, even those grandchildren that would enrich
their lives? You've got some choices to make.
Sometimes I think being a dad, a father brings
with it some of the recognition that we're human and
we're limited, and occasionally we don't quite get it
the way we want, but today I want us to really think
about first things namely God.
It is in the Lord that we find our best role
model for how to be a dad. In our passage in
Matthew's gospel, Jesus gives us a little glimpse into
that which is worthy of our spending a moment. It is
a part of that larger passage in which Jesus speaks of
the providential love and care of God towards his
children within the kingdom.
According to Christ, we can pray with
trust and optimism that the Lord is not reluctant to
do good things for us, but in fact, eager to do good
things for us; hence, when we pray the Lord's prayer,
it resonates with two images. One, it is
not a long, convoluted urgent kind of prayer, not one
of those two-hour prayers that you might associate
with some settings.
Secondly, it does not become specific in
terms of what it asks for. It simply says, Lord, I
want to worship you, and I'm going to trust you for
that which I need today and tomorrow, much like a very
small child would trust Mom and Dad are going to be
there to provide just exactly what they need, even
though they may not be able to articulate it in highly
specific terms.
We can pray the Lord's Prayer for the needs of
our day and our life with that kind of open-ended
trust because our Heavenly Father knows what we have
need of before we can even put it into words, that's
the nature of this parent relationship that we have
with God.
So Jesus says ask and you may be sure that it
will be given to you. Seek and you may be sure that
you will find, knock and you may be sure that the door
will be opened to you, that's the promise of God.
Now how does it relate to dads? Well, here it
is, number one: It is true, Jesus was acknowledging
that there is such a thing as our sermon title
suggests, the good dads and the bad dads in our midst.
Many of us have good dads, but he also knows there are
probably people in any sanctuary that could not say
that. Maybe their world was not that perfect Ward and
June Cleaver kind of husband/wife, mom/dad
existence.
Some people do have a hard time associating this
notion of God as loving Father because for them Dad or Father
was a very negative image, full of abuse and
heartache. It is a struggle for them to get a handle
on the God of the Sermon on the Mount. Sometimes they have to
learn it first in the abstract before it ultimately
becomes something they can successfully internalize.
Yet we know Jesus said there are good dads as well. He
describes it this way, if your child asks you for
bread, would you give him a stone or her a stone? By
implication the expected answer is no, that's
ludicrous, we would never do that to our child. If
anything, we probably would tend to overindulge them.
If they asked for bread, we would probably make sure
that gravy came along with it. We go the second mile
for our youngster.
The challenge from me would be to do several
things. Number one, make the determination that there
will be nothing in this life that is more important
than your family. There is an old saying that said
they never heard anybody say on their death bed they
wished that they had spent more time at the office.
They say I wish I'd spent more time with my family or
things that really deeply mattered. Give them the
stuff that really matters from you. Give them a
heritage and a legacy.
Secondly, live your faith. Give them your faith.
Scripture says train a child in the way that it should
go before evil days take place. Remember God, and
then when they are old, when they're mature, they
won't part from it. Give your children your faith.
Let that faith spill over into their heart. To be an
excellent parent means that you realize you've been
given a life to shape as God's steward. Be excellent
Dads and Moms. Let God use you in that way.
In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
amen.