Jun. 19, 2022

Fathers—Almost Apostles!  (BTS - 19 Jun 22) — Pastor John Custer

Introduction - This lesson commemorates fathers on Fathers’ Day.  It is hard to mistake the parallels between the role earthly fathers fill with our natural children and the role which Our heavenly Father fills with all of us Christians.  It is also very similar to the function of apostles within the Christian church.  

1 Cor 4:15 For even if you had ten thousand others to teach you about Christ, you have only one spiritual father. For I became your father in Christ Jesus when I preached the Good News to you.  NLT

One immediately identifiable characteristic of a father is his ability to reproduce people.  This special ability is given to the human father by God as a shared part of God the Father’s capability to make more people.  From the first man, Adam, onward, it has been the Father’s will for us to reproduce after our kind.  We obviously identify this with physical birth, but it applies just as well to the spiritual new birth, which is probably more potent in its ability to populate the earth with redeemed people than the slower biological process.  So, we could safely say that it is His will for every Christian man to be a father, at least spiritually.  

There is a great need for fathers! God’s design for the earth was that it be an ordered place full of beauty and life.  By contrast, our country, the United States, ranks #1 in the dubious distinction of being the most fatherless nation on earth.  These statistics come from our own Census Bureau.  As a result, 18.5 million kids in the United States are without a father in the home.  85% of children and teens with mental disorders come from fatherless homes.  70% of all adolescent patients in drug and alcohol treatment centers originate from homes without fathers.  90% of all runaways and homeless kids are from fatherless homes.  I am not seeking to depress the families who have suffered the unfortunate loss of a father through disease, accident, or a criminal act, or even the conscious act of abandonment or estrangement on the part of the father.  On the contrary, the good news is that God has a remedy for a family bereaved of its father for any reason: apostles or men with apostolic characters.  

Paul was very well known apostle.  We are familiar with the typical apostle-type stuff he did (raised the dead, preached to kings, healed the sick, suffered shipwreck, saw visions of heaven, etc.)  We will discuss all the other characteristic of the apostle another time, focusing today on an overlooked, understated apostolic quality, that being that his relationship as a spiritual father to Timothy.  This relationship was employed on a constant basis in the course of daily living and ministry, not in flashy exploits of derring-do.  It involved the non-flamboyant quality of being, day-in and day-out an example of a transformed person, made wiser by his extra years of experience with God’s Spirit.   

Philippians 2:22 But you know how Timothy has proved himself. Like a son with his father, he has served with me in preaching the Good News.  NLT

1 Timothy 1:2 I am writing to Timothy, my true son in the faith. May God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord give you grace, mercy, and peace. NLT

This is similar to what an apostle does for the church.  Apostles are needed!  Many of them! The fathering characteristics of an apostolic father can be gleaned from looking at how God the Father loves us, how we are counseled to love our own children, and how the apostle Paul and Timothy worked together.  Here’s are just some of the fatherly characteristics of God the Father which apostles exhibit:

They receive and restore wayward kids:  As the story of the prodigal son goes, they are always ready to restore someone who has gone astray and repented.  They never give up on anyone.  

They have unlimited patience for receiving abuse, criticism, and disappointment from rebellious kids.  You could call them “weeping fathers.”  Jesus did plenty of this as he suffered while the children of ?God were growing up.  

They are not afraid to use the rod of correction when needed to correct a spiritual child when the sin they are involved in will lead to greater problems.  It wasn’t the deacons or the women who were responsible to determine what the church was to believe or how it disciplined those who severely offended others.  

They view their mentoring roles as an eternal responsibility to be passed down from generation to generation.  Mentoring is not hard.  It mainly involves being an example; occasionally giving advice., not incessant lecturing. They are aware that God wants a perpetually reproducing progeny who keep multiplying His nature unendingly.  

They adopt the most needy in society: the widows, orphans, and poor.  These are people who do not belong to them.  Most of us do well at caring for those who are ours.  Apostolic fatherhood feels a burden to assume care for these who belong to no one, and adopts them into a loving family.  This attitude is absolutely necessary for God’s will to be done in healing this broken earth.  Jesus first came to adopt us as sons by saving us: 

John 1:12-13 But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God. They are reborn—not with a physical birth resulting from human passion or plan, but a birth that comes from God. NLT

He adopts us into fatherhood, which we then pass on to the next generation of Christians. Every boy ideally should progress from boyhood into manhood and ultimately into fatherhood, and every Christian (includes women) should progress from childhood Into adulthood, ultimately into spiritual parenthood.  This chain of saving humans from one generation to another must go on perpetually.  It is how God will save all that He wills out of the earth.  Said another way:

They view divine fatherhood as something beyond natural fatherhood:   Abraham was someone new in the fathering line.  Patriarchs before him had given birth to earthly sons, only to have them die out.  For men, the most noble thing was to make a great mark in life, hopefully leaving more to your family than you came into the world with.  It all had to do with our own. Others mattered only secondarily after that.  Abraham goes beyond the powerfully typical natural love he had for his earthly son, by being willing to sacrifice him.  That whole transaction showed God that Abraham was willing to give up his own son for other priorities, a needed attitude for all of the faith progeny which God had planned for him through the church in the centuries ahead.  The church is to have this same attitude toward all the generations to come, insuring that the burning passion to adopt is passed from generation to generation.  

Conclusion - We probably think least often of God the Father when we think of the Trinity.  Jesus probably consumes most of our thought time, with the Holy Spirit running a close second.  Jesus perfectly revealed the Father to us. He could not have done that without being one Himself, as He was to His disciples.  God is calling all of us men today to grow into the stature of Jesus, especially in this matter of fathering the church.  The church needs apostles, and apostolic fathers, lots of them!