Jun. 18, 2023

Father’s Day 2023 - Changing a Tire

Introduction - Fathers have been given an important place in God’s kingdom.  God himself is one God in three Persons, Father, Son and Holy Ghost.  Of the three, the Father is probably least known.  We are familiar mostly with Jesus, the Son, our Savior.  Next in familiarity is the Holy Spirit, upon which we Christians rely for his enablements and gifts.  God the Father gives to us a part of his nature, that is, to teach the generations following us to love Him and obey his precepts.  

The following story was an experience I had about three weeks ago, and I knew it was for today’s gathering:

During a recent visit to a Lowe’s Store I parked and immediately noticed an older Buick sedan with a flat front tire.  I also noticed four men around the car: what looked like a grandfather, a father, and two young boys, probably ages 9 and 7.  The whole family was big and husky.  I went in, and when I returned to the car, I heard sounds coming from another nearby vehicle which I at first thought were the sounds of a sheep bleating.  As I walked around to get a better view, I saw that the sound was coming from an old tire jack and its fold-out crank handle.  The jack was one of those old scissor jacks, and the oldest boy was rotating the crank handle.  At each turn, the crank made the bleating sound I had heard.  The grandfather and father were both very close by, their heads within feet of the flat tire and the two boys looking on intently like umpires watching a throw to the plate in baseball.  The father had shown both boys how to set the parking brake, chock the wheels, affix the crank handle, take the weight off the tire slightly, and begin breaking the lug nuts loose with the lug wrench and their foot.  Once the lug nuts were loosened, the oldest boy jacked the car up high enough to get a new spare tire onto the wheel bolts, screwed the lug nuts off, removed the flat tire, mounted the spare tire, screwed the lug nuts back on, lowered the car to the lot surface, and tightened the lug nuts hand tight with the lug nut wrench.  Grandad got into his big truck, and dad and the boys took off in the car, having been changed forever by the experience that dad and grandpa led them through.  As I watched them pull away, the Lord told me “Tell this to the congregation.”

There’s a simple, but powerful spiritual principle behind this simple story:

Deuteronomy 6:1-9 “These are the commands, decrees, and regulations that the LORD your God commanded me to teach you. You must obey them in the land you are about to enter and occupy, 2 and you and your children and grandchildren must fear the LORD your God as long as you live. If you obey all his decrees and commands, you will enjoy a long life. 3 Listen closely, Israel, and be careful to obey. Then all will go well with you, and you will have many children in the land flowing with milk and honey, just as the LORD, the God of your ancestors, promised you. 4 “Listen, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD alone. 5 And you must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength. 6 And you must commit yourselves wholeheartedly to these commands that I am giving you today. 7 Repeat them again and again to your children. Talk about them when you are at home and when you are on the road, when you are going to bed and when you are getting up. 8 Tie them to your hands and wear them on your forehead as reminders. 9 Write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.  NLT

The Power of fathers to teach

Fathers and grandfathers have been given the authority of God for the purpose of teaching both the physical children He gives us, as well as the spiritual children he is birthing in the church.  Every man is, therefore a father or grandfather or both.  Missionary friends of ours from Peru told us about a custom amongst the native Peruvians to whom they ministered.  Nothing regarding how to have a family, propagate, raise kids, etc. is taught to the daughters by the mothers.  Every generation starts at zero concerning this type of knowledge.  This sounds incredible, that even the knowledge of diapering, disease treatment, feeding, accident prevention, etc., must be learned by trial and error from scratch!  Really, this is not all that different from what is practiced in some parts of society today.  There is much widespread ignorance about such simple natural practices, but even more ignorance about loving God with all our hearts and obeying him fervently.  Knowledge of the Sabbath is one such lost gem.  God mentions the keeping of the Sabbath a great number of times (117).  

Mark 2:27 Then Jesus said to them, “The Sabbath was made to meet the needs of people, and not people to meet the requirements of the Sabbath.

Isaiah 58:13-14. “Keep the Sabbath day holy. Don’t pursue your own interests on that day, but enjoy the Sabbath and speak of it with delight as the LORD ’s holy day. Honor the Sabbath in everything you do on that day, and don’t follow your own desires or talk idly.14 Then the LORD will be your delight. I will give you great honor and satisfy you with the inheritance I promised to your ancestor Jacob. I, the LORD, have spoken!” NLT

As a young Lutheran, all I knew about the Sabbath was that it was a strange day of complete idleness.  I did not understand any other significance for it.  It was an odd, intrusive insertion into my week or my plans.  I never was taught how to act or what was permissible to do on the Sabbath.  In my feeble attempts to honor it, I remember awkward moments and questions like “Is it okay to eat ice cream, or to go for a ride with my family, or to take a walk, or to go for a run in the woods?”  Any attempt at it eventually got swallowed up in the 7-day-a-week pursuit of grades, sports and college.  That busyness continued on into my early Christian life as a military officer, husband, and father.  In practice, the Sabbath was nothing more to me than the usual day most of our culture takes off because most businesses don’t do business over the weekend. I was taught that the Old Testament law was fulfilled, so the Sabbath didn’t matter anymore; do whatever you want.  I understand better now that it is a blessed day, one seventh of my week, in which God wants to talk to me, to lift me above the wearing and hope-draining tedium of this life, and it is a chance to do something special for him, making him happy by giving attention to Him.  God commends the one who keeps the Sabbath.  It is his way to keep us alive a long time.  It is His way to make our load lighter and make our work much more effective.  It is His way of allowing us to discover the marvel of communicating with Him.  

I am not proposing a return to the kindergarten-type legalistic experience that Old Testament saints were under, in which people were stoned for something as simple as collecting wood for a cook fire on the Sabbath.  We can’t construct a list of approved activities, either, because the keeping of the Sabbath is a matter of each believer’s heart and conscience, not a matter of works.   We must, as fathers, teach the importance of the true Sabbath, in which we make the day a day in which our hearts are really remembering the amazing love Jesus has for us, and taking refuge in that love, whether we are fishing, whitewater rafting, crocheting or painting a picture.  It is the focus of our heart and mind that matter.  There are six other days to ask a brief prayer and then plunge into the day’s work of serving other humans.  The 7th day is God’s day.  The book of Hebrews teaches us that Jesus is our Sabbath rest in some way.  As we connect to him in this heart-to-heart manner we enter the true rest, this side of heaven, which God has always intended for us.   

Hebrews 4:9-11 “So there is a special rest still waiting for the people of God…so let us do our best to enter that rest.”

The power of grandfathers to teach 

Genesis 5:21-29 When Enoch was 65 years old, he became the father of Methuselah. 22 After the birth of Methuselah, Enoch lived in close fellowship with God for another 300 years, and he had other sons and daughters. 23 Enoch lived 365 years, 24 walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him. 25. When Methuselah was 187 years old, he became the father of Lamech. 26 After the birth of Lamech, Methuselah lived another 782 years, and he had other sons and daughters. 27 Methuselah lived 969 years, and then he died. 28 When Lamech was 182 years old, he became the father of a son. 29 Lamech named his son Noah, for he said, “May he bring us relief from our work and the painful labor of farming this ground that the LORD has cursed.” NLT

Conclusion - This little-known man, Enoch, realized the secret hope of every human: to never have to die a physical death.  He was the great grandfather of Noah, who we know very well.  Noah was counted righteous, along with his family, and so was kept alive and counted worthy to enter the ark and to re-start the human race after God destroyed the corrupt earth with a flood.  Enoch lived during one of the most corrupt times in human history, two or three generations before the worldwide flood of Noah’s time.  He lived counter to the culture of debauchery.  He did it so well that God was pleased with him and “took him.”  Before he was taken, it was said of him, “he was pleasing to God” (Hebrews 11:5 NAS).  Enoch gave birth to Methuselah, who gave birth to Lamech, who gave birth to Noah.  Obviously, as a great-grandfather, his righteous example was present in the family line to the extent that it produced the one family from which we all came.  The same reward can be ours today - Use your power to teach!