Father’s Day 2023
Speaker: Pastor Darin Browne
We live in an age where there is a concerted effort towards destroying normal sexuality, especially masculinity? Such a statement, despite what the alphabet mafia might be pushing, and the Gay BC might want to report, is not hate speech.
There is an attack on masculinity, and that makes Father’s Day more important than ever. And part of the reasoning behind destroying gender is to emasculate males and especially the role of a father. So why attack fatherhood?
The fact is that God chose to reveal Himself as a Father to us, not a mother or a bisexual, non-binary, or a transgender god like Ishtar, but as a Father…God the father!
Genesis 1:27 (ESV)
So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
Rev. Dr. Ian Paul in the Telegraph said, “The fact that God is called ‘Father’ can’t be substituted by ‘Mother’ without changing meaning, nor can it be gender-neutralised to ‘Parent’ without loss of meaning. “Fathers and mothers are not interchangeable but relate to their offspring in different ways.”
WHY FATHER?
God chose to reveal Himself as a Father. This is not an accident. He shows Himself to us with all the best character traits of a father, not as a non-binary, effeminate, emasculated mix.
You should recognise that your view of your earthly father, (he could have been good, bad, abusive, disinterested, or remote) colours your view of God the Father.
2 Corinthians 6:18 (ESV)
and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.”
Some see God as having a big stick, waiting to smash you, waiting to punish you when you step out of line. Some live in fear of rejection from Him, fearing that the smallest failure will be punished severely. Many see Him as distant and disinterested (God is watching us from a distance). But some will know Him as a loving Father, whose heart is for you and whose love for you is infinite.
If you focus on your earthly father, you will see faults, if you focus on your Heavenly Father, you will see perfect love!
The greatest illustration in the Bible of the kind of love God has for you as your father is found in Luke 15…the parable of the Prodigal Son.
GOD’S FATHERLY LOVE FOR YOU IS PURE
In the parable the father gives an inheritance to his son, who squanders it. But the father is always waiting for his son to return to him, just as God our father is waiting right now for you to return to Him. So, let’s examine the Father’s pure love.
1: PROTECTIVE
God is not here this morning with a bolt of lightning and a big stick. He loves you, has plans for you and wants to protect you and deliver you from evil!
Jeremiah 29:11
For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.
God is not out to punish you, not out to hurt you, not out to limit or control you…He wants the very best for you! And He wants to protect you from harm! But wanting the best for you doesn’t mean granting every request you make! We often demand things that ultimately are not good for us, and His laws are designed to protect us from the consequences of our dumb decisions.
Many people make bad decisions, experience the consequences of those decisions, and yet blame God for what’s happened.
Proverbs 19:3 (ESV)
When a man’s folly brings his way to ruin, his heart rages against the LORD.
If you made a poor decision, maybe married the wrong person, taken the wrong substance or drug, ran with the wrong crowd, made the wrong business decision, stop blaming God for what you decided to do! He loves you; He never wants to harm you; He is actively protecting you from the consequences of your own decisions.
And He has plans, big plans, for your life. Look at your life…tell me, are you fulfilled? Have you reached your destiny, or fallen short? Come to the Father today and its game on!
GOD IS LOOKING OUT FOR YOU
Whatever you’ve done, however you’ve fallen in the past, God can forgive and turn life’s lemons into lemonade. He is watching you right now!
Luke 15:20
So he got up and went to his father. “But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and was filled with compassion for him; he ran to his son, threw his arms around him and kissed him.
All that time the wayward son was away, self-indulging and sinning as much as he could, the Father was waiting patiently, looking, searching the horizon, praying, longing for his return…then the Father saw him from afar, and rushed to welcome the prodigal son home.
All that time, He was waiting expectantly, looking, believing for a change of heart. God is doing that right now with you…He awaits, looking for a change of heart.
Picture this…in your darkest moment of sin, in your greatest time of shame, your Father is watching, waiting, not condemning but longing for you to turn to Him. He doesn’t like what He sees you do, but He never stops loving you!
No matter what you’ve done, no matter how selfish or sinful or horrible you’ve been, no matter what someone has done to you in the past, God your Father is looking out for you right now, waiting for that change of heart, waiting to lavish upon you life and life to the full. Will you push Him away again, or is today the day you give Him the best Father’s Day?
2: UNCONDITIONAL
Romans 8:38-39
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God’s fatherly love for you is unconditional, (meaning no matter what you do He loves you), unwavering, (meaning it never changes) and unfathomable, (meaning try as you might, you will never exhaust the depth of the Father’s love).
We are used to love that is conditional. If you play well, if you get an A, if you’re cute or beautiful or talented, then you feel loved. But get it wrong, as and the subliminal message is, we don’t love you the same way anymore!
The world tells us that if you love someone you have to let them do whatever they want. That’s not true! You can love someone and disagree with them. You can love someone who destroys their life with drugs because sin has consequences…
HOW CAN A LOVING FATHER SEND THOSE HE LOVES TO HELL?
He loves you so much, He sent His one and only Son to save you from going to hell. We all deserve hell, but the heart of the Father is to sacrificially send His one and only Son to die in your place.
If you go to hell, it’s your choice, not His. If you don’t receive Jesus as Lord and Saviour, you will go to hell, and it will break God’s Father heart, because He loves you so much, even if you choose to reject His Son.
In the parable, the father loves his son, even when the son rejects him and blows the family fortune on his own pleasures. At home, abroad, in a brothel or a pig style, the father’s love never changes, but note this…the wayward son was still in a pig sty! He wasn’t spared the consequences of his rejection of his father.
John 3:16
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
When your Heavenly Father looks at you, He loves you unconditionally. He offers you life in His Son Jesus, but you must accept or reject Him. Choose life today, choose to yield your life to your Father today. He wants the best for you, His love is limitless, so don’t reject it and walk away to hell! God loves you and has provided a way to salvation in Jesus. He doesn’t choose to send you to destruction, you choose. So today, choose life, because God loves you unconditionally.
TODAY IS A GREAT TIME TO REPENT
2 Peter 3:9 (ESV)
The Lord is not slow to fulfil his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
God is waiting today for you to repent. In Greek, repentance is metanoia, which means a complete reversal of one’s mind, a 180-degree turn, not just veering slightly to the good side. It doesn’t mean being sorry for being caught. It’s far deeper than that. The same word is used in…
2 Corinthians 7:10
Godly sorrow brings repentance that leads to salvation and leaves no regret, but worldly sorrow brings death.
You and I have sinned, even as believers we sin. If we sin, our conscience weighs heavily upon us, and we regret what we’ve done, especially if we are caught. This regret and guilt can and will destroy you. So many carry a burden of guilt and regret and shame within for things they’ve said and done, and that fills them with sorrow and kills their joy in life. If you are feeling guilt or shame or regret today, don’t carry that alone any longer!
1 John 1:9
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Repentance might be painful, it might humble you, but it sets you free in a way you have never experienced before. The burden of sin is lifted, the fear of consequences is removed, the joy of the Lord is restored and life, life to the full is the result. If you think sinning is fun, try holiness, it’s the best!
Want to give your Heavenly Father a gift this Father’s Day? Repent and seek Him today! The Father’s heart responds to repentance, every time!
3: RESTORATIVE
The third thing about God’s pure love is that He wants to restore you.
The wayward son returned home just to be a servant at best, but the father restored him to privilege. God wants to restore you today.
Joel 2:25
I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
What does restore mean? It means making something as if the years of neglect never happened. Sin is a locust, it eats everything, it slowly destroys you from the inside out. Restore a car and it is like the day it rolled off the showroom floor, and that’s what God promises you, to restore you.
Those years you’ve wandered away from Him. those years you disobeyed, messed your life up, the dumb decisions, the pain you caused others, the pain you caused yourself…God is in the restoration business, and today He is calling you home.
But Biblical restoration goes even beyond this. God won’t just restore your life to what it once was…get this, He restores your life to what it should have been all along!
The 15th century Japanese art of Kintsugi takes cherished but broken and shattered bowls and fixes them… with gold. This doesn’t hide the flaws, it celebrates them! When God restores you, He says, “Don’t cover up your sins and failures. Confess them and let me In cover them with my love!”
Have you had hurts in the past that still cause pain at times. Don’t suppress them, confess them, and let God restore your shattered life with gold not just to what it once was, but to what it should have always been!
4: EMOTIONAL
Many people see God as some ethereal force floating out there, the universe or something similar. He’s not the universe, He is creator of the universe, and sustainer of all things, but His desire is always for intimacy with you…yes you!
God is a person, and He’s a Father. I’m a father, and I get emotional when is see my girls, and now my grandkids too. God says…
Jeremiah 31:3 (ESV)
I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you.
Lamentations 3:21-23 (ESV)
But this I call to mind, and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.
God’s fatherly love for you is genuine. And emotional…
A NEW FATHER AND MOTHER
Ask any new parent if there is any more difficult, demanding, or time-consuming job than raising a child. You lose sleep, patience, money, time, hair, and, occasionally, your sanity. You make unbelievable sacrifices for a little person you only met recently, who has no marketable skills, adds nothing to the family finances, makes incredible demands on you at all hours of the day and night (especially the night), and doesn’t even say “Thank you.” Yet…
When it’s time for bed or even a nap, there is nothing more satisfying than holding that little person close to your heart, singing a lullaby. For us as parents, those are often the most cherished memories.
It seems unbelievable, but that is how God feels about you.
Zephaniah 3:17 (ESV)
he will rejoice over you with gladness; he will quiet you by his love; he will exult over you with loud singing (Hebrew RINA, which means a happy song)
Does that not sound like a picture of a proud father or mother, cuddling his or her child close, totally content just to be with him or her?
Immanuel means God with us. He made every one of you for Himself and gets emotional when you draw near to Him.
HOW WILL YOU RESPOND TO THE FATHER’S PURE LOVE?
1 John 3:1 (ESV)
See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are.
That is God’s pure, fatherly love. His protective, unconditional, restorative, and emotional love for you. And all you need to do to make Father’s Day complete, is to open your arms to Him and say, I’m coming daddy!
When the prodigal son turned his face towards home, he was humbled. He was broken, but his father loved him and received him as his son. If you come to Jesus Christ right now, when you ask Him into your life, you don’t become a slave, you’re a son or daughter of the King of Kings, making you a prince or a princess. You are royalty, and royalty honours the king.
THE LOVE OF A FATHER
There was a little girl named Maria who grew into a beautiful young woman in a village in Brazil. She was bored of village life, so she joined a friend in running away to the big, exciting city. Her parents were distraught, and her dad went to the city to search for her. He couldn’t find her, and after months of searching, he had to return home to work.
Before he left, counted out all his remaining money, went to an arcade photo booth and produced as many photos of himself as he could. He wrote on the back of each one, went to every bar, boarding house, and public notice board he could find, and he pinned his photo everywhere he could, then returned to the village, heartbroken and missing his daughter.
Weeks later, after a night of partying and excess, Maria came out of some guy’s apartment, feeling dirty, broken, and miserable, when she happened to see a photograph of her father’s face pointed to the notice board. She unpinned it, tuned it over, and as tears rolled down her cheeks, she read this message…
No matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ve become, please come home.
That’s God message to you today, Father’s Day. You might have made mistakes in your life, may have sinned against God, and hurt others. Your daddy wants you home. You might be carrying a burden of guilt, or shame, or pain, or unforgiveness. Your daddy wants you home. You might feel that you have no value, that you are worthless, that no one cares. He cares, and your daddy wants you home.
No matter what you’ve done, no matter what you’ve become, your daddy wants you home today.
