A Father's Impact
- Ashland Church of Christ
- Nov 3, 2024
- 17 min read
Updated: Nov 3, 2024
Guest Pastor J Cook
November 3, 2024
Listen, watch, or read the transcript below.
A Father's Impact
Click the arrow to expand and collapse the scripture verse.
'There was a man in the land of Uz whose name was Job, and that man was blameless and upright, one who feared God and turned away from evil. There were born to him seven sons and three daughters. He possessed 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 yoke of oxen, and 500 female donkeys, and very many servants, so that this man was the greatest of all the people of the east.
His sons used to go and hold a feast in the house of each one on his day, and they would send and invite their three sisters to eat and drink with them. And when the days of the feast had run their course, Job would send and consecrate them, and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all.
For Job said, “It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.” Thus Job did continually. Now there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord , and Satan also came among them. The Lord said to Satan, “From where have you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking up and down on it.”
And the Lord said to Satan, “Have you considered my servant Job, that there is none like him on the earth, a blameless and upright man, who fears God and turns away from evil?”
Then Satan answered the Lord and said, “Does Job fear God for no reason? Have you not put a hedge around him and his house and all that he has, on every side? You have blessed the work of his hands, and his possessions have increased in the land.
But stretch out your hand and touch all that he has, and he will curse you to your face.” And the Lord said to Satan, “Behold, all that he has is in your hand. Only against him do not stretch out your hand.”
So Satan went out from the presence of the Lord . Now there was a day when his sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, '
Job 1:1-13
Listen
Watch
Read
Click to expand the transcribed notes.
Transcribed by Turbo Scribe
I'm a preacher of skin years ago from here. For those of you who have not met me, I'm Jay Cook. And I'm a little, not unorthodox, I'm a little, a lot unorthodox.
And so I'd like to start off a little bit differently than we normally would in church. And so I'd like to ask Julie, if you'll stand up. And all of you ladies, all of you females, if you would stand, please.
Holy nation. Oh, no, no, no. Oh, yeah, royal priesthood.
There you go. Royal priesthood. Royal priesthood.
All right, now, Julie, it's up to you to very quickly count these ladies. How many of you are with us here today? Just ladies. Hi, ladies.
23, 24, 25. I got 25. Good.
I'm glad you helped me. All right, we got 25 ladies. Thank you.
What do you have, Steve? Now, Jane, will you stand up and point me in here today? Guys, will you stand up, please? Just for a minute. Just point me in here. I walked in.
Okay. 17. So we have 25 ladies, 17 men, correct? Oh, 18 men.
18 men. 26 women. 26 women.
All right. So what's our official count? 26 ladies and 18 guys. 18 guys.
I do this for a reason today, and I don't want you ladies to think for a moment that I'm trying to negate the importance of your faithfulness in church. It really does play a big role in the success of church through the centuries. It's always been that there are more women in church than there are men.
Even in the time of Christ, if you'll remember, go through the Gospels and such, there were ladies meeting with the ladies, and you didn't see too many things where there were men that were a part of it. An interesting survey, a startling one, that was done in 1993 was that it asked out of the parents that were there what kind of an impact their bringing their children to church had on when their children got older now and whether they could still retain them. Here's the statistics.
It said that if there was a man and a woman, dad and a mom, that brought children to church on a regular basis, what do you guess would be the number of people that, when they were raised in that environment, that they would go ahead and continue to come to church? You can talk, Richard, I know. A higher percentage. 90 percent.
90? About 50. I don't know the exact percentage. Higher, right? Say 85 percent.
25 percent. Way down. If you ask, here's the startling thing.
If you ask how many, when just their mom brought them to church, and how many of them after the fact showed up after they were out on their own, what would you say that the statistic is? Less than 80 percent. 10 percent. 8. 8? 10? 55.
Lower? Lower? 3. 3? 3 percent. 3 percent. I'm trying to remember any statistics.
Now, here, try this one. How many of a dad said, church is important to me, and I'm going to take my kids regularly, don't have Wyatt with me, but I'll go, and I'll make... What do you suppose that the statistics are as far as young people, children, after that environment that they were raised in? How many of them do you suppose kept going to church when it was just their dad? Higher than 30 percent. 30 percent.
35. 35? Sounds almost like a Pentecostal church here. It's great.
Okay? The answer is 44 percent. Isn't that strange to think about it, the influence? And yet, when we look today, it's typical. It's nothing to knock anybody about, quite honestly.
Isn't it that a man would have more influence on whether or not children go to church after they're out of their grasp? Isn't it kind of a peculiar thing? In our church, one of the things that we were very much aiming towards when we were building our new building about 10 years ago was that when it came to painting, we avoided pastels. You know why? Guys don't like sissy pastels. That's why.
If you can get guys to come to church, you will always have a supportive female cast that will be behind them and supportive of them. If you don't attract men, you're going to lose in the long run. That's what we decided that we were going to do.
Anything that took to the divine, specifically, enough of women for crying out loud, they were very welcome. But what could we do to try and enforce that men could be a part of it? The National Center for Fathering, it conducts a Father of the Year essay every year. It reaches roughly 100,000 schoolchildren in grade school and asks them, it says, describe your dad.
What my father means to me, and I'll do these essays, first grader, my dad is the best dad ever. I'm just a pig for him. First grader, my dad is a Frito-Lay man.
That's an important job because Frito-Lay means chips, which is food, and it's important because you can't live without food. Number three, the third grader, my dad in my life isn't really my dad. He's my grandpa.
But he's been like a dad to me since before I was born. I hope that as I get older, Grandpa will teach me all the stuff he knows about wood and first aid, everything else he knows about. My grandpa isn't my father, but I'm going to be training for all the dads in the world.
Fourth grader, sometimes as a joke, I'll put my stinky socks in his briefcase so it'll work the next day. He'll think of me. Fifth grader, you know what else my dad does? He braids my hair.
I'm the only girl I know whose dad braids her hair. I think that's the perfect dad. He's already the world's greatest dad.
I just wanted everyone to know that. And finally, we've got the sixth grader. One time I had an assembly, and I was the soloist, and my dad was in the first row.
And after I saw him, I smiled at my dad, and my dad smiled back and started to cry. That's the best thing I ever saw in my life, she said. Winston Churchill, we've all been familiar at least with that name.
How many women do we have here tonight? 26. 26, and how many men? Just keep that in your mind, and I'll ask again as we go along. Winston Churchill said that his dad couldn't speak a kind word about him.
For some reason, he was incredibly jealous of Winston Churchill. And in Churchill's book, it says, in the title of the last slide, it says, I'd rather have been an apprentice for a bricklayer, or run errands as a messenger boy, or dress the windows in the local shops, if I could only have had the support of my father. Very few words in the English language that create such an array of thought.
If I mention fathers, there are some here that probably do not look at it as a positive tone. They've had bad experience. There are others that just adore the idea of the word father.
They have a good father. They love him. My brother and I, Tim Bridges et al.
Oh, by the way, just to make sure again that I told you that he wanted to say hi to you. So, for those of you who might remember him. Anyway, we were doing a sermon, and we wanted to find out biblical examples of good fathers.
What we found was astounding. The more we thought of different male characters in the Bible, a lot of them, if not most of them, had these incredible flaws. I mean, you look at it, you have like, take for instance, Abraham that sometimes would lie about his relationship with his wife.
David was vulnerable to sexual temptation. Joshua was a coward. Noah drank too much.
The list goes on and on. And it took a while, but we finally figured out that there's one good example in the Bible about a good dad. We thought, what about Job? Job seems to be the perfect picture of what a man, a Christian man, should be like.
And so, I'd like to read you today from Job, the first chapter, verses 1 through 12. But let me pray and ask God to open our eyes. Father, help us to realize the importance of opening up your word and allowing it to speak.
Allowing it to dwell in us richly. I pray that as we join together in this next few moments, that you would help us to have an emphasis on the importance of us. The importance of doing the right thing as fathers and as mothers.
I pray these things in Jesus' name. Amen. There once was a man named Job who lived in the land above us.
He was blameless, a man of complete integrity. He feared God and stayed away from evil. He had seven sons and three daughters.
He owned 7,000 sheep, 3,000 camels, 500 teams of oxen, and 500 female donkeys. He also had many servants. He was, in fact, the richest person in that entire area.
Job's sons would take turns preparing feasts in their homes. They would also invite their sisters to celebrate with them. When the celebration ended, sometimes after several days, Job would purify his children.
He would get up early in the morning and offer burnt offerings for each of them. That's important. He didn't say, just be with my children, forgive my children.
He had each one of his children, and he prayed specifically for each one of them. For God said to himself, perhaps my children have sinned and have cursed God in their hearts. This was Job's regular practice.
He prayed all the time, individually, for ten kids. One day, the members of the heavenly court came to present themselves before the Lord, and the accuser, Satan, came with them. Where have you come from, the Lord asked Satan.
Satan answered the Lord. I've been patrolling the earth, watching everything that's going on. Then the Lord said, asked Satan, have you noticed my servant Job? He's the finest man in all the earth.
He is blameless, a man of complete integrity. He fears God and stays away from evil. Satan replied to the Lord, oh yeah, but Job has a good reason to fear God.
You've always put a wall of protection around him and his home and his property. You've made him prosper in everything he does. Look how rich he is.
But reach out and take away everything he has, and he will surely curse you to your face. All right, you may test him, the Lord said to Satan. Do whatever you want with everything he possesses, but don't harm him physically.
So Satan left God's presence. Job, what made him a good man? What made him stand out among all the other men in that culture and time? What made him different? That God would protect him, that God would bless everything that he did. Well, I think the point one is that Job was the real deal.
He didn't pretend to love God. He didn't pretend to fear God. He actually was the real deal, and what he saw was what he got.
I've got to tell you, growing up in churches, we saw the underbelly of the church many times. There were lots of men that would be praying up here in front and passing offering and communion and that kind of thing, that it was well known that they had a different lifestyle, period, out in the community. Job was not that kind of guy.
Job was a guy that didn't have flaws. Yeah, he had flaws, but nonetheless, he also was a man that knew exactly what it took to please God by being real. Guys, is the person that you claim to be here today, the person that they see out in the workplace, are you the real deal? Job seemed to be that.
You know, I think one of the things that has changed through the years was World War II, you had men that were overseas fighting battles, and others were in defense factories trying to help, and the churches were filled up with ladies. Their husbands and sons were gone at the time, and unfortunately, there were preachers that wanted to accommodate the ladies, so they would go ahead and they would try and have these soft, sweet messages about Jesus Christ. That's still today, unfortunately.
It seems that we're not getting the total message of Jesus Christ and what He was like. If you think about some of the things that Christ was like, if you ladies are to go ahead and label Him gentle, He's sweet, He's forgiving, He's kind, He's meek, He's all those things that quite honestly do not inspire men. If the men were to say what was Christ like, they would say things like He was brave, He's courageous, He's a man to be reckoned with.
Those are things that yet through the years we have softened the impression of what Christ is like. In reality, we don't get the full picture, and thus we many times lose men. There are two words that the Bible uses for Job that I think makes him just a real guy.
The one was He's blameless, and that's a word to us that means He's complete, the whole package, the real deal, the ordinary sort of person that has integrity. The other word is upright. He's straightforward, just, ultimately very balanced.
He didn't have any hidden agenda. What you saw was what you got. I've got a confession to make to you.
You might not want me back, but I've got to tell you, I think that ministers many times try to put on an air of being someone that they're not. Here it goes. I don't know whether I'm with you next week or not.
I smoke cigars. There it is. I feel so much better.
I'm sorry. It feels so good. I've got such a weight off of me.
If there were a bunch of you here that were honest, they'd say, you know why? I smoke cigars too. You're not supposed to. I mean, there's this thing that says that that's one of those things that men don't do.
Christian men don't smoke. And yet, some of the best times I've had with my son and with my brother are out late in the summer evening in the back porch talking about God and smoking cigars. I think that a lot of times what you have is a problem that we've allowed the world to initiate righteousness and sin.
Take, for instance, the thing that changed my folks would tell me all the time, in public or not, shut up. They used that term. Now, a lot of ladies here are going to go, whoa, whoa, shut up.
That's the word. That's almost the worst word you can use. The truth is that's society.
It's telling us what is moral and what is immoral. I'm not suggesting to tell your kids that. I'm just simply telling you that it changes as time goes on.
Job was a man that I think his children saw him as he really was. If he were to have written his epitaph in the sky, his children would have said, yeah, that's my dad. That's what he's like.
I don't think he tried to hide behind some false spirituality. He was a man that was very well loved, blameless. And yet, he had his flaws like anybody else did.
And I have a sneaking hunch that that endeared him to his children much more than it did to just the opposite. The idea of being real. You know, in this day, I don't know about you.
Let's vote on it. How many of you will be glad when Tuesday is over and we have no more elections? Let's see a strong hand. There you go, right there.
I'm so sick of hearing on both sides, hey, we're going to be the most transparent administration that's ever existed. How many of you believe that? I didn't think so. The truth is they can't even spell transparency.
They have no idea what that means. Job was transparent. Job didn't hide anything.
And I got an idea that his children admired the fact that they would watch dad sometimes struggle with stuff but come out a winner because he was a man that was blameless and kind and good. Number two, Job was rich. Now, that doesn't mean we got to go out and figure out ways to get rich.
What it does mean is that Job didn't use that richness to try and buy his children's affections. As a matter of fact, he kept a good view and perspective on that. As a matter of fact, at the very last in the first chapter, Job said this, I came naked from my mother's womb and I'll be naked when I leave.
The Lord gave me what I had and the Lord has taken it away. Praise the name of the Lord. In all this thing, Job did not sin by blinding God.
Through the years, I've become the chaplain of Jacksonville ideas. People that don't have a church home, they'll a lot of times ask me to do their funerals, their loved ones' funerals. And I'll sit down with the family and I'll ask them, what was grandpa like? And they would give me some answers and I'd say, what are you going to remember the most, grandma or grandma? What are you going to remember the most for? You know, in all the years that I've done that, never once heard one of them say, oh, they were rich.
They left me a lot of money. Matter of fact, it's just the opposite. Little bitty, tiny, everyday things that made a difference.
One said, you know, grandpa took his time out of the field when he could have been in there doing some stuff and he played wiffle bowl with us for the whole afternoon. Grandma, I remember one of those grandmas said, she got out on a bicycle, hadn't been in a bicycle in years, had this long skirt on, but she got out and she drove around with a bike ride with us. Little by little, the little things that we can do, the humble things that we can do are the things that are going to go ahead and trail after you, not the impressive things that we often make the mistake of thinking, but that's why they don't remember us.
We've already alluded to it, but another thing that was good about Joe was that he prayed for his children. I've never known someone that didn't just say, hey, here go kids, that said, hey, be with Justin. Justin needs you at this time or in this specific need.
Be with our daughter Heather. She needs some help right now. Lord, we're asking you.
We don't know what the answer is. We just know that you do and that you tend to bless her and shelter her. In every aspect, praying specifically for your children means so much.
And they'll go, yeah, I'll let my wife pray for them. The truth is they need to hear that our parents are praying for them in person about specific things that they are going through in their lives. Now, unfortunately, that doesn't happen that often.
I've got a good friend, Kim Millett, lives down in Fort Worth, and they married my cousin and we played basketball together. Truth is that Kim is one of the best examples, even now with the children about my kids' age, and they'll call him up and ask him, hey, Dad, will you pray with me? There are times where we'll be there with the other family and one of them will bring up a need and Kim will go and grab him by the shoulders and he'll grab their hand and say, let's pray about that now. We are so hesitant to show any kind of abusive, gee, let's be Christian.
Let's ask God. We can't fix it, but he can. Joe prayed for his children.
One of the things that made him an outstanding man, the last thing that I say here is be very cautious when you start allowing the Holy Spirit of God to rest in you and you be the father that leads like God wants you to. You'll find out that the first target that's there is your family. The very first thing, the thing that you love the most, that has so much difficulty expressing that, that is the first thing that people go after.
Do you know 113? One day when Joe's sons and daughters, and it was a done deal, that was his target, they died. God said to him, you can't kill Joe, but he didn't say you can't attack his family. Unfortunately, that's the very thing that he did.
The thing that was most precious to him. Nothing more saddening or painful than losing a child. Through the years, the funerals that I have done, there is nothing worse than a parent who has to go ahead and give the funeral or memorial service of their children.
Yet, that's what Joe had to endure. So the Lord blessed Joe. After Joe had gone through the testing, says that the second half of his life was more than in the beginning where he had 14,000 sheep, 6,000 camels, 1,000 chains of oxen and 1,000 female goats.
He also gave Joe seven more sons and three more daughters. He named his first daughter Jemima, the second one Kaziah, and the third one, boy, you got me, Karen Hock. I guess that's close.
In all the land, no women were as lovely as the daughters of Joe, and their father put them into his will along with their brothers. And Joe lived 140 years after that. Living to see four generations of his children and grandchildren.
And then he died, an old man who had lived... Man, what's it going to take? For we said of you when you died, hey, they lived a full and long life. We all want that. But unfortunately, many times our pride gets in the way.
Many times when it comes to Christianity, that's a thing that we do because our wives want us to. The reality is that putting God first is the first ingredient that allows for us to have those. God doesn't say you're not going to have temptations and trials.
He allowed that for Joe, who was already right. Nonetheless, God let him be blessed after the fact. After life was so unbearable, his children all dead, his wealth wiped out.
A wife who probably would have been a great source of encouragement, but what did she say to him? Hey, why don't you curse God and die? The truth, you know, I'm glad to see my great-great-great-great kids. Don't seem to think that will happen, but one of the things that I do want, more than anything, is to see my children and their children loving the Lord on the front lines, because that's what God called them to do. How many men do we have here today? Fifteen.
How many women? Twenty-six. That's great. Incidentally, most churches wouldn't have that ratio.
That's a good ratio. But I tell you, man, you play an important part in the next generation of children. Make sure you take it seriously.
Make sure you honor God through your attendance in church and making sure that your children are faithful. That's great. Thank you, Father, that we can lean on you and your word, that it can speak to us and through us.
I pray, Father, that right now, that you just convict us of all the need to make sure that we inspire our children to be what you call them to be, to be faithful, not only now while they're under the care of their parents, but faithful when they're out and leading their own families' lives. I pray these things in Jesus' name, amen.
Kommentit