Father’s Day: God Established the Family

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I enjoy being a father. It is the most important job that I have. I notice certain things about this job more and more. I notice responsibilities, pressures, and joys.

On December 6, 1907, a massive explosion decimated a coal mine in Monongah, West Virginia. Three hundred and sixty-two miners were killed, making this the worst mining disaster in U.S. history. The tragedy devastated the small town and led eventually to the establishment of the U.S. Bureau of Mines.  

The Monongah mine disaster also marked another beginning. Several months after the explosion, a local church held a special service in honor of the 362 miners, most of whom had left behind wives and children. This is the first event on record in the United States set aside specifically to honor dads. 

Two years later, a woman from Spokane who, along with her five siblings, was raised by her widowed father, began a public campaign to establish a national Father’s Day. A day for mothers was already in the works and, according to historical accounts, was a much easier sell to the public. By 1916, President Woodrow Wilson had officially recognized Father’s Day, though it would not be recognized as a national holiday until 1972. 

A little over a hundred years after the mining disaster that birthed Father’s Day, the United States is now suffering a crisis of fatherlessness. One in four American kids are, like so many in that West Virginia town, growing up without their father at home. That amounts to 18.5 million kids. 

If statistics hold, this means that 18.5 million children are three times more likely to engage in criminal activity than those who have dads at home. Those 18.5 million kids are more likely to engage in sexual activity earlier, are less likely to go to college, more likely to have emotional and behavioral problems, more likely to struggle academically, are twice as likely to commit suicide, and much more likely to commit violence. The vast majority of mass shooters in the past 20 years were young men who were, in some way, estranged from their fathers. 

Almost any social good that can be named is dependent on dads who commit to their families and is at risk when they don’t. This does not mean that every child who grows up without dad in the home will not succeed.

Showing up, sticking around, and discipling kids as only a father can is a powerful witness to the beautiful design and the steadfast love of our own heavenly Father. Every kid needs and deserves one.[1] 

Fathers and mothers, and the family are part of God’s natural law. Natural law is the ethical or moral structure that God has revealed to humans in creation (both within their consciences and in the providential unfolding of history) and which is discerned through reason and experience.  The concept of natural law has existed since the earliest days of the church. When Paul wrote of those who “by nature do what the law requires” (Romans 2:14), he may have been thinking in terms of natural law.[2]

As we celebrate Father’s Day I want to focus on God’s order. God established the family.

My theme today is that God established the family as the first institution. We must honor the family.

  1. God established the family (Genesis 2:18-24).
    1. In Gen. 2:18 the Lord says that it is not good for man to be alone and so the Lord created Eve.
    2. Look at: Genesis 2:21–24 (ESV): 21 So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. 22 And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. 23 Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man.” 24 Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.
    3. In that passage God is setting the first institution, which is the family.
    4. God officiated the wedding for Adam and Eve.
    5. As one writes: This is a wedding. You know how the father brings the bride down the aisle to the groom? In this case, the father is God. God is doing the honors, and he’s bringing the wife to the husband. When Adam sees Eve, he literally explodes into art. This is the first piece of art in the history of the world, according to the Bible. This is Hebrew poetry using parallelism, assonance, word play, and a chiastic structure. It’s a song. He’s exploding into poetry and song…[3]
    6. In Genesis 3, the devil temps Eve and Adam does not step up and defend his wife. Sin then enters the world.
    7. In Genesis 4, the two, Adam and Eve, become 4, and then many more Cain and Abel followed by others.
    8. This is the family, the first institution given to society.
    9. There is a principle, it is This means the closest people to a situation are most equipped to handle the situation. Your family is most equipped to take care of the needs of your family. Poland is most equipped to handle the needs of Poland. Ohio is most equipped to handle the needs of Ohio. It is not good to micromanage.
    10. Family is critical for the health of society. God established the family. God established and placed it on our hearts as part of natural law the idea of mom, dad, and family order.
    11. Exodus 20:12 (ESV) 12 “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you.
    12. Paul later says in Eph. 6:2 that this is the only commandment with a promise. The point is that no civilization can live well in the land without respect for parents.
    13. Family was God’s idea, not man’s.
  2. Father’s have a significant rule as provider and spiritual leader in the family.
    1. Sticking with the Old Testament we can see the consequences when dad’s don’t lead in the family. In 2 Samuel 13 David’s son Amnon raped his sister Tamar. David did not do anything about it. This led to David’s son Absalom taking matters into his own hands and then eventually David almost lost the kingdom. David should have been the dad.
    2. But what about the New Testament?
    3. In the New Testament we have household codes. We find these in Eph. 5:22-6:9; Col. 3:18, 22, and 1 Peter 3. In the Pauline household codes Paul reflects the household codes of the Greco-Roman world, but he is a little subversive. In the Greco-Roman world the father was the head of the house and his rule was absolute. The male head of household is referred to as the paterfamilias. The paterfamilias maintained power over property and family members—even power of life and death. [4]
    4. But in Ephesians 5:21, before Paul writes about family order he writes:
    5. Ephesians 5:21 (ESV) …21 submitting to one another out of reverence for Christ.
    6. Then Paul writes: “Wives to your husbands, as to the Lord…” (Eph. 5:22).
    7. There is still an order in the family, but we have mutual submission. I think Paul, inspired by the Holy Spirit, is still considering the husband, the leader of the family, the spiritual leader, and the head, but we must be servant leaders. As we continue in Ephesians 5 Paul gives the example of what Jesus did. Husbands are to be like Jesus. What did Jesus do? He came and served us. He came and died to take care of our sin problem.
    8. Ephesians 5:23–25 (ESV) 23 For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. 24 Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. 25 Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her…
    9. Now, look at this Jesus is the head of the church and He died for the church. The church is the bride of Christ, there is family language again. Jesus took care of the bride’s spiritual need.
    10. Husbands, fathers, must be spiritual leaders of our family.
    11. We are the pastor of our family.
    12. What does it mean to watch over our children spiritually?
    13. The Bible makes it clear that we are to pass on the faith to the next generation:
    14. Deuteronomy 6:4–9 (ESV) 4“Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7 You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9 You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.
    15. All through the Old Testament it talked about teaching our children and grandchildren about the Lord. Not just about God in a generic sense, but the Lord.
    16. It means to introduce them to Jesus. Show them that you love Jesus. Show them that you treasure Jesus. Bring them with you to church. Read the Bible with them. Pray with them. Pray for them. Discipleship begins at home, and, again, you are the pastor of your family.
    17. Sitting at his father’s bedside after watching him take his last breath, John Piper spoke these words:I look you in the face and promise you with all my heart: Never will I forsake your gospel. O how you believed in hell and heaven and Christ and cross and blood and righteousness and faith and salvation and the Holy Spirit and the life of holiness and love. I rededicate myself, Daddy, to serve your great and glorious Lord Jesus with all my heart and with all my strength. You have not lived in vain. Your life goes on in thousands. I am glad to be one.
  • The family is a gift from God.
    1. This is God’s order.
    2. God established the family.
    3. God established the family with husbands, and wives, children, and grandchildren. The world may be confused, but we should not be confused.
    4. The world is confused.
    5. Gavin Ortlund writes;
    6. The sense of chaos and disintegration introduced by atheism is powerfully conveyed in Friedrich Nietzsche’s famous parableof the “madman.” This character (generally regarded as representing Nietzsche) runs to the marketplace and cries out,
    7. “Whither is God?” . . . “I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the sea? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us?”[5]
    8. Once they take away God there is no hope, no backward, sideward, forward. It is empty and cold. The world may be confused about the family, but we do not need to be confused about the family.
    9. In his famous essay on existentialism, for example, Jean-Paul Sartre rejected the efforts of earlier French atheists to retain objective morality apart from God, statingthat “the existentialist . . . finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven.”[6]
    10. When God is rejected, when His values are rejected, what follows is the rejection of morality, ethics, values, and of course family.
    11. God gave us family.
    12. We don’t need to be confused. We must be model examples.
    13. God created family. God gave family as a gift.
    14. Do you realize that family is a gift given by God?
    15. God created Eve for Adam because there was a need. It was not right that man should be alone (Gen. 2:18). In other words, though we say God should be enough, the norm is that we need other people. This is natural law. This is God’s natural order which He established with creation. God gave family as a gift.
    16. The family is God’s first institution.
    17. Dads are the pastor of the family.

By the way, AND this is very important, sometimes families are divided. Sometimes dads are absent. This happens too often, and it is tragic. We must all remember that God is our heavenly Father. We must all remember that the church is our family. Family is a central metaphor for understanding our relationship to God. Israel is portrayed as the Lord’s daughter or wife (Jer 3:20; 31:22). Jesus’ followers are children of God; His brothers and sisters (Mark 3:31–35). In many of the letters of the apostles, followers of Jesus are referred to as brothers and sisters (Rom 16:17). The covenant with God is understood as a great extended family.[7]

Sometimes, families are even divided by the Gospel. Jesus said that would happen (Matthew 10:21, 36; Mark 13:12). Still, that is part of the sinful world. God’s order for the family was established in the Garden of Eden. Praise God for family. Praise God for fathers, mothers, children, and grandchildren.

God created us to be with him. (Genesis 1-2)

Our sin separated us from God. (Genesis 3)

Sins cannot be removed by good deeds (Gen 4-Mal 4)

Paying the price for sin, Jesus died and rose again. (Matthew – Luke)

Everyone who trusts in him alone has eternal life. (John – Jude)

Life that’s eternal means we will be with Jesus forever. (Revelation 22:5)

Pray

[1] https://breakpoint.org/healthy-cultures-rest-on-dads-shoulders/

[2] Brian Collins, “Natural Law,” in Lexham Survey of Theology, ed. Mark Ward et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2018).

[3] Timothy J. Keller, The Timothy Keller Sermon Archive (New York City: Redeemer Presbyterian Church, 2013).

[4] Ibid.

[5] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/article/apologetics-age-despair/

[6] Ibid.

[7] Michelle J. Morris, “Family,” in The Lexham Bible Dictionary, ed. John D. Barry et al. (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016).

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