May 21, 2025 • 48 mins
In this powerful continuation of last week's message on "A Mother's Love," Pastor Raines turns our attention to the role of fathers in the home, the church, and the world. Originally preached on May 27, 1990, this timeless message explores the difference between worldly fatherhood and God's kind of father—one grounded in love, obedience, and reverence for God's Word.
Through the sobering story of Eli and his sons from 1 Samuel 2, Pastor Raines offers biblical insight into the consequences of passive fatherhood and the vital responsibility fathers have in leading spiritually. Learn how to become a father who honors God, teaches truth, and lives out faith with conviction.
Whether you're a father, hope to be one, or simply want to better understand God's design for fatherhood, this message will challenge and encourage you.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
Hello friends and welcome or welcome back.
(00:17):
This is the Legacy Bible Podcast where we will be bringing you legacy audio and legacy
lessons from the Bible, from the Tape archives of the Fellowship Bible Church in
Joliet
Illinois, my name is Marcus Onate
(00:38):
I'm the host and I'll be bringing you more legacy audio.
And today we're going to be having, well this is actually a week after the one we hand
last week which was from 1990.
It was about the perfect level of a mother.
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Well, this is a continuation but it is about fathers.
So this is titled A Father's Love and it's from May 27th 1990.
So we got the mothers and now you're going to hear Pastor Rains speak on fathers.
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So Lets all.
Listen in.
They'll be a good message.
Want to be ready to open into your up your Bible to 1 Samuel 2.
I'm coming to that in a minute.
Might be surprised by the title this morning, A Father's Love.
God's kind of father.
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We just had that extra message on a mother's love last Sunday.
And I really wanted a season of time with you on the place of a father in this world.
God's kind of father.
So I thought rather than wait till Father's Day, I don't have the advantage of these weeks
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beforehand to just enjoy truths from the Word of God and to be directed on some of these
things that God would tell us over maybe two or three weeks.
Well, where do you learn to be a father?
You learn it from the example of your father?
(02:27):
Some do.
Maybe they have good examples to teach them how to be the father that God would want him
to be.
Or do you just let it happen?
That's another way you could learn to be a good father just by letting fatherhood happen
as it comes.
You know, whatever comes from living life, the way those around you want to live it,
you want to just kind of just go with the flow, be a father, whatever is demanded by the circumstances.
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There's another way.
You want to do this one, gentlemen, in agreement with your wife and with her help, you just
live the way that satisfies both of you.
A lot of people in the world think that's what makes life happy.
And certainly if the couple can be happy by just being agreed and living by the same
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standards, then whatever comes of their marriage, like children and being mothers and fathers,
that can also just happen by the two of them being agreed, both being happy with all that
they do, but living by their own self-standards.
That's how you get happy.
Maybe.
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How about this?
Live to be the best father with all the input, the best input, let's even say, that you can
get from books, newspapers, TV, radio and magazine.
Learn how to be a good father that way.
How about this?
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Learn to be a good father from the psychologist and the psychiatrist.
The experts on how to live.
I suggest that you want to read their books, though, because if you have to go see them
personally, it's a very expensive route to take.
Now, another way, learn how to be a good father, is from your own common sense.
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Have you ever heard that?
Why?
Anybody with common sense would know how to do this or that.
Common sense.
I want to go to the first one I mentioned from the example of your own father.
Learn to be God's kind of father from the example of your own father.
I get a little bit personal here.
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I've got to tell you about my father.
All the years you folks have known me, I've probably never told you these things, but
let me share some things with you.
My father married when he was 18 years old.
My sister was born when he was 19 and I was born when he was 21.
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My father was raised in the rural south.
He had no brothers.
All sisters, that's all he had.
And he had a father who was alive, but he was an absentee kind of father very often.
My grandfather was off cutting timber in Arkansas or Missouri, where he was off tending wheat
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fields in Kansas and left his family back home in Arkansas for many, many months, sometimes
for whole growing seasons or whole logging seasons, sometimes for years.
Then he would return.
My father was at home tending the fields of cotton, strawberries, rice, because they lived
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in the lowlands area next to the Mississippi and went to church occasionally.
But I know the church or the message there or the Savior had a little impact on his life.
He quit high school so he could work.
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Many of his sisters went north to the big city, that wonderful metropolis at Glorious
Place, Chicago.
They all heard about that wonderful place down there.
And so my grandparents with my father followed and they came to Chicago.
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And they got jobs.
And while he was there, he met a girl from the rural south of the very southernmost
tip of Illinois.
And they got married.
By the age of 25, my father's marriage was in trouble.
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By the time he was 27, his marriage had ended in divorce.
He went back to the rural south with three children and no wife.
He had failed as a husband and my mother had failed as a wife.
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He had failed as a father.
My mother didn't have place in her life for three children because she wanted to live
for herself.
My father didn't know how to be a father.
So he farmed his children out to aunts, knuckles, grandparents.
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And for years, we lived not together, but we lived sometimes and most often separate
from one another as children with different relatives in different states.
I've lived in five states as a child, passed around among the relatives.
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No, I couldn't learn from my father.
An example of how to be a godly father.
How about you?
Maybe you could.
Maybe you had that wonderful experience.
I didn't.
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One of the major flaws in the examples of our human parents and fathers in particular
is talked about in Hebrews chapter 12.
Like to read something there from the New American Standard Version about our earthly
fathers.
Hebrews 12.
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At verse 9 and 10 says this.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them.
Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live?
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For they that's speaking of our earthly fathers, they disciplined us for a short time.
As seemed best to them.
But he speaking of God, disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.
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What a difference between the standard used by earthly fathers and the standard used by
God, our heavenly father.
Our earthly fathers guided us and even corrected us as seemed best to them.
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Where they got their understanding of what was best, well, they're all different.
They get it from different places.
But God deals with us by one perfect standard.
Out of his righteousness, out of his love for us, he deals with us only according to
what's good for us.
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He knows perfectly what's good for us.
And he always deals with us according to what's good for us.
No other standard is ever allowed to operate with God for us.
What a wonderful heavenly father.
That's the difference between the earthly parents that we have and how they deal with
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us and how God deals with us.
For our good, we may share his holiness.
How about this one?
You can't follow the example of our earthly fathers.
Let's just perhaps just let it happen.
That's how you learn to be a godly father.
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Just go with the flow.
Letting all those around you live as they please.
And so you seek to live as you please.
Now, for that, I need to turn you to 1 Samuel.
That's where I wanted you to be.
With me in chapter 2, I'd like to look at a little story in 1 Samuel 2 to learn about
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being a father.
There's a section in 1 Samuel 2, princely starts in chapter 2, verse 12 through 17.
I'd like to tell you about a man who was a high priest in this time named Eli.
This was before Saul was king.
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This was before David, of course.
He was the next one after Saul to be king.
So this is during the last days of the Judgement.
The days of the Judges lasted for 350 years after Israel got into the promised land.
After Moses was taken by the Lord, there was 350 years when God raised up one man after
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another as occasion required for defending the country from enemies.
Basically that, there were more military leaders than they were spiritual leaders.
What God's desire was that anybody that be in leadership, whether it be military or
political, that they'd be first of all a spiritual leader.
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He did have the priesthood in place and the man that was the high priest was, as I say,
Eli.
He had two sons, Offni and Phineas.
Offni, you know, names of the Old Testament all have a meaning.
Don't you hate to go through that life with that one?
Offni.
You'd have to say, excuse me every time somebody said, what's your name?
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Excuse you.
It meant Pugilist.
Now, Pugilist is a fist fighter.
What's your name?
Fist fighter.
Not a very encouraging kind of name, not kind of fellow that you would necessarily want
to meet.
It wasn't a peaceable man, but he had a brother named Phineas.
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Now, there's a name for you.
It means this is one you'd like, isn't it?
Mouth of a serpent.
Two boys, whatever, inspire a father to name his boys, Offni and Phineas.
Pugilist and mouth of a serpent, but they certainly fit their names.
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They were evil, man, though they were priests.
And by the way, they served in the priesthood.
It's very clear in verse 12, they did not know the Lord.
They did not know the Lord.
They were sons of Eli, but they were also sons of Satan, sons of Bileil, or Bileil.
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They were sons of Satan.
They didn't know the Lord, but they were going about seeking to do service at the tabernacle
as priests for God.
There they were, this fighter and mouth of a serpent, sons of Satan, didn't know the
Lord.
And their father was the high priest.
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Now if there ever was a man who should have been an example of a godly father, it should
have been the high priest in Israel, the chosen people of God, and the man who was
in the premier place of leading the people in their worship, the man who was in the place
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of intercession for the nation before God.
Prime spiritual leadership.
Certainly he should have been a godly example to follow.
He wasn't.
He wasn't at all.
The situation was this, as these men grew to be adults and they joined in the priesthood,
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they went about the priesthood on their own terms.
Israelites would bring their offerings to the tabernacle and they would send their servants,
it tells us, with a three-pronged hook, the idea that is that if you stick a three-pronged
hook in a pot, what they would do, they would better explain.
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The Israelites would bring their sacrifices and they would be seething them, boiling part
of them, maybe in a big pot or a cauldron.
And the priests, Haphne and Phineas would send their servant along with a three-pronged
hook and get down into the cauldron and grab onto whatever meat they could with that
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three-pronged hook and whatever they came up with was for them.
One-pronged hook would get some, the two-pronged hook would get more, but they made sure they
had a three-pronged hook, they got a lot of it.
They wanted a large portion for themselves, but it got worse.
Israelites would come to the tabernacle with an offering and of course the chief parts
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were for the Lord, not for people, not for the priests, and one of the chief parts, you
can read the book of Leviticus on this, one of the chief parts was the fat.
My kids can't understand this, but I just tell you, this is the way the Lord looked at
it, that the fat was a special delight to him.
It's understandable if you understand that the offerings were made by fire, that when
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an offering was placed on the burning coals and the wood, that the oil in the fat would
fuel the fire and it would make the flame even burn brighter, stronger.
The fat was what that is, that which was rich, that which was a great delight.
It had the oil in it and oil everywhere it would seem in the word of God, speaks to
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us of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
Nonetheless, the fat was a special delight, and by the way the priests were never to take
their portion until it had been burned with fire, until it was either roasted on the altar
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or boiled or seethed in a pot or a cauldron.
They never could take their portion until the Lord's, first of all, the favored parts
were given to the Lord and then the rest of it was offered unto the Lord.
Not Haphne and Phineas, Phineas wanted their portion first.
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Israel I would come to the tabernacle with his offering and they would say, give me
the fat.
Israel I would object and say, well, now wait a minute, make sure if you take the fat that
you offer it on the fire first.
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Give me some of the meat when they would say, well, wait a minute, it's raw still.
It hasn't been offered to the Lord by fire yet.
The servant, even of the priest, would even go this far.
You either give it to me or I will take it by force.
The Israelites would submit and they would let them take the sacrifice, not because they
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wanted them to do it that way, but because the priest wanted the very best for themselves.
They wanted to be first, even before God.
You say, well, that certainly, apparently that was wrong, but how upset was God about
that?
And the answer is from the Word of God.
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He was very, very upset.
Verse 17, wherefore the sin of the young man was very great before the Lord.
Well, you know what it did?
It turned people away from even wanting to give their offerings to God.
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Even if you were a part of a ministry that was supposed to be for the Lord's glory, and
you had sacrificially given to that ministry, and then one day it was disclosed that the
fellow that was ahead of that ministry was building a multi-thousand dollar air condition
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houses for his dog with your money.
Or he was buying multiple luxury automobiles.
Or for God's glory, he was buying a million dollar house or a multiple million dollar
house.
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Or his wife had 200 pairs of shoes.
You just heard these little things.
Wouldn't that make you not want to give your money?
Wouldn't that make you think, no, wait a minute.
I am sacrificing to give to the Lord, and my sacrifices to God are being abused by the
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people that I am giving those sacrifices to.
Why should I give my sacrificial giving?
Why should I give it into the hands of people that are going to do that kind of thing?
I just won't give it.
You can understand that's exactly what was going on back here.
People said, no, we're not going to give.
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If that's what's going to be done, we're not going to give.
People turn and afford the sacrifices of God.
You say, well, why is that?
Why was that so important?
Because every sacrifice we've studied this together, every sacrifice in the Old Testament
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days, every sacrifice was a picture of the Lord Jesus and of his suffering and of his
pure sacrifice.
After the sin and the trespass was answered for, these sacrifices were perfect pictures
of the fellowship that he opened up to us as his children, as the sons of God, to that
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great place of fellowship at the Lord.
And if you despise the offerings of God, especially as we see ourselves back here in
the Old Testament days, you are despising the sacrifice really of the Savior.
Not that they understood all of these things, but God did.
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And God would have none of it.
And God was very angry with these boys.
And so he said, a man of God to Eli to tell him his thoughts.
And God really warned Eli about this, what was going on.
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Over here at verse 27, it says it was a man of God that came to Eli.
We don't even know who it was.
Just one of those people that God used who sometimes it was a prophet.
You know, Elijah was called a man of God, Eli She was, and others.
But sometimes they're just never named for us.
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Sometimes we're not really led to understand that they are in an special way, a prominent
prophet or something that God saw fit to at least tell us of.
We'll meet these folk in glory.
But this godly man raised the Lord that was somebody in Israel that could be called a
man of God.
This man of God came to Eli with a message from the Lord.
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He came to Eli with a rebuke.
First of all, now in verse 29, we find out what he's upset about, what the Lord is upset
about.
Wherefore, kicky at my sacrifice and my offering, which I've commanded in my habitation and
honorist I sons above me to make yourselves fat, the chief, the offerings of Israel, my
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people.
When you look at that second part of that verse where he says, he says, and honorist
by sons above me, any time you give greater credence to the thoughts, to the values of
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somebody else above God, you really have displaced God.
But somebody thinks, can never be placed above what God thinks.
What somebody's opinion is, should never be placed above what God's opinion is.
What somebody likes, should never be placed above what God likes.
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What somebody says, should never be placed above what God says.
So if there's a whole lot of social pressure to go a certain way, the question isn't how
many people want me to go that way, the question should be, what does God want?
I like what the Apostle Paul says in the book of Romans, let God be true in every man
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of life.
But that's what it takes.
Let me stand with God, that the whole world is against a certain position.
That's okay if God's for it.
I'll stand with God.
If God and I are alone, that's good enough for me.
But not for Eli.
See these were his boys.
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Old fist fighter and mouth of the serpent, they were his boys.
And what they said and what they did was more important to him than what God said.
And he was the high priest.
That's not the kind of father that God would want us to be.
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He was angry and God said, you have put your sons above me.
You've honored them.
You've considered them.
You've preferred them above me.
That was first.
And so he was, he not only did that, I think in this verse we can find that he also went
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along with it.
You see, where's that?
I think it's right here in this last phrase, to make yourselves fat with the chief, with
all the offerings of Israel, my people.
You see it doesn't say themselves, it says yourselves.
When did he get out of that?
I get this.
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Though the ones who were active, the ones that were the chief doers in all of this was,
in fact, often the infinious, still their father must have enjoyed eating this stuff
with them.
Apparently, they live pretty much in the same area, if not in the same house.
We don't know.
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But he said, yourselves, you made yourselves fat.
This isn't just poetic language, people.
Let me tell you, Eli was a fat man.
I wasn't going to do it until afterwards, but let me show you at chapter four, at the
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end of Eli's life, we'll come to that moment.
But I thought I better just prove that he was a fat man to you.
He, first Samuel, four, verse 15, now Eli was 90 and eight years old, and his eyes were
dimmed that he could not see.
This man was old, practically blind.
And the man said, in Eli, I am the commodity army and I'm fled out of the army.
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And he said, what is there?
What is there?
Done my son in the messenger answer and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines.
And there has been also a great slaughter among the people, and by two sons also hopped
me in.
Finneas are dead, and the Ark of God is taken.
And it came to pass when he made mention of the Ark of God that he fell back off the
seat backward by the sight of the gate and his neck break.
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And he died.
Where he was an old man and heavy.
He was an old man and he was fat.
How did he get fat?
He got fat, according to chapter two, by eating the sacrifices.
Because God's word to the man of God was this, to make yourselves fat with the cheapest
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of all the offerings of Israel, my people.
To the priests to have the chief offerings.
No.
Who was supposed to have the chief offerings?
God.
The chief offerings were to go to God.
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You say, but I only like filet mignon.
I don't like teabone.
You know, ribeye is okay, but I feel I am in yon of the ribeye.
That's what I have to eat.
I'm sorry.
If the Bible said that ribeye and filet mignon are for God, then you eat weiners.
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Not these boys.
Not these boys.
They said we want the fat in all the best meat.
And here was Eli saying, well, I like it too.
So give me some passive boys.
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And he was eating it with them.
He not only didn't withstand them, he not only didn't correct them, he kind of went
along with it.
And either way, there's a truth there that if you don't stand against something that's
wrong, really you go along with it.
You may be silent about it, but you're giving silent a cent.
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Especially if you're in the place of leadership, especially if you're in the place where you're
the one that's supposed to give the discipline and guide the way.
A father has the responsibility for leading in the right way.
A father has the responsibility.
He can't say, well, I didn't really actively pursue that.
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I didn't really tell him to do that, but if the father doesn't stand against him, if
the father doesn't set out the right path, God holds him responsible.
You've got men, you've got to set out the way of God for your children.
We better say we, we have to set out the way of the Lord for our children.
We have to set out God's path.
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We are responsible.
God holds us responsible.
This man was not a good father.
So here's the principle that underlies God's whole dealings with us on these matters.
Man, here in chapter 2, down at verse 30, look at the last part of that verse.
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He says this, them that honor me, I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly
esteem.
When you get through all of this, what it comes down to is this.
If you honor God, he will honor you.
And if you despise the word of God, then he will not honor you.
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He will not bless you.
You can't claim the blessings of God on your family if you don't first come to him, find
out how he wants you to live, what kind of father, what kind of man, what kind of husband
he wants you to be.
If you don't follow God's guidelines, then don't expect him to bless your home.
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It's just that plane.
What happened kind of already read this.
He was predicted by this man of God for him that his sons, his grandsons and all those
after them at verse 33 were bring grief to his heart.
That's what Eli was told.
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And indeed they would.
They were going to die in their youth.
That's part of it.
We're going to die young and a sign for all of this being true is given in verse 34.
Here's a sign.
And here is the sign.
A sign is a special working of God that somebody would recognize.
I mean, it was something evident that when you looked at it, you could say, that's proof
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that God is at work.
Okay?
Well, how could Eli know for sure that what God said to him was really going to happen?
Here's the sign.
The sign was that Houghtony and Phineas in one day were both going to die in one day.
What I'm saying is that if Eli's line, if all the men in Eli's line were going to die
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young, if it was going to be a curse on his line over the years ahead, one way that Eli
could be absolutely sure that that's exactly what was going to happen would be this, that
is two boys were going to both die in one day.
Now if one died one day and another didn't die till the next day, then of course God's
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word would be broken.
And he wouldn't have to worry about that curse.
It isn't how it happened, Bill.
You see, Philistines and the Israelites had one of their many flare-ups in war and they
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set themselves against one another.
And in one day, four thousand Israelites died.
And the Israelites after that day's battle, they got together and said, oh, what happened?
Four thousand of our men died.
I'll tell you what we'll do, they said.
Let's go up to Shiloh.
That was the town where the Chabernacle was kept at that time.
And let's get the Ark of the Covenant.
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That was the little Gopherwood box that was covered in gold and had a gold lid on it,
called a Mercy Seat.
Let's bring that down and let's put that before the army and the Lord will lead us into victory.
But God was at work.
It was very foolish counsel to start with.
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But Houghtony and Phineas were up at Shiloh with the Ark of the Lord, you see?
And so when they brought the Ark down, here it came along, Houghtony and Phineas.
Priests were not supposed to be out in the front of the army.
The Ark of the Lord was not supposed to be out in the front of the army.
But that's the way it was.
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They went into battle the next day.
The Ark of the Covenant was out in front.
Well, we can't say the next day.
It did take them time to get up to Shiloh and get it down there.
But the next time they went into battle, at least I can say, the Ark of the Covenant
was out in front of the army.
Houghtony and Phineas were out there with it carrying it no doubt with the poles.
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And in front and one behind and off against the Philistines they went.
But things didn't quite work out the way they expected.
Verse 10 of chapter 4 tells us that in that day, now this is an awful thing to think about,
but 30,000 men died, 30,000 men died.
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Now could God allow the terribleness of this whole thing that these two men had done,
this awfulness that this father had done, how could God allow that to affect so many other
lives?
Gentlemen, your fatherhood doesn't stop at your doorstep.
The impact of your life on the lives of your sons and your daughters has a ripple effect.
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It goes out through them to others.
And it does affect also the name and the glory of God.
And it's an awful thing to consider.
The 30,000 more men had to die as a result of the sin of these two boys and their father.
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He got back to Eli from a messenger and I read that to you already.
He heard about the Ark of God.
He heard about his two sons.
That was bad enough.
But when he heard about the Ark of God being taken by the Philistines, he fell off his
stool backwards and broke his neck because of his great fatness, his great age and his
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blindness.
The way that man was not just physically blind, he was spiritually blind.
He knew the word of God, but he didn't obey it.
Here is the answer for us, gentlemen.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6, we have a word from God about how to be good fathers.
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It starts at verse 4.
There is only one God.
Make him your God.
How do you do that?
Verse 5.
And by the way, the Lord Jesus quoted this verse and called it the first and great command.
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There is no command in all this Bible, gentlemen, that can be put above this one.
This is it.
Now shall love the Lord by God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all
thine might.
Want to be the right kind of father, God's kind of father?
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Love first, love the Lord with all your heart.
No, number two, let's re-on.
On these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.
Number two is this, after loving the Lord with all your heart, mine, soul and strength.
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Number two is to love his word.
You see?
Have his word in your heart.
Have his word in your heart.
Love the Lord, have his word in your heart.
(39:30):
Number three, verse seven.
And thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children.
Love the Lord, have his word in your heart and teach it.
Teach it first to your children.
(39:51):
First, first to your children.
Next, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the
way and when thou lieest down and when thou riseest up.
(40:12):
First, we said, love the Lord.
Second, have his word in your heart.
Third, teach it.
Teach it to your children.
Fourth, talk of it.
Now teach it and talk of it is different.
To teach it means you set out the truths of God's word to them.
And talk of it means you bring it into your conversation.
(40:33):
You know you can teach by opportunity.
There is what sometimes in the teaching profession they call the teachable moment.
It's like mommy, why are daffodils yellow?
You know, they can come up with some interesting questions little kids can't.
(40:56):
What makes the grass green?
Why don't snakes have legs?
You ever never got any of those?
It's fun.
It holds the clouds up.
Never get that one?
(41:17):
Some of them are real sticklers.
Simple little questions.
It's a teachable moment.
That's the time when they would like to know about what holds the clouds up.
So you can say, well, let me tell you about the evaporation precipitation cycle.
No, maybe you can't down there level.
You have to say, well, that's like this.
And then you go off to tell them about the water vapor and winds and things like that.
(41:41):
And you'll probably notice after three or four minutes, if you keep going on about it, they're
probably more worried about something else than they are about what they've just asked
you about.
You'll probably run your course on that one.
You'll have to teach them about something else now.
And so teachable moments come and go.
Talk means bring the truths of God into your conversation.
Well, sometimes old fist fighter lets his brother have it in the mouth.
(42:13):
Or old mouth of a serpent says something evil.
And you say, listen, that is not the way God would want us to behave.
That's a teachable moment.
Eli didn't do that.
He didn't seem to love the Lord with all of his heart.
He didn't have his word in his heart.
(42:34):
So that really means to respond to it.
He wasn't teaching it.
And he certainly wasn't talking about it as he should have been.
All through the day, talking about it.
And then there's something further here in verse eight and nine and thou shall bind them
for a sign upon nine hand and they shall be as frontlets between nine eyes and thou shall
(42:55):
write them upon the post of thine house and on thy gates.
It just simply means have God's word as a standard for every part of your life.
Have God's word as a standard for every part of your life.
Love the Lord.
Have his word in your heart.
Teach the word of God.
Talk of the word of God and have the word of God as the foundation for everything else
(43:19):
in your life.
And then it says a little bit farther down the road here.
If you forget the Lord, don't forget the Lord.
Verse 12, be aware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out the land of Egypt
and from the house of bondage.
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Don't turn away from God.
Don't get so busy in this life.
Don't get so busy.
Whatever you're doing in this life that you just forget about God.
No more Memorial Day parades.
People have just forgotten.
No more remembering.
(44:02):
I want to tell you and I want to warn you with this.
Don't forget about God.
He is always going to be Lord.
He is always and only the Savior.
And so this further counsel right behind that or below that at verse 13, thou shall
fear the Lord thy God and serve him and shall swear by his name.
(44:26):
Fear him.
Serve him.
Swear by his name.
Attune your heart to God.
Use your life for his purpose and will and make sure everything you're committed to first
rests on him, his righteousness, his nature.
(44:51):
Nothing less.
And when your sons come and ask a question over here in verse 21, and when thy son asked
at thee in time to come, what mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the
Lord our God has commanded you, what are you going to say?
(45:15):
The answer comes down in verse 24.
This is the answer, gentlemen, you give to your sons and your daughters.
The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always,
but he might preserve us alive as it is at this day.
(45:38):
You want the goodness of God, then fear this, and it shall be our righteousness if we observe
all these commandments before the Lord our God as he have commanded us.
That's what you say to your children.
God gave it to us.
Now we want to be blessed.
We're going to follow it.
This is the word of God.
These are the guidelines for our life.
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He's given them to us.
Now we want to be blessed in this life.
We're going to follow them.
And that's why they're in our home.
And that's why they're the foundation of our home.
And that's why they're taught.
And that's why we talk of them.
And that's why we fear the Lord and serve him and swear by his name.
That would be a good father.
God's kind of father.
(46:25):
You've got to go this way.
Let's pray.
Lord, pray that there is a father or even thinks that he will someday be a father.
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Might commit himself in a new and a fresh way today to love the with all his heart.
And let your word be written on his heart.
And he might teach it.
And he might talk of it.
It might be the foundation for every principle and everything he does in all of his life.
(47:11):
He might fear you and serve you and swear by your name.
And know that is very blessing in this.
Okay, there we have it.
Thank you, Pastor Raines.
I noticed it got cut off a little bit there at the end, but got to expect that kind of
thing from old tape recordings.
(47:34):
But still I think it was worth it even though we missed a little bit of the closing prayer.
If you like that, come back next week.
We'll have more.
I'm not sure if it'll be on fathers or not, but it'll be on something.
So come back.
If you want to check out our website, you can do that.
There's some nice transcripts up there.
(47:56):
You can read just a lot of information in those.
I think we're up to episode 51 in those.
So you can check those out.
And if you like, please subscribe to comment.
And of course, share it with others so that you can share it with your friends, your neighbors,
your family, wherever you want.
(48:20):
Tell them about the Legacy Bible Podcast.
Alrighty then.
So thank you for listening and I'll be seeing you next week.
Until then, have a great day.
See you later.
Bye.
Hello friends and welcome or welcome back.
(00:17):
This is the Legacy Bible Podcast where we will be bringing you legacy audio and legacy
lessons from the Bible, from the Tape archives of the Fellowship Bible Church in
Joliet
Illinois, my name is Marcus Onate
(00:38):
I'm the host and I'll be bringing you more legacy audio.
And today we're going to be having, well this is actually a week after the one we hand
last week which was from 1990.
It was about the perfect level of a mother.
(01:01):
Well, this is a continuation but it is about fathers.
So this is titled A Father's Love and it's from May 27th 1990.
So we got the mothers and now you're going to hear Pastor Rains speak on fathers.
(01:23):
So Lets all.
Listen in.
They'll be a good message.
Want to be ready to open into your up your Bible to 1 Samuel 2.
I'm coming to that in a minute.
Might be surprised by the title this morning, A Father's Love.
God's kind of father.
(01:44):
We just had that extra message on a mother's love last Sunday.
And I really wanted a season of time with you on the place of a father in this world.
God's kind of father.
So I thought rather than wait till Father's Day, I don't have the advantage of these weeks
(02:05):
beforehand to just enjoy truths from the Word of God and to be directed on some of these
things that God would tell us over maybe two or three weeks.
Well, where do you learn to be a father?
You learn it from the example of your father?
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Some do.
Maybe they have good examples to teach them how to be the father that God would want him
to be.
Or do you just let it happen?
That's another way you could learn to be a good father just by letting fatherhood happen
as it comes.
You know, whatever comes from living life, the way those around you want to live it,
you want to just kind of just go with the flow, be a father, whatever is demanded by the circumstances.
(02:53):
There's another way.
You want to do this one, gentlemen, in agreement with your wife and with her help, you just
live the way that satisfies both of you.
A lot of people in the world think that's what makes life happy.
And certainly if the couple can be happy by just being agreed and living by the same
(03:17):
standards, then whatever comes of their marriage, like children and being mothers and fathers,
that can also just happen by the two of them being agreed, both being happy with all that
they do, but living by their own self-standards.
That's how you get happy.
Maybe.
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How about this?
Live to be the best father with all the input, the best input, let's even say, that you can
get from books, newspapers, TV, radio and magazine.
Learn how to be a good father that way.
How about this?
(04:00):
Learn to be a good father from the psychologist and the psychiatrist.
The experts on how to live.
I suggest that you want to read their books, though, because if you have to go see them
personally, it's a very expensive route to take.
Now, another way, learn how to be a good father, is from your own common sense.
(04:24):
Have you ever heard that?
Why?
Anybody with common sense would know how to do this or that.
Common sense.
I want to go to the first one I mentioned from the example of your own father.
Learn to be God's kind of father from the example of your own father.
I get a little bit personal here.
(04:48):
I've got to tell you about my father.
All the years you folks have known me, I've probably never told you these things, but
let me share some things with you.
My father married when he was 18 years old.
My sister was born when he was 19 and I was born when he was 21.
(05:09):
My father was raised in the rural south.
He had no brothers.
All sisters, that's all he had.
And he had a father who was alive, but he was an absentee kind of father very often.
My grandfather was off cutting timber in Arkansas or Missouri, where he was off tending wheat
(05:31):
fields in Kansas and left his family back home in Arkansas for many, many months, sometimes
for whole growing seasons or whole logging seasons, sometimes for years.
Then he would return.
My father was at home tending the fields of cotton, strawberries, rice, because they lived
(05:58):
in the lowlands area next to the Mississippi and went to church occasionally.
But I know the church or the message there or the Savior had a little impact on his life.
He quit high school so he could work.
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Many of his sisters went north to the big city, that wonderful metropolis at Glorious
Place, Chicago.
They all heard about that wonderful place down there.
And so my grandparents with my father followed and they came to Chicago.
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And they got jobs.
And while he was there, he met a girl from the rural south of the very southernmost
tip of Illinois.
And they got married.
By the age of 25, my father's marriage was in trouble.
(07:05):
By the time he was 27, his marriage had ended in divorce.
He went back to the rural south with three children and no wife.
He had failed as a husband and my mother had failed as a wife.
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He had failed as a father.
My mother didn't have place in her life for three children because she wanted to live
for herself.
My father didn't know how to be a father.
So he farmed his children out to aunts, knuckles, grandparents.
(07:50):
And for years, we lived not together, but we lived sometimes and most often separate
from one another as children with different relatives in different states.
I've lived in five states as a child, passed around among the relatives.
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No, I couldn't learn from my father.
An example of how to be a godly father.
How about you?
Maybe you could.
Maybe you had that wonderful experience.
I didn't.
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One of the major flaws in the examples of our human parents and fathers in particular
is talked about in Hebrews chapter 12.
Like to read something there from the New American Standard Version about our earthly
fathers.
Hebrews 12.
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At verse 9 and 10 says this.
Furthermore, we had earthly fathers to discipline us and we respected them.
Shall we not much rather be subject to the father of spirits and live?
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For they that's speaking of our earthly fathers, they disciplined us for a short time.
As seemed best to them.
But he speaking of God, disciplines us for our good that we may share his holiness.
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What a difference between the standard used by earthly fathers and the standard used by
God, our heavenly father.
Our earthly fathers guided us and even corrected us as seemed best to them.
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Where they got their understanding of what was best, well, they're all different.
They get it from different places.
But God deals with us by one perfect standard.
Out of his righteousness, out of his love for us, he deals with us only according to
what's good for us.
(10:24):
He knows perfectly what's good for us.
And he always deals with us according to what's good for us.
No other standard is ever allowed to operate with God for us.
What a wonderful heavenly father.
That's the difference between the earthly parents that we have and how they deal with
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us and how God deals with us.
For our good, we may share his holiness.
How about this one?
You can't follow the example of our earthly fathers.
Let's just perhaps just let it happen.
That's how you learn to be a godly father.
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Just go with the flow.
Letting all those around you live as they please.
And so you seek to live as you please.
Now, for that, I need to turn you to 1 Samuel.
That's where I wanted you to be.
With me in chapter 2, I'd like to look at a little story in 1 Samuel 2 to learn about
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being a father.
There's a section in 1 Samuel 2, princely starts in chapter 2, verse 12 through 17.
I'd like to tell you about a man who was a high priest in this time named Eli.
This was before Saul was king.
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This was before David, of course.
He was the next one after Saul to be king.
So this is during the last days of the Judgement.
The days of the Judges lasted for 350 years after Israel got into the promised land.
After Moses was taken by the Lord, there was 350 years when God raised up one man after
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another as occasion required for defending the country from enemies.
Basically that, there were more military leaders than they were spiritual leaders.
What God's desire was that anybody that be in leadership, whether it be military or
political, that they'd be first of all a spiritual leader.
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He did have the priesthood in place and the man that was the high priest was, as I say,
Eli.
He had two sons, Offni and Phineas.
Offni, you know, names of the Old Testament all have a meaning.
Don't you hate to go through that life with that one?
Offni.
You'd have to say, excuse me every time somebody said, what's your name?
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Excuse you.
It meant Pugilist.
Now, Pugilist is a fist fighter.
What's your name?
Fist fighter.
Not a very encouraging kind of name, not kind of fellow that you would necessarily want
to meet.
It wasn't a peaceable man, but he had a brother named Phineas.
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Now, there's a name for you.
It means this is one you'd like, isn't it?
Mouth of a serpent.
Two boys, whatever, inspire a father to name his boys, Offni and Phineas.
Pugilist and mouth of a serpent, but they certainly fit their names.
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They were evil, man, though they were priests.
And by the way, they served in the priesthood.
It's very clear in verse 12, they did not know the Lord.
They did not know the Lord.
They were sons of Eli, but they were also sons of Satan, sons of Bileil, or Bileil.
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They were sons of Satan.
They didn't know the Lord, but they were going about seeking to do service at the tabernacle
as priests for God.
There they were, this fighter and mouth of a serpent, sons of Satan, didn't know the
Lord.
And their father was the high priest.
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Now if there ever was a man who should have been an example of a godly father, it should
have been the high priest in Israel, the chosen people of God, and the man who was
in the premier place of leading the people in their worship, the man who was in the place
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of intercession for the nation before God.
Prime spiritual leadership.
Certainly he should have been a godly example to follow.
He wasn't.
He wasn't at all.
The situation was this, as these men grew to be adults and they joined in the priesthood,
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they went about the priesthood on their own terms.
Israelites would bring their offerings to the tabernacle and they would send their servants,
it tells us, with a three-pronged hook, the idea that is that if you stick a three-pronged
hook in a pot, what they would do, they would better explain.
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The Israelites would bring their sacrifices and they would be seething them, boiling part
of them, maybe in a big pot or a cauldron.
And the priests, Haphne and Phineas would send their servant along with a three-pronged
hook and get down into the cauldron and grab onto whatever meat they could with that
(16:16):
three-pronged hook and whatever they came up with was for them.
One-pronged hook would get some, the two-pronged hook would get more, but they made sure they
had a three-pronged hook, they got a lot of it.
They wanted a large portion for themselves, but it got worse.
Israelites would come to the tabernacle with an offering and of course the chief parts
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were for the Lord, not for people, not for the priests, and one of the chief parts, you
can read the book of Leviticus on this, one of the chief parts was the fat.
My kids can't understand this, but I just tell you, this is the way the Lord looked at
it, that the fat was a special delight to him.
It's understandable if you understand that the offerings were made by fire, that when
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an offering was placed on the burning coals and the wood, that the oil in the fat would
fuel the fire and it would make the flame even burn brighter, stronger.
The fat was what that is, that which was rich, that which was a great delight.
It had the oil in it and oil everywhere it would seem in the word of God, speaks to
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us of the person and work of the Holy Spirit.
Nonetheless, the fat was a special delight, and by the way the priests were never to take
their portion until it had been burned with fire, until it was either roasted on the altar
(17:52):
or boiled or seethed in a pot or a cauldron.
They never could take their portion until the Lord's, first of all, the favored parts
were given to the Lord and then the rest of it was offered unto the Lord.
Not Haphne and Phineas, Phineas wanted their portion first.
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Israel I would come to the tabernacle with his offering and they would say, give me
the fat.
Israel I would object and say, well, now wait a minute, make sure if you take the fat that
you offer it on the fire first.
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Give me some of the meat when they would say, well, wait a minute, it's raw still.
It hasn't been offered to the Lord by fire yet.
The servant, even of the priest, would even go this far.
You either give it to me or I will take it by force.
The Israelites would submit and they would let them take the sacrifice, not because they
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wanted them to do it that way, but because the priest wanted the very best for themselves.
They wanted to be first, even before God.
You say, well, that certainly, apparently that was wrong, but how upset was God about
that?
And the answer is from the Word of God.
(19:23):
He was very, very upset.
Verse 17, wherefore the sin of the young man was very great before the Lord.
Well, you know what it did?
It turned people away from even wanting to give their offerings to God.
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Even if you were a part of a ministry that was supposed to be for the Lord's glory, and
you had sacrificially given to that ministry, and then one day it was disclosed that the
fellow that was ahead of that ministry was building a multi-thousand dollar air condition
(20:08):
houses for his dog with your money.
Or he was buying multiple luxury automobiles.
Or for God's glory, he was buying a million dollar house or a multiple million dollar
house.
(20:31):
Or his wife had 200 pairs of shoes.
You just heard these little things.
Wouldn't that make you not want to give your money?
Wouldn't that make you think, no, wait a minute.
I am sacrificing to give to the Lord, and my sacrifices to God are being abused by the
(20:56):
people that I am giving those sacrifices to.
Why should I give my sacrificial giving?
Why should I give it into the hands of people that are going to do that kind of thing?
I just won't give it.
You can understand that's exactly what was going on back here.
People said, no, we're not going to give.
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If that's what's going to be done, we're not going to give.
People turn and afford the sacrifices of God.
You say, well, why is that?
Why was that so important?
Because every sacrifice we've studied this together, every sacrifice in the Old Testament
(21:45):
days, every sacrifice was a picture of the Lord Jesus and of his suffering and of his
pure sacrifice.
After the sin and the trespass was answered for, these sacrifices were perfect pictures
of the fellowship that he opened up to us as his children, as the sons of God, to that
(22:11):
great place of fellowship at the Lord.
And if you despise the offerings of God, especially as we see ourselves back here in
the Old Testament days, you are despising the sacrifice really of the Savior.
Not that they understood all of these things, but God did.
(22:34):
And God would have none of it.
And God was very angry with these boys.
And so he said, a man of God to Eli to tell him his thoughts.
And God really warned Eli about this, what was going on.
(22:57):
Over here at verse 27, it says it was a man of God that came to Eli.
We don't even know who it was.
Just one of those people that God used who sometimes it was a prophet.
You know, Elijah was called a man of God, Eli She was, and others.
But sometimes they're just never named for us.
(23:19):
Sometimes we're not really led to understand that they are in an special way, a prominent
prophet or something that God saw fit to at least tell us of.
We'll meet these folk in glory.
But this godly man raised the Lord that was somebody in Israel that could be called a
man of God.
This man of God came to Eli with a message from the Lord.
(23:45):
He came to Eli with a rebuke.
First of all, now in verse 29, we find out what he's upset about, what the Lord is upset
about.
Wherefore, kicky at my sacrifice and my offering, which I've commanded in my habitation and
honorist I sons above me to make yourselves fat, the chief, the offerings of Israel, my
(24:06):
people.
When you look at that second part of that verse where he says, he says, and honorist
by sons above me, any time you give greater credence to the thoughts, to the values of
(24:28):
somebody else above God, you really have displaced God.
But somebody thinks, can never be placed above what God thinks.
What somebody's opinion is, should never be placed above what God's opinion is.
What somebody likes, should never be placed above what God likes.
(24:50):
What somebody says, should never be placed above what God says.
So if there's a whole lot of social pressure to go a certain way, the question isn't how
many people want me to go that way, the question should be, what does God want?
I like what the Apostle Paul says in the book of Romans, let God be true in every man
(25:11):
of life.
But that's what it takes.
Let me stand with God, that the whole world is against a certain position.
That's okay if God's for it.
I'll stand with God.
If God and I are alone, that's good enough for me.
But not for Eli.
See these were his boys.
(25:34):
Old fist fighter and mouth of the serpent, they were his boys.
And what they said and what they did was more important to him than what God said.
And he was the high priest.
That's not the kind of father that God would want us to be.
(26:00):
He was angry and God said, you have put your sons above me.
You've honored them.
You've considered them.
You've preferred them above me.
That was first.
And so he was, he not only did that, I think in this verse we can find that he also went
(26:22):
along with it.
You see, where's that?
I think it's right here in this last phrase, to make yourselves fat with the chief, with
all the offerings of Israel, my people.
You see it doesn't say themselves, it says yourselves.
When did he get out of that?
I get this.
(26:43):
Though the ones who were active, the ones that were the chief doers in all of this was,
in fact, often the infinious, still their father must have enjoyed eating this stuff
with them.
Apparently, they live pretty much in the same area, if not in the same house.
We don't know.
(27:04):
But he said, yourselves, you made yourselves fat.
This isn't just poetic language, people.
Let me tell you, Eli was a fat man.
I wasn't going to do it until afterwards, but let me show you at chapter four, at the
(27:28):
end of Eli's life, we'll come to that moment.
But I thought I better just prove that he was a fat man to you.
He, first Samuel, four, verse 15, now Eli was 90 and eight years old, and his eyes were
dimmed that he could not see.
This man was old, practically blind.
And the man said, in Eli, I am the commodity army and I'm fled out of the army.
(27:52):
And he said, what is there?
What is there?
Done my son in the messenger answer and said, Israel has fled before the Philistines.
And there has been also a great slaughter among the people, and by two sons also hopped
me in.
Finneas are dead, and the Ark of God is taken.
And it came to pass when he made mention of the Ark of God that he fell back off the
seat backward by the sight of the gate and his neck break.
(28:13):
And he died.
Where he was an old man and heavy.
He was an old man and he was fat.
How did he get fat?
He got fat, according to chapter two, by eating the sacrifices.
Because God's word to the man of God was this, to make yourselves fat with the cheapest
(28:38):
of all the offerings of Israel, my people.
To the priests to have the chief offerings.
No.
Who was supposed to have the chief offerings?
God.
The chief offerings were to go to God.
(29:01):
You say, but I only like filet mignon.
I don't like teabone.
You know, ribeye is okay, but I feel I am in yon of the ribeye.
That's what I have to eat.
I'm sorry.
If the Bible said that ribeye and filet mignon are for God, then you eat weiners.
(29:30):
Not these boys.
Not these boys.
They said we want the fat in all the best meat.
And here was Eli saying, well, I like it too.
So give me some passive boys.
(29:51):
And he was eating it with them.
He not only didn't withstand them, he not only didn't correct them, he kind of went
along with it.
And either way, there's a truth there that if you don't stand against something that's
wrong, really you go along with it.
You may be silent about it, but you're giving silent a cent.
(30:17):
Especially if you're in the place of leadership, especially if you're in the place where you're
the one that's supposed to give the discipline and guide the way.
A father has the responsibility for leading in the right way.
A father has the responsibility.
He can't say, well, I didn't really actively pursue that.
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I didn't really tell him to do that, but if the father doesn't stand against him, if
the father doesn't set out the right path, God holds him responsible.
You've got men, you've got to set out the way of God for your children.
We better say we, we have to set out the way of the Lord for our children.
We have to set out God's path.
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We are responsible.
God holds us responsible.
This man was not a good father.
So here's the principle that underlies God's whole dealings with us on these matters.
Man, here in chapter 2, down at verse 30, look at the last part of that verse.
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He says this, them that honor me, I will honor, and they that despise me shall be lightly
esteem.
When you get through all of this, what it comes down to is this.
If you honor God, he will honor you.
And if you despise the word of God, then he will not honor you.
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He will not bless you.
You can't claim the blessings of God on your family if you don't first come to him, find
out how he wants you to live, what kind of father, what kind of man, what kind of husband
he wants you to be.
If you don't follow God's guidelines, then don't expect him to bless your home.
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It's just that plane.
What happened kind of already read this.
He was predicted by this man of God for him that his sons, his grandsons and all those
after them at verse 33 were bring grief to his heart.
That's what Eli was told.
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And indeed they would.
They were going to die in their youth.
That's part of it.
We're going to die young and a sign for all of this being true is given in verse 34.
Here's a sign.
And here is the sign.
A sign is a special working of God that somebody would recognize.
I mean, it was something evident that when you looked at it, you could say, that's proof
(33:13):
that God is at work.
Okay?
Well, how could Eli know for sure that what God said to him was really going to happen?
Here's the sign.
The sign was that Houghtony and Phineas in one day were both going to die in one day.
What I'm saying is that if Eli's line, if all the men in Eli's line were going to die
(33:38):
young, if it was going to be a curse on his line over the years ahead, one way that Eli
could be absolutely sure that that's exactly what was going to happen would be this, that
is two boys were going to both die in one day.
Now if one died one day and another didn't die till the next day, then of course God's
(33:59):
word would be broken.
And he wouldn't have to worry about that curse.
It isn't how it happened, Bill.
You see, Philistines and the Israelites had one of their many flare-ups in war and they
(34:20):
set themselves against one another.
And in one day, four thousand Israelites died.
And the Israelites after that day's battle, they got together and said, oh, what happened?
Four thousand of our men died.
I'll tell you what we'll do, they said.
Let's go up to Shiloh.
That was the town where the Chabernacle was kept at that time.
And let's get the Ark of the Covenant.
(34:42):
That was the little Gopherwood box that was covered in gold and had a gold lid on it,
called a Mercy Seat.
Let's bring that down and let's put that before the army and the Lord will lead us into victory.
But God was at work.
It was very foolish counsel to start with.
(35:05):
But Houghtony and Phineas were up at Shiloh with the Ark of the Lord, you see?
And so when they brought the Ark down, here it came along, Houghtony and Phineas.
Priests were not supposed to be out in the front of the army.
The Ark of the Lord was not supposed to be out in the front of the army.
But that's the way it was.
(35:26):
They went into battle the next day.
The Ark of the Covenant was out in front.
Well, we can't say the next day.
It did take them time to get up to Shiloh and get it down there.
But the next time they went into battle, at least I can say, the Ark of the Covenant
was out in front of the army.
Houghtony and Phineas were out there with it carrying it no doubt with the poles.
(35:47):
And in front and one behind and off against the Philistines they went.
But things didn't quite work out the way they expected.
Verse 10 of chapter 4 tells us that in that day, now this is an awful thing to think about,
but 30,000 men died, 30,000 men died.
(36:13):
Now could God allow the terribleness of this whole thing that these two men had done,
this awfulness that this father had done, how could God allow that to affect so many other
lives?
Gentlemen, your fatherhood doesn't stop at your doorstep.
The impact of your life on the lives of your sons and your daughters has a ripple effect.
(36:39):
It goes out through them to others.
And it does affect also the name and the glory of God.
And it's an awful thing to consider.
The 30,000 more men had to die as a result of the sin of these two boys and their father.
(37:04):
He got back to Eli from a messenger and I read that to you already.
He heard about the Ark of God.
He heard about his two sons.
That was bad enough.
But when he heard about the Ark of God being taken by the Philistines, he fell off his
stool backwards and broke his neck because of his great fatness, his great age and his
(37:30):
blindness.
The way that man was not just physically blind, he was spiritually blind.
He knew the word of God, but he didn't obey it.
Here is the answer for us, gentlemen.
In Deuteronomy chapter 6, we have a word from God about how to be good fathers.
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It starts at verse 4.
There is only one God.
Make him your God.
How do you do that?
Verse 5.
And by the way, the Lord Jesus quoted this verse and called it the first and great command.
(38:21):
There is no command in all this Bible, gentlemen, that can be put above this one.
This is it.
Now shall love the Lord by God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all
thine might.
Want to be the right kind of father, God's kind of father?
(38:44):
Love first, love the Lord with all your heart.
No, number two, let's re-on.
On these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart.
Number two is this, after loving the Lord with all your heart, mine, soul and strength.
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Number two is to love his word.
You see?
Have his word in your heart.
Have his word in your heart.
Love the Lord, have his word in your heart.
(39:30):
Number three, verse seven.
And thou shall teach them diligently unto thy children.
Love the Lord, have his word in your heart and teach it.
Teach it first to your children.
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First, first to your children.
Next, and shall talk of them when thou sittest in thine house and when thou walkest by the
way and when thou lieest down and when thou riseest up.
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First, we said, love the Lord.
Second, have his word in your heart.
Third, teach it.
Teach it to your children.
Fourth, talk of it.
Now teach it and talk of it is different.
To teach it means you set out the truths of God's word to them.
And talk of it means you bring it into your conversation.
(40:33):
You know you can teach by opportunity.
There is what sometimes in the teaching profession they call the teachable moment.
It's like mommy, why are daffodils yellow?
You know, they can come up with some interesting questions little kids can't.
(40:56):
What makes the grass green?
Why don't snakes have legs?
You ever never got any of those?
It's fun.
It holds the clouds up.
Never get that one?
(41:17):
Some of them are real sticklers.
Simple little questions.
It's a teachable moment.
That's the time when they would like to know about what holds the clouds up.
So you can say, well, let me tell you about the evaporation precipitation cycle.
No, maybe you can't down there level.
You have to say, well, that's like this.
And then you go off to tell them about the water vapor and winds and things like that.
(41:41):
And you'll probably notice after three or four minutes, if you keep going on about it, they're
probably more worried about something else than they are about what they've just asked
you about.
You'll probably run your course on that one.
You'll have to teach them about something else now.
And so teachable moments come and go.
Talk means bring the truths of God into your conversation.
Well, sometimes old fist fighter lets his brother have it in the mouth.
(42:13):
Or old mouth of a serpent says something evil.
And you say, listen, that is not the way God would want us to behave.
That's a teachable moment.
Eli didn't do that.
He didn't seem to love the Lord with all of his heart.
He didn't have his word in his heart.
(42:34):
So that really means to respond to it.
He wasn't teaching it.
And he certainly wasn't talking about it as he should have been.
All through the day, talking about it.
And then there's something further here in verse eight and nine and thou shall bind them
for a sign upon nine hand and they shall be as frontlets between nine eyes and thou shall
(42:55):
write them upon the post of thine house and on thy gates.
It just simply means have God's word as a standard for every part of your life.
Have God's word as a standard for every part of your life.
Love the Lord.
Have his word in your heart.
Teach the word of God.
Talk of the word of God and have the word of God as the foundation for everything else
(43:19):
in your life.
And then it says a little bit farther down the road here.
If you forget the Lord, don't forget the Lord.
Verse 12, be aware lest thou forget the Lord, which brought thee forth out the land of Egypt
and from the house of bondage.
(43:41):
Don't turn away from God.
Don't get so busy in this life.
Don't get so busy.
Whatever you're doing in this life that you just forget about God.
No more Memorial Day parades.
People have just forgotten.
No more remembering.
(44:02):
I want to tell you and I want to warn you with this.
Don't forget about God.
He is always going to be Lord.
He is always and only the Savior.
And so this further counsel right behind that or below that at verse 13, thou shall
fear the Lord thy God and serve him and shall swear by his name.
(44:26):
Fear him.
Serve him.
Swear by his name.
Attune your heart to God.
Use your life for his purpose and will and make sure everything you're committed to first
rests on him, his righteousness, his nature.
(44:51):
Nothing less.
And when your sons come and ask a question over here in verse 21, and when thy son asked
at thee in time to come, what mean the testimonies and the statutes and the judgments which the
Lord our God has commanded you, what are you going to say?
(45:15):
The answer comes down in verse 24.
This is the answer, gentlemen, you give to your sons and your daughters.
The Lord commanded us to do all these statutes, to fear the Lord our God for our good always,
but he might preserve us alive as it is at this day.
(45:38):
You want the goodness of God, then fear this, and it shall be our righteousness if we observe
all these commandments before the Lord our God as he have commanded us.
That's what you say to your children.
God gave it to us.
Now we want to be blessed.
We're going to follow it.
This is the word of God.
These are the guidelines for our life.
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He's given them to us.
Now we want to be blessed in this life.
We're going to follow them.
And that's why they're in our home.
And that's why they're the foundation of our home.
And that's why they're taught.
And that's why we talk of them.
And that's why we fear the Lord and serve him and swear by his name.
That would be a good father.
God's kind of father.
(46:25):
You've got to go this way.
Let's pray.
Lord, pray that there is a father or even thinks that he will someday be a father.
(46:46):
Might commit himself in a new and a fresh way today to love the with all his heart.
And let your word be written on his heart.
And he might teach it.
And he might talk of it.
It might be the foundation for every principle and everything he does in all of his life.
(47:11):
He might fear you and serve you and swear by your name.
And know that is very blessing in this.
Okay, there we have it.
Thank you, Pastor Raines.
I noticed it got cut off a little bit there at the end, but got to expect that kind of
thing from old tape recordings.
(47:34):
But still I think it was worth it even though we missed a little bit of the closing prayer.
If you like that, come back next week.
We'll have more.
I'm not sure if it'll be on fathers or not, but it'll be on something.
So come back.
If you want to check out our website, you can do that.
There's some nice transcripts up there.
(47:56):
You can read just a lot of information in those.
I think we're up to episode 51 in those.
So you can check those out.
And if you like, please subscribe to comment.
And of course, share it with others so that you can share it with your friends, your neighbors,
your family, wherever you want.
(48:20):
Tell them about the Legacy Bible Podcast.
Alrighty then.
So thank you for listening and I'll be seeing you next week.
Until then, have a great day.
See you later.
Bye.
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