Well, it really is a delight to be here. I get to be here with three of my grandchildren and my son-in-law. It's a blessing to do that. And I have five interns here and two former interns and a bunch of friends. So it really is a sweetness.

Please open your Bibles to 1st John chapter 4. Find verse 7, 1st John chapter 4. And Once you get there, let's stand in honor of the precious word of God. Verse seven, verse John 4-7. "'Beloved, let us love one another, "'for love is of God, "'and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.

He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

Beloved, If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love has been perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit, and we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in Him and He in God.

And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love and He who abides in love abides in God and God in Him. Let's pray. Oh Lord, we pray that you would bring us into the regions of your love, that you would help us to grow in love, in that which is true love, that you would mark us by love, which is from you. Help us, Lord, to be the kind of people who receive from you and give of you and become like you.

Amen. Please be seated. I wanna give you five ways of love between fathers and sons. And my focus this morning is what it looks like to possess honor and humility between fathers and sons. The leaders of this conference have asked me to do this and I'm delighted to do this and to speak specifically about how this happens between fathers and sons and so I'm going to I'm going to drive into really the heart of the matter of honor in between fathers and sons and humility between fathers and sons.

And what we all know as fathers and sons is that from time to time and maybe even daily, We find ourselves driven into a crossroads. And it's a crossroads of honor or dishonor. It's the crossroads of love or hatred between fathers and sons. And God, in his sovereign wisdom, drives fathers and sons to that crossroads. And like I said, sometimes He does it daily.

And there are seasons in life where it happens more than others. But God drives fathers and sons into this crossroads so that his love might be manifested in them, because his whole design in creation is to manifest the glories of his love, and in his wisdom, he makes fathers and sons finding themselves at this crossroads. What you do and who you are at that Crossroads means everything and This Crossroads is produced by different things it can be the opinion of a father or the crashing in of that opinion of the Son, or a command of a father, or it might be a lifestyle, or it might be a direction in life, but every father knows that he's driven to this crossroads of the Son, and every son knows it too. He's driven to these crossroads. And what he does and who he is has enormous significance.

Because when you're at that crossroads, you're always shown who you really are. Because when you're at that crossroads, your heart either goes to honor or dishonor it goes to love or hatred and so that's what I want to talk about this morning When you're at that crossroads of honor and dishonor, or love and hatred, here's the most important thing. You need to know who you are, and you need to know from which well you're drawing from. And so I wanna give you five ways of love from 1 John 4 verses seven through 16. And I'm gonna name them here now so that you'll see them and then we'll take them one by one, just walking verse by verse through 1 John 4, 7 through 16.

And the first ways of love is that you must know the source of love in verse seven. And secondly, you must understand lack of love. You must understand where that comes from. And thirdly, you must see how love works. And we'll talk about that in detail, but it's that God initiates.

And then, fourthly, you need to feel how right It is to love and the fruit of it when you're at that crossroads. And then fifthly, you need to demonstrate that God abides in you because what you do at that crossroads will demonstrate who you are and whether God abides in you or not. That's what the Bible teaches. Now let me just back up and talk about the context here. John the apostle is writing this.

He's probably 80 years old, maybe older. He's back in Ephesus as a pastor. He's already been, he was already banished to the island of Patmos by the Roman Emperor, and the tradition says he was boiled in oil. He's now back in Ephesus, and he's there as an old man in the church of Ephesus. And John is teaching about how you know you are a child of God.

And he gives an infallible test of what it means to be a Christian in 1 John. But he's teaching about love because the heart of Christianity is love. You can't talk about Christianity without talking about love in the same breath. And so John, he mixes these together all through both his gospel and this epistle. Here, John is teaching about love.

And One of the things that we, this should be obvious to all of us, and every pastor here, how many are your pastors? We've got several here, I had breakfast with one this morning. Thank you so much, that was a blessing. Here's what every pastor knows. Most of all breakdowns between fathers and sons are breakdowns of love.

If you've ever counseled the fathers and sons, you know this one thing, you must find the trail to the breakdown of love. And that's true with husbands and wives, that's true in every relationship in the church, every difficulty, every trial, every tumult in the church, you have to trace back down to this one thing. Where did love break down? And so that's what fathers and sons need to do. And so the first thing that fathers and sons need to know together is they need to know the source of love.

That's why John says, beloved, let us love one another. Beloved, he begins with this remarkably beautiful word, beloved. He's really declaring his own heart toward his children. He has the heart of Jesus toward those he's speaking to and he calls them beloved. I don't know if you've ever read scripture about the heart of Jesus Christ for His church, and He has such tender-hearted impulses toward His church.

And John reflects it here, beloved, beloved. And Beloved, let us love one another. Verse 11, Beloved, if God so loved us we ought to also love one another. In verse 12, no one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and his love has been perfected in us.

So these words, love one another, appear all throughout this passage of scripture. It's really the heart of this text, loving one another. And this is the heart of the matter between fathers and sons. Twice he states that God is love. But this is a command, and the essence of this teaching is that God demonstrates his love by sending his own son.

Jesus Christ is the son of his love. What's important to understand about the contours of the whole Bible is that the whole Bible really is a testimony of a father's love for his son and how they join one another in one and with one another to rescue a bride the Church of Jesus Christ but Jesus is the son of his love the foundation of the universe somebody once said is a love between a father and a son. And so when God makes fathers and sons together in this life, He's putting them there for a purpose, to demonstrate his own love toward his own son. His love toward his son and his son's love toward him is the pattern for all of love and all of relationships. You know, the very first mention of the word love, L-O-V-E in the Bible, is a mention of a father's love for a son.

The very first mention of the word love is when God says to Abraham, take your son, the son whom you love. And that's the first mention of love. And the very first mention of love in the New Testament is the love of a Father toward his Son. When the Lord Jesus Christ is at his baptism, and there's this voice from heaven that says, this is my beloved Son, in whom I'm well pleased. The foundation of the universe is the love of a Father and a Son, and so, you know, last night we were exhorted to look up, look up.

Let's do that again. Look up to the Father and the Son and find all of your patterns in the Father and the Son. Look up. Lift up your eyes to the hills from which your help comes. It comes from the Lord, and that's what we're doing here today.

And so this command, beloved, let us love one another. Love is mentioned 27 times in 1 John. And so This very first command, beloved, let us love one another. She caused us to ask a number of questions. Fathers, do you love your sons?

Sons, do you love your fathers? The easiest thing in the world for a father is to exasperate out of lack of love. The easiest thing for a son is to cease to delight in doing the father's will and to dishonor him. These things are war cries against the kingdom of heaven. Do you delight to do your father's will?

Father do you delight in your son? Is he dear to you or has he become an offense to you because of his sin? Love is of God. That's the second part of this is that love comes from God. Now, the message of verse seven is that love is from God, which means that love comes from somewhere.

Love is not an act that you put on. Love is not primarily a discipline. Love comes from somewhere else. It doesn't come from you. It's not something that you can fake.

True love is not. But it comes from outside of you and wells up within you. So love is not a discipline. I'm not asking fathers to get disciplined about love, that's not the point, because love is from God. It comes from a wellspring of life and it comes from God.

So John is not just commanding fathers to get it together, you know. Clean up your act. That's actually not the message of Christianity. The message of Christianity is to receive the life of the Son of God and that life will take you over and it'll bubble up. That's Christianity.

Legalism is do these 10 things. Christianity is receive the love of the Son of God and you'll do things that you never could do before because of that wellspring of love. And so you turn to God for love because God is love. Let me give you a different illustration from Ephesians chapter 3 verse 14. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 3.

I just want to take us to another illustration. You know, we have this illustration that John has given us. Now we're gonna go to the Apostle Paul in his instruction to the church in Ephesus where John was a pastor. And Paul uses different languages with two illustrations there that are very beautiful that help us to understand what he's talking about. And he speaks of being rooted and grounded in love.

And again, I take us back to this crossroads. When you find yourself at that crossroads, you need to understand what you were rooted and grounded in. That's the most important thing. And so in verse 14 we read in Ephesians chapter three, for this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named." Now Paul is praying and this is what he's praying that he would grant you according to the riches of his glory to be strengthened with might through his spirit in the inner man inside of you that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith that you being rooted that's the first illustration and grounded in love may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ which passes knowledge that you may be filled with all the fullness of God." But what I want us to dial in on, there's a lot to dial in on in this section, But I want us to be focused on rooted and grounded.

Because when you're at the crossroads, everything hinges upon what you were rooted and grounded in. And Rooted is the terminology of a tree, like an oak tree, that has roots going down and it's bringing up nourishment from the soil. And its fruitfulness is dependent upon its rootedness. You know, trees don't just slap on fruit. They grow fruit from the inside, from the innermost being of its drawing nourishment, from the ground and from the water that's there.

So he gives this illustration of being rooted in love. Love has a root or it has no root. If you have no root, You might be able to put on love but you can't really love. You can have a legalistic kind of love where you're just hanging fruit on your body but it's not real. And then grounded, That's a different illustration.

That's the illustration of a building, a building on a foundation, and it's grounded. That building is on a solid foundation. By the way, there's a man in this room who's building a building right now that must be so substantial and so solid that its foundation, not just around the entire footprint of the building, but throughout the entire building is six to nine feet of concrete and hundreds of tons of steel in the concrete. That's grounded. That's grounded.

But love must stand on something solid, six feet of concrete and steel, something that is immovable like no other foundation. And that's Jesus Christ. He's a greater foundation than that. But love must be rooted and it must be grounded or it doesn't work. And that's the same thing with the love of a father and son.

That's what John is saying. Love is from God. Love is from God. Now, what the Apostle John and what the Apostle Paul are teaching is that everything in your life is grounded to something? Or it's grounded to something?

And everything hinges upon what it's grounded to. It's rooted and nourished from somewhere. It's grounded, it's being held up. You know, the Lord says, I will uphold you with the right hand of my righteousness. You're rooted and grounded in something.

Everything you do is rooted and grounded in something. Everything. There's nothing disconnected from that. If it's connected to Christ, it will be connected to love. If it's not, we'll just serve ourselves.

And the stark reality that the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul are communicating is that everything you do is either connected to the love of Jesus Christ, or it's connected to something else. And when you're at that crossroads, you need to understand what you're connected to. Everything hinges on that. Not only does love come from God but God is love. God in God's nature is love and love alone.

And then John uses two ways to explain what this love means. It means first that you are born of God. Everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Born of God is a term for regeneration, to be made new, to be born again, to be birthed again. You're born as a natural man and then you're born again.

You're born of God. You're born of something alien to you and something happens to you and you're born again. And the life of the Spirit of God enters your soul and you are rooted and grounded in love. It transforms everything that you are. To be born again, to be born of God is to speak of a divine power through a spiritual transformation of your life.

Again, this is not legalism. It's not just putting on nice...it's not becoming a nicer guy. It has nothing to do with becoming a better husband, except that might be the result of it. But it's not putting something on. It's having something born in you.

And it's transformation. And it changes the way you think, the way you feel, the way you act, especially when you're at the crossroads. You have a new father and he is God and you're born again. So you must know the source of love, that love is from God. And then you must understand the lack of love.

That's verse eight. You must understand the source of the lack of love. Brothers, you have to understand this. Where are these feelings coming from? Where are these thoughts coming from?

And here we're instructed in what's true about you and what's true about me. Verse eight, he who does not love does not know God, for God is love. Now, there are many positive tests in 1 John for what it means to be a child of God and be connected to love, but this is one of the negative tests. It's a negative test of Christianity. You know, it's interesting, I have such a delight now to preach to the Gospel of John in our local church.

And Jesus feeds 5, 000, probably 15 or maybe 25, 000 people, it's astonishing. And he says to the crowd, he says, you don't have the love of God in you because what they wanted was food and healthcare They wanted healing and they wanted food to come out. They wanted to have food like Jesus gave... Jesus, do it again. Well, they just wanted personal success.

They just wanted personal comfort and success. That's all they wanted. And He says, you don't have the love of God in you. They were not rooted and grounded in love. They were called disciples there in John chapter 6, but they weren't true disciples.

They were just part of the crowd because they wanted to be successful. It's easy for this to happen in Christian gatherings where men want to be better fathers, they want to be better husbands. They don't want to have so much too much in their life, so they want to get it together. But they don't have the love of God in them. That's a profound difference.

And when you're at the crossroads and you don't have the love of God in you, Things will turn out very differently. But what he's saying here is lack of love proves who you are and it proves what family you belong to. If you have no love, you're part of the family of Cain, who killed his brother. So love is not a decision. Love is not a discipline.

It's not something that you put on. It's from God. For God is love. And you must know where lack of love comes from and be very honest with yourself about it. We flatter ourselves with all kinds of alternative explanations for our lack of love.

Believe me, believe me. I've had them all, and I've heard them all. So you must know the source of love, number one, that's verse seven. You must understand the lack of love, that it makes you a stranger from God and the life of the Holy Spirit flowing through you. And then you need to see how love works, verses 9 and 10.

You need to see how love works. Look at these words. In this, the love of God was manifested toward us, that God sent His only begotten Son into the world that we might live through Him. In this is love. Not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.

And here's how love works. God initiates. God sends His Son. God reaches out. God opens up his arms.

He speaks to you. He draws you. God initiates love. If you don't understand that if you're going to love you have to be an initiator of love then you don't understand love. We want people to initiate and get the ball rolling, but that's not how love works in the kingdom of God.

The love of God initiates, it reaches out, and it takes, it makes the first move. And God made the first move by sending his own son. He manifested his love by making the first move. And that should teach us so much about the conflicts and the log jams that we get in with people. You know, how do we break that?

And we take initiative. Someone has to make the first move. Love makes that first move and God demonstrates His love in that way. John says, here is love. It's like John is flying over the world, you know, and he says, here is love, right there, there's love.

It's Jesus Christ, it's God sending his son. God initiating love, that's love right there. Here it is, here is love. Now you see it, there it is, right before your eyes. It's God sending His Son.

You know, there's so much in the Bible that speaks about love. You know, if you go to 1 Corinthians 13, there are these 15 marks of love. You know, like love suffers long. Love is kind. Love does not envy.

Love does not parade itself. Love is not puffed up. Love does not behave rudely. Love does not seek its own. Love is not provoked.

Love thinks no evil. In other words, it thinks the best of people. Love does not rejoice in iniquity. Love rejoices in the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, and endures all things.

So there you have it. There's a definition of love. And this is a definite, this is the love of God. Alive in the soul of a human being, you know, in the world. And so, you need to know how love works because if you don't know how love works you won't make the first move.

You know most of the time with fathers and sons. Reconciliation happens when a father has empathy on his son. I had to learn that the hard way. So did I. My wife had to teach me that one.

Didn't somebody say you gotta listen to your wife? Yeah, yeah. Sometimes, not all the time. Well, you're stupid if you don't listen some of the time anyway. Or you know, you're stupid if you don't listen all the time.

But you need to know how love works that God initiates. And then the fourth way, You need to feel how right it is to love. You need to feel how right it is to love. Now you might find this strange, but read verse 11. Beloved, if God so loved us.

Now, What John is saying is, don't you feel how God loved you, okay? Don't you get... Don't you see what He did? He took you. He made you His son.

You hated Him. You are a lustful, covetous, selfish sinner and he loved you while you were dead. And John is saying, don't you feel how God loved you? Don't you feel the love of God? You know one of the great manifestations of men, in my experience, who don't really know God but they have an outward form of religion is they don't feel the love of God.

They don't see how God loved them. They don't know the love of God. They don't... It doesn't move them. They don't see it, you know, because their pride has blinded them to the greatness of his love.

So, fathers and sons were in there at the crossroads need to feel how right it is to love how right it is to love but you can't feel that unless you know how you how much you've been loved and how much you've been forgiven and how kind God has been to you you can't really love someone unless you know how much he's loved you. And the chief manifestation of harsh people is that they've never known love and so they can't love. They've never known forgiveness so they can't forgive. You know, this happens in marriages. Sometimes you find a spouse that just can't forgive.

When you find a spouse that can't forgive, most of the time, you've just found a spouse who's never been forgiven. And they've never felt that. They've never felt the love of God. They don't have the love of God in them because they just want something for themselves. So, verse 11, beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

So, you need to feel how God has loved you, or else you can't, when you're at the crossroads, love somebody else. So the love of God is our pattern. You know, God doesn't just simply give us doctrine. He does give us doctrine, but he gives us himself and He shows us how love works. And so, how has God loved you?

How has God been patient with you? How has He been kind to you? How has He disciplined you? Well, they're in His love right there. You need to feel how God has loved you.

Sometimes He loved you when He took something away from you. Sometimes He loved you the most when He made you sick and made you lift up your eyes to the hills from which to have your help comes. Or He took everything away from you and that was the first time in years you looked up to him and you found out it was the sweetest thing. You found out your trial was the best thing that ever happened to you. You found out that the loss was your greatest gain.

Well, how has God loved you? You know, a son needs to understand that too when he's at the crossroads. Sometimes his father wants to take something away from him for his own good. He needs to understand how love works. You've got to know how love works.

Love sometimes takes something away and fathers in love must take things away. They must deprive their sons of certain things. That's how love works. If a son, sons, if you don't understand that, you'll never know how much your father loves you. You have to know that when he takes something away, in most, in most of the cases, it's because he loves you and because you need it You need to know how love works and you need to feel how God loves you and sometimes God loves you by taking something away or hurting you Somebody said if God wants to you when if when God wants to use a man, he first hurts him and then he uses him.

Do you know that? Do You know what I'm talking about? Sons, that's true. Sons you need to know that. You know there are many ways that fathers love sons and sons love fathers.

If you go to Proverbs 8, you'll see that the father loves his son by working with him and he delights in his son and the son delights in the work, in working with his father. Abraham loved his sons by commanding them, that's Genesis 18. Jesus loved his disciples by speaking to them and walking by them. Sons love their fathers by serving them and honoring them and submitting to them and obeying them and delighting to do their will. These are the ways that sons honor their fathers and love their fathers.

When you're at the crossroads of honor and dishonor, you need to understand. You need to understand very clearly. You need to feel how right it is to love. And then fifthly, you need to demonstrate that God abides in you. Demonstrate that God abides in you because what you do at the crossroads is going to demonstrate something It'll demonstrate out of which well you're drinking It'll demonstrate what you're rooted in it will demonstrate What you're grounded on whether you're grounded on the rock or whether you're grounded on sand whether you've got nine feet of concrete to hold you up or sand.

You'll know, you've got to know. You've got to know what you're demonstrating and to demonstrate that God abides in you. That's verses 12 through 16. No one has seen God at any time if we love one another God abides in us There's this abiding that's kind of like rooted and grounded he abides in us and his love has been perfected in us it's in us now And by this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit and we're responding out of the Spirit. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.

That's the spirit of love. And we have seen in Testify, verse 14, that the Father has sent his son as Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the son of God, God abides in him and he in God. And we have known and believed the love that God has for us. God is love and he who abides in love abides in God.

Now how do you know if you abide in God? How do you know that? Because you need to know that. That's actually the whole point of this section of 1 John. John gives many tests of salvation.

I'm going to give you seven of them very quickly. How do you know? Here I'm going to give you seven infallible tests for knowing whether you are in Him or not, whether you're rooted and grounded in love. And the first is, have you confessed your sin? First John 1, 8 through 10, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that if we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. How can you know? Have you confessed your sin? Do you know that you're a sinner?

And you've come before God and you said, have mercy on me, a sinner. Secondly, are you walking in the light? 1 John, verses 5 through 7, 1 John, verse 1, I'm sorry, 1 John, chapter 1, verses 5 through 7, walking in the light. This is the message which we have heard from him and declare to you that God is light and in him There is no darkness at all If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all unrighteousness.

Are you walking in the light? In other words, are you walking according to the word of God, obeying the word of God, loving His law and desiring to obey it? Thirdly, that brings us to obedience. First John 2, three and four. By this we know that we know Him if we keep His commandments.

He who says I know Him and does not keep His commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him. And he's not talking, of course, about keeping the commandments perfectly. Nobody ever did that. But it's this internal desire and love to keep the commandments of God and to repent and confess when you know that you haven't, to turn away from unrighteousness. And the fourth test is hatred of the world or love of the world.

First John 2, verses 15 through 17. Do not love the world or the things that are in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life is not of the Father but as of the world and the world is passing away and the lust of it but he who does the will of God abides forever." Hatred for the world or love for the world will tell you who you are when you're at that crossroads. Number five, the love of the brethren.

Do you love the brethren? 1 John 2, 9-11, He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he's going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. Do you see how dangerous it is to hate your father and have an insolent heart toward your father?

It's the most dangerous thing in the world to you because it shows you that you do you're not rooted and grounded in love and you don't know Him and you're bound for hell, that's what it means, sons. Do you know what it means when you are at that crossroads and you are insolent toward your Father? It's your greatest danger and it reveals the greatest harm to your life. Number six, the Spirit's testimony. First John 4 13, by this we know that we abide in Him and He in us because He has given us of His Spirit.

And the last, the seventh doesn't come from 1 John. It's discipline. Where we learn that God disciplines every son that he receives. If God is disciplining you, it's a sign that he loves you. That you're a son.

He's treating you like a son and he's disciplining you because he loves you. Now, when you're at the crossroads of honor, dishonor, love and hatred, you need to know who you are. Now, here's a reality of fathers and sons. When sons get to a certain age particularly, and it can happen earlier in some sons, but they want to go in a different direction. They want to go in a different direction than their fathers.

And it's legendary and it happens, you know, particularly with young men who are growing up, you know, they need to find what their faith is, what they really believe in. And so there are conflicts that arise out of that. But sometimes it manifests itself, you know, where sons say, well I don't want to live like my dad did. I'm not going to live the way my dad taught me. I'm still a Christian, but I don't want to live like that.

I don't want to hold the same standards as my dad. You know, I have different opinions. I don't even think I want to go to the same kind of church as my dad. Have you ever encountered that? I've encountered this quite a bit, actually, you know, in my relating with my friends, you know, around our church and around the country.

But a son must realize that he must answer these questions out of love. And he must know whether he is rooted and grounded in love when he's asking these questions. And almost every son is going to ask these questions. It's so common. And they must ask what's driving them.

Is it for a greater desire of holiness? Is it for a greater desire to turn away from the world? Does it foster more love between father and son, between the family, between the brothers and sisters? Does it grow love in the church? Does it bring disunity?

Does it cast dispersion? What does it do? And what's driving it? A son must ask that question when he's at that crossroads. And he's asking those questions.

What do you do? You know, I had to answer this question in front of a bunch of people in our church. We were having a father-daughter treat. And one of the daughters said, what if a daughter doesn't have the same standards like of modesty that her dad had? So she asked that question right in front of God and everybody, you know.

And her dad. It's a great question. It's a great question. So here's at least part of the answer to that question. You have to remember that it's no accident that God put you in the family he did.

That's no accident. By the way, you didn't choose your parents. God chose your parents. So you have to remember that it was an act of divine, sovereign wisdom, and I use those words very carefully, sovereign wisdom. Absolutely pure and powerful and good wisdom.

That's why you got landed in the family that you're in. You know, all four of my children are adopted. It was God's sovereign wisdom that put them in my family?" Absolutely. And it's not... So part of the answer is, it was God that gave you those parents.

It was God that gave you that instruction. It was Almighty God in His sovereign wisdom. He's the one that did that to you. And you need to really think about that. When a daughter says, I don't know if I agree with my father's standards of modesty, that girl needs to understand it was God that did that.

And he did it for your good. He ordained it. And so you shouldn't take it lightly. Do you remember the Rechabites? You know the story of the Recubites?

So Rekab, this father, he told his sons, He says, here's how we're gonna live. This is what the Recubites are gonna do. We're not gonna drink wine, and we're not gonna cultivate fields, and we're not building houses. How about that? Well, that sounds kind of rough.

That's what he said. And for 300 years, these sons did that. They obeyed their father. It's remarkable. Like is it wrong to build a house?

No. Is it wrong to cultivate a field? I hope not. Some of you do that. So, Rekab wasn't...

He says, this is how we're gonna live in this world. We're gonna be free from a bunch of encumbrances, okay? That's how we're gonna live. So, 300 years later, the prophet Jeremiah calls Jonadab, who's a son of Rekab, and Jeremiah says he brings him into the temple, he summons him, right? The prophet Jeremiah summons him into the temple and he says, drink wine.

You know what he said? Our daddy told us not to do that. And he didn't. And you know what happened? Here's what God says.

I'm gonna bless this family forever and there'll always be Rechabites on the earth, always. Forever. Because they honor their Father. God blesses honor. God blesses obedience.

And so you need to ask yourself, why did God put me in this family and why did God give me the Father that He gave me? He did it by His sovereign wisdom and love. That's why. And that's true of every father and son in this room. The most underperforming father, that's true of.

Okay? When sons listen to their fathers, God blesses them. Here's something I've never heard anybody say. I've never heard anybody say this, okay? I've never heard anybody say, when I defied and disobeyed my parents it was the best thing I ever did.

You know I was talking to a pastor friend of mine recently and he had some tattoos that were Hebrew words and godly things like that. And I said, so what does that mean? He said, well that came out of disobedience because my dad didn't want me to do it. That's there because of disobedience, even though it says Jesus. That's what he said.

He said, I wish I could take him off, you know, but I can't. But nobody, I've never heard anybody say, when I disobeyed my parents it was the best thing I ever did. It's because it's just really rare, really rare. It might, it might actually be good to do that sometimes, very carefully, extremely carefully. So when you're at that crossroads of dishonor, you need to know there's a river that makes glad the city of God, that there's this river of delights that there are in His presence or pleasures forevermore.

When you walk with Him and obey Him, when you honor your father, the Bible says it'll go well with you. A lot of guys out there, you may be in this crowd, you're beating your head against the wall and you're bloody because it goes back to dishonoring your father and you're not even reconciled to your father. And maybe there's some fathers in need of you reconciled to their fathers and that might break out a revival in your own family, but God blesses fathers and sons who honor their fathers. You know, in his commentary on Galatians 6, the Church Father Jerome tells this famous story about John, the writer of these words, John the Evangelist. The story is that He's so old in the Church of Ephesus that the deacons had to carry him to the pulpit.

And there was this period of time where he was so weak, all he could say was, little children love one another. And then they would take him down. And then somebody asked, why do you always say that? And he replied, it's the Lord's command, and if this only is done, it is enough. Beloved, let us love one another, And you need to know the source of love.

And you need to understand where lack of love comes from. And you need to understand how love works. And you need to feel how right it is to love. And you need to demonstrate that either you are abiding in God, either you're rooted and grounded in love, or your father is the devil, and that matters. Would you pray with me?

Lord we pray that you would create in us your loving kindness, that we would be sons of your delight, and that we would love one another. I pray that all these fathers and sons who are at these crossroads even here at this retreat That you would root them and ground them in love Let all things be done in love amen love. Amen.