In this sermon, Dr. Andrew Davis explores the role of fathers and sons in God's redemptive plan. He discusses the eternal, happy relationship between the Father and the Son before the creation of the world and how their love led to the creation of humanity. The story of Adam as our first father and the concept of federal headship is examined, as well as the consequences of sin entering the world through him. Noah and his sons provide a lesson on the importance of respecting and honoring one's father. The patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, play a significant role in God's unfolding redemptive plan, with Abraham's faith serving as an example for all. The central question of the Old Testament, 'Where is the lamb?', is answered by John the Baptist in the New Testament, revealing Jesus as the ultimate fulfillment of God's promise.

The Father and the Son were eternally happy together in their relationship. I love what it says in Psalm 50, in which God says, if I were hungry, I would not tell you. For everything in the fields is mine, and now in the cattle on a thousand hills. So what he's saying is, if I had a need, which I don't, I sure wouldn't come to you. All right, that's about what he's saying.

If I were hungry, I would not tell you. Something like that. But God didn't need to create us. He was happy in His relationship with His Son and the Son with the Father. It's a complete relationship, but we get some indications of what it was like.

John 17 and verse 5, Jesus said, Now Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began. They had a shared glory, Father and Son, before the world began. Evidently, Jesus, as Charles Wesley put it, laid his glory by to enter the world. Philippians chapter two, Jesus being in very nature, God did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, something that he had to steal, a robbery to hold onto it, but laid it down. Not his deity, but the trappings of glory.

He laid it down. And now in John 17, 5, he wants it back, the glory he shared with the Father. By the way, it says in Isaiah, my glory, God says, my glory, I will not give to another. And so therefore, when Jesus wants that same glory he shared with the Father, it's a clear claim to deity within the Trinity. So they shared a glory together.

And then later in that same high priestly prayer in John 17, 24, it says, Father, I want those you have given me to be with me where I am and to see my glory, the glory you have given me because you love me before the creation of the world. That's incredible and just some glimpses into eternity past in that high priestly prayer. And by the way, we're in there too, aren't we? In John 17, 24, He wants us to see His glory. I want them.

He has a yearning, a desire to have us with Him in heaven so that we can see the glory He shared with the Father. Isn't that incredible? So that ends up being the context of our own salvation, the desire that the Father and the Son have to show the love they have for each other and to include us in it. It's a beautiful thing. So it's a foundational love, and it's a passionate love.

There's nothing lacking in it. Eternity passed the love they had. And then the crafting of the redemptive plan. God has a plan. And it's an incredible plan, it's an eternal plan unfolding from the creation of the world.

It says in Ephesians 1-11, in him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will. So God has a plan and it's comprehensive and God unfolds everything in conformity with that purpose, with that plan. And this is an unfolding plan. It unfolds from age to age. Ephesians 3, eight and nine, the apostle Paul says, "'To me, though I am the very least of all the saints, "'this grace was given to preach to the Gentiles "'the unsearchable riches of Christ, "'and to bring to light for everyone "'what is the plan of the mystery hidden for ages in God who created all things.

So God had an eternal plan, and it was hidden in him, but then it was unfolded over time. And so God unfolds his redemptive plan throughout the Old Testament and then into the New Testament. We get more and more information as time goes on. And it is a wise plan, Ephesians 3, 10 says, so that through the church the manifold wisdom of God might now be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly places. It's a wise plan, an eternal plan, according to his eternal purposes, says in Ephesians 3, 11.

And it is a plan that is consummated in a father-son relationship that God wants to have with each one of us. And so he uses this kind of language in Romans 8 29. Those God foreknew, he predestined to be conformed to the image of his son that he might be the firstborn among many brothers. So there's that kind of language that we are to be brought into a sonship relationship with the eternal God. And he predestined us, having foreknown us, he predestined us to that.

I'm working on that 30% of you that didn't know where you were at theologically. So we'll talk more about that. But Romans 8 29, you are foreknown and predestined so that you would be in a sun-like relationship with the eternal God. That's the plan that they crafted before God even said, let there be light. And it was a plan crafted between the Father and the Son.

How beautiful is that? And then there is that work of creation. And you just get the picture of the Father and the Son working side by side, mysteriously, in the crafting of the universe. And language cannot really capture all the depths of the theology here. I don't fully understand it all.

But listen to what it says. It says in John 1, 1 through 3, In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. And then in verse 2 it stresses the relational aspect. He was with God in the beginning, and then they get busy. Verse 3, through him all things were made, and without him nothing was made that has been made.

What does that mean? Through him? I don't know what it means. I just know that Jesus was an active participant with the Father in the creation of the physical universe. And they did it together.

There was a sense of Father-Son fellowship together in the crafting of the universe. How beautiful is that? And so Colossians 1, 15 and 16 says this. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation, for by him all things were created. Things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities, all things were created by him and for him.

So we get these little words in the English language, by him, through him, for him, that's Jesus. But it was the Father who did the creating with the Son, and through the Son, and for the Son. And so the Father and the Son in creation. All right, that's our brief tour of eternity past. But the first act of creation, God says let there be light and there's light.

And on the sixth day of creation, God makes man, male and female. He created them in the image of God, and he blessed them and said to them, be fruitful and multiply, and God gave them that commission. And Adam was the first man, and God crafted him, and he put him in a garden. And it says in Luke 3.38, in the genealogy of Jesus, an incredible genealogy, after a genealogy of 75 names going from Jesus up, back in time, but up to Adam. It's just so and so, the son of so and so, the son of so and so, the son of so and so.

75 names, until at last you get to Adam, the son of God. It's a phrase we wouldn't give if the scripture didn't give it. You know, you think there's only begotten son of God, and that's true, but Adam was in some sense the son of God, because that's what the scripture says. And so he was crafted in the image of God. And then Adam stood and represented all of us.

We were all represented by our first father, Adam. And he stood there at the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, having been clearly commanded by God not to partake of it. But he took and he ate that fruit, and he sinned. And it says very plainly what happened in Romans 5, 12. Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin.

In this way, death came to all men because all sin. We were represented by our first father, Adam. And sin entered the world. We're talking about a redemptive plan that wouldn't need to be a redemptive plan if there hadn't been sin. And that's where sin entered the world, through this one man.

And so it says in 1 Corinthians 15, 22, as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. So we all died in Adam. And so in Genesis 5, tracing out another genealogy, it says this is the book of the generations of Adam. When God created man, he made him in the likeness of God. Male and female, he created them and he blessed them and he named them together, man.

And that I think is the reason why a wife will take her husband's name when they get married. Together, they're called by the name man, the race, male and female, they're called man. And then it says this, when Adam in Genesis 5-3 had lived 130 years, he fathered a son in his own likeness, and he named him Seth. So now we've got Seth in the likeness of Adam. And that comes with all kinds of baggage at that point, because that includes a sin nature.

We all sinned in Adam, and we gained from him a nature towards sin, a bent towards sin. And then you get this dreary refrain in Genesis 5, verse 5, and then he died, verse 8, and then he died, verse 11, and then he died, verse 14, and then he died, 17, and then he died, and then he died, and then he died, and then he died. We get death from our first father, Adam, that's what we get, sin and death. And now at the root of the doctrine of original sin is the concept of federal headship that Adam represented the whole human race at the tree. I was talking to my kids about this, trying to teach them this point.

So important that they understand theology and that we teach them these things. And I'm not sure I understand theology, you know, but I try and we try to explain it. But one of them said to me, Daddy, it isn't really fair. I wasn't there. Well, there's about seven different answers.

There's 20 different answers to that one. First of all, we could just say, would you have done better? Oh, yes, Dad. I would have done much better than Adam. All right, just like any other nation would have done better than the Jews, right?

Really? They had all these advantages. But all right, well, we'll dispense with that. I've seen you, and I don't think you would have done any better. So there's that.

But then I asked, do you hope to go to heaven? You're a sinner, you acknowledge it. Why do you think you're gonna go to heaven? Why would God accept you? Well, because Jesus died for me.

Were you there then? You see the consistency of God? You weren't there when Adam sinned and you weren't there when Jesus died. And he is our federal head, he's our representative at the cross, just as Adam was at the tree. But in one sense it seems you were there.

You were there when Adam took that fruit. Because it says in Hebrews 7, verse 9 and 10, one might even say that Levi, who collects the tenth, paid the tenth through Abraham because when Melchizedek met Abraham, Levi was still in the body, the loins of his ancestor, his father. So in one sense, genetically or something like that, I'm not going to get it too biologically technical here. You were there in the body of your ancestor. And so Adam, our first father, gave us sin and death.

Second stage, we have Noah and the flood. You know, sin doesn't stay put, it just grows, it multiplies, it metastasizes, it doesn't stay put. And so pretty soon you have murder in Genesis 4 and it just gets worse and worse. By the time you get to Genesis 6, the thoughts and inclinations of the human heart are only evil all the time. And God is weary of putting up with and bearing patiently the sin that he sees.

He's determined to wipe out the world with a flood. But there was a man that he found. By grace, Noah was righteous and upright in his sight. And Noah had a yearning to protect his family. And so it says in Hebrews 11, 7, By faith Noah, when warned about things not yet seen, in holy fear built an ark to save his family.

And by his faith, he condemned the world and became heir of the righteousness that comes by faith. Oh, fathers, what is the dreadful thing that Noah didn't see and that he labored for over a hundred years to protect his family from. What was it? An impending flood, the judgment of God. I tell you a greater one is coming.

Far greater than the flood of Noah. And that is the wrath of God on Judgment Day. Are you laboring to protect your family from it? Are you working to protect them? And you can't build an ark.

You don't need to build an ark. Jesus has built the ark. You just need to evangelize your kids and tell them to get on the ark, because the flood most certainly is coming. But there is Noah, an example to fathers, of concern for his family, and by faith, he seeks to protect them, and he builds this ark. Well, Noah's sons would repopulate the earth.

What would it be like? Think what it would have been like to step off the Ark, after the flood everything was done, on Mount Ararat to step off and smell the fresh air of a whole new world and realize eerily you eight are the only human beings on it. That's an eerie feeling when you think about it, but also a very significant moment in redemptive history. And through Shem, Ham, and Japheth, Noah would repopulate the earth through his sons. And the table of nations in Genesis 10 just shows the spread of humanity from Mount Ararat from that point.

Those three sons would repopulate the earth. And it says in Genesis 10 32, these are the families of Noah after God blessed Noah has already been alluded to. God said, be fruitful and increase in number and fill the earth. In Genesis 10 32 it says, these are the families of the sons of Noah according to their genealogies and their nations and from these the nations spread about on the earth after the flood. Those are the nations we're trying to reach with the gospel.

And they spread all over the earth. Those are the very same ones, all of them tracing their lineage back to Noah. From one man, he made every nation of men. Acts 17, the apostle Paul said that. Now, Noah's sons were blessed or cursed, at least in part, based on how well they honored their father Noah.

And so this story is told rather tragically of Noah, a man of the soil, who decides to plant a vineyard, and he makes wine from the grapes, and he drinks of the wine, and he gets drunk. And he lays uncovered in his tent. And so he's uncovered in his tent. And along comes Ham, the father of Canaan, and sees him uncovered and goes and tells his brothers about it. Now I don't know what he said or with what spirit, but the implication is he somewhat mocked his naked father.

This is Noah at his worst. He never looks worse in the Bible than at this moment. But what Shem and Japheth do here is so significant. They put a cloak on their shoulders and they walk in backwards and they cover the nakedness of their father. They never see it and they walk back out.

And when Noah wakes up and understands what had happened, he doesn't say cursed be Ham. He said cursed be Canaan, Ham's son. And it's really quite striking at that particular moment. Because Ham didn't honor his father, the curse is going to go on his son. That father-son relationship is cursed.

Now, I've thought about this, and I've told this to my kids a lot. And apparently, they need to understand this as they get to be teenagers. I have two teenage children. And I haven't realized just how stupid I've become in such a short amount of time. My insights just lack the clarity they used to have.

I don't know what it is. I seem to have gone insane. But I hope that it's going to clear. The thing is we also have a two year old. So we're stair stepped all the way down to two.

So I might be insane and kind of foolish for a long time. But at any rate, I say, listen to me, you must honor me. Because I'm your father, even if I'm sinful, you must honor me. God will bless you or not based on whether you do that. Shem and Japheth they walked in backwards and covered their father's nakedness.

I don't struggle with alcohol at all, but I do struggle with sin. I have to ask forgiveness of my children. I have to confess sin to them I need to do it it's just honest when you speak sharply or discipline and anger or don't love their mother your wife and in the way that Christ would the church you need to apologize and be honest but they need to not in any way dishonor me because of my sinfulness And I learned that from the lesson of Noah and his drunkenness. Level three, the patriarchs. We have Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, these patriarchs.

And there's a promise of worldwide blessing coming through Abraham. God is beginning to unfold his missionary plan. And in Genesis chapter 12, he tells Abram, leave your country and your people and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a blessing. I will bless you.

I'll make your name great like the name, the greatest names of the face on the face of the earth. And then he says in Genesis 12, three, I will bless those who bless you, and whom who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed. So the gospel's gonna go out to all these families, the descendants of Noah, and Shem, Ham, and Japheth. And through Abraham, all the peoples on the earth are going to be blessed. Well, we know that's coming through Jesus.

Jesus is the fulfillment of that promise. So Abraham is our forefather in faith. And he is also the example of saving faith for all time. How does an individual sinner stand holy and blameless before God so that God will actually invite us to live with him in eternity in heaven? How can that even happen?

It happens by faith. It happens when we, by faith, believe the promise of God. And so it says in Genesis 15, you remember how God had promised that He would be the father of many nations, and he doesn't have any children. And Sarah is barren, and he's getting old, and she's old, and he's got this guy, Eliezer of Damascus, who's his heir. And it's just not going the way he thought.

And God speaks to him in Genesis 15.1 and says, do not be afraid, O Abram, I am your shield, I am your very great reward. And he said, what can you give me? I'm still childless, in case you hadn't noticed. I don't have any children. And he says, come out with me and look up at the stars.

And they come out and they take a walk together. You know Abraham is called the friend of God. And so they just went out and he said, look at that star, the starry sky, and see all of those stars and count them if you can. By the way, you can't. And then he says, so shall your offspring be.

That's a promise. It's a future promise. You will have offspring as numerous as the stars in the sky. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. Paul picks up on this in Romans chapter 4 as the way we get saved.

We believe a better promise than that, but it's the same mechanism. We hear a promise of God concerning future, eternal life, and we believe it. Abraham believed God and it was credited to him as righteousness. He is the pattern of all time, but notice that it's focused on his procreation, on him having children, His father-son relationship. Well, after that Abraham was given the covenant of circumcision.

Before Isaac was born, the covenant of circumcision came. His son Ishmael had been born. And this is a distinctly male sign of the old covenant. It's tied to the propagation of Abraham's seed through marital relations and of the blessing. It says in Genesis 17, 11 and 12, you are to undergo circumcision and it will be the sign of the covenant between me and you.

For the generations to come, every male among you who is eight days old must be circumcised. So it's a uniquely male thing in the old covenant. And a focus I think also on procreation, on the bearing of children. Now foundational to God's choice of Abraham was Abraham's commitment to pass on his faith to his children and to his grandchildren. And it says in Genesis 18, 18 and 19, Abraham will surely become a great and powerful nation, and all nations on earth will be blessed through him.

For I have chosen him, says the Lord, I have chosen him so that he will direct his children and his household after him to keep the way of the Lord by doing what is right and just, so that the Lord will bring about for Abraham what he has promised him." To some degree, it seems that God's bringing about for Abraham what he's promised is connected to his instruction of his children and his training of them. And he chose, God chose of course, chose well. Because Abraham would be a good father. And he would instruct Isaac. And he would pass on the vision and the promises of God to Isaac and Isaac then to Jacob.

But that's exactly what he was told to do. And fathers, may I urge you, just look at Genesis 18, 18 and 19. And say, is this not my calling as well has not God chosen you to pass on your faith to future generations as well to instruct your children and to train them in the ways of the Lord well in the course of time God did a miracle he enabled a man who's who is a hundred years old his body is good as dead it says in Romans 4 to conceive a child to give birth to become a father to a child, and a woman whose womb had been barren 90 years. I mean, it was humorous, she thought, that she would bear a child at that late stage of her life. But it says that God is the one who calls things that are not as though they were and gives life to the dead.

And so he calls up out of that deadness and that nothingness a child, physically Isaac. And she gives birth to Isaac, and Abraham circumcised him. And then he begins to train him. He begins to teach him the ways of the Lord. And in the course of time, as I've already alluded, it says sometime later, God tested Abraham and said, Abraham, take your son, your only son Isaac whom you love, and offer him as a sacrifice in one of the mountains that I'll tell you about.

Does God test us? Does He test us in the context of our families? Does He test us in the context of our relationship with our sons and our daughters? Yes, He does. And that was a very difficult test.

But look at their relationship. Here's Isaac saying to his father Abraham, Father, Here's the wood and the fire, but where's the lamb for the sacrifice? And do you remember the beautiful, beautiful thing that Abraham said? God will provide the lamb. I think it was through the little boy Isaac that he speaks the central question of the Old Testament.

Where is the lamb? It is the question of the Old Testament sacrificial system. Where's the lamb? Because the blood of bulls and goats cannot take away human sin. And he's saying, where is God's provision?

And it's coming, friends. John the Baptist pointed to God's provision, said, behold the lamb who takes away the sin of the world. Isaac's question, where is the Lamb? John the Baptist answered, behold the Lamb of God. It takes away the sin of the world.

But just in a lower level, just look at the relationship between Abraham and Isaac as they have this kind of conversation about spiritual things, even at a young age. And you remember how God rescued Isaac from being killed at that particular moment. And isn't it amazing that he who asked Abraham to give up his son, but in the end stopped him by the angel of the Lord. He didn't stop himself. The father actually gave his son, his only begotten son whom he loved.

He who did not spare his son but gave him up for us all. How will he not also along with him graciously give us all things? Well in the course of time, Isaac had two sons. One of them was a child of the promise, Jacob. The other one he saw was not a child of the promise.

One of them was a man of faith, the other one was not. He sold his birthright for a bowl of stew. He had no interest in the things of God. Jacob had a lot of problems. He was a con artist, a deceiver.

He lied to his father. Who are you? The blind father said. And he said, I am your son Esau. Well that's, I guess by any definition, a lie.

And he lied to his own father, took advantage of him. So there's nothing great about Jacob. We're not chosen because we're such righteous people, or even because We're great believers. Faith is a gift. But still, Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were chosen by God to carry on a physical lineage.

And in the course of time, Jacob himself had 12 sons, the patriarchs, and from them came the Jewish nation. That sets the stage for the Christ. Jesus was born of the Jews. He told the Samaritan woman at the well, salvation comes from the Jews. And that comes from a physical lineage from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and a whole heritage.

Well, in the course of time, the unfolding of God's redemptive plan, you know what happened with Joseph, how he sold as a slave into Egypt, and then Jacob and all of the patriarchs followed him down, and in four generations, 400 years, they were enslaved, and God sent the deliverer, Moses. And he called Moses, the flames of the burning bush, that he would go and deliver him. And he put it in these terms, very interesting, Exodus 4, 22 and 23, then say to Pharaoh, this is what the Lord says, Israel is my firstborn son. That's what he says. Israel is my firstborn son.

And I told you, let my son go that he may worship me. But you refused to let him go, so I will kill your firstborn son. See how personal it gets? Again, we are saved into a sonship relationship. The Jews were seen as a nation, as God's firstborn son, and because Pharaoh wouldn't let him go, he lost his own firstborn son.

Well, you know that the plague came. The last of the plagues was the most dreadful, the very thing that God said he would bring on Pharaoh. He brought on the entire nation. The Passover came and God commanded that the Passover lamb be sacrificed and the blood be applied so that the first born sons of Israel would not die. The implication is they deserved it as much as the Egyptians did.

All of us are saved by grace. There's no one righteous, not even one. And we must have the blood of the land. And so, God commanded the Passover. And he made it a regulation for the Jews for generations to come.

And he said in Exodus 13, one and two, "'The Lord said to Moses, "'Consecrate to me every firstborn male. "'The first offspring of every womb among the Israelites belongs to me whether man or animal so all the firstborn males were consecrated Then it says in verse 5 through 8 of that same chapter, Exodus 13, when the Lord brings you into the land of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Hivites, and Jebusites, the land he swore your forefathers to give you, a land flowing with milk and honey, you are to observe this ceremony in this month. For Seven days eat bread made without yeast, and on the seventh day hold a festival to the Lord. Eat unleavened bread during those seven days. Nothing with yeast in it is to be seen among you, nor shall any yeast be seen anywhere within your borders.

And on that day tell your son, I do this because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt. So you're supposed to take your little young son alongside and say, I want to tell you what God did for us. You're gonna pass on that heritage, that memory of what God did. Explain it to your son. And then again in that same chapter, Exodus 13, 13 through 16.

It says, redeem with a lamb every firstborn donkey, but if you do not redeem it, break its neck. Redeem every firstborn son among your sons. By the way, it says nothing about breaking your son's neck. However tempting it may be, all right, Never called on to do that, okay? But they must be redeemed.

The implication is still hold over there from the night of the Passover. Redeem every firstborn among your sons. In days to come when your son asks you, what does this mean? Say to him, with a mighty hand the Lord has brought us out of Egypt out of the land of slavery. When Pharaoh stubbornly refused to let us go, the Lord killed every firstborn in Egypt, both man and animal.

This is why I sacrifice to the Lord the first male offspring of every womb and redeem each of my firstborn sons. And it will be like a sign on your hand and like a symbol on your forehead that the Lord brought us out of Egypt with his mighty hand. The redemption ceremony points back to the night of the Passover, the night that the lamb was sacrificed, but even more than that it points ahead to the time when Jesus would shed his blood, not just for all the firstborn sons, but for the whole nation, that everyone who believes in him might have eternal life. As I've already mentioned, all the sons were circumcised. Leviticus 12, a woman who becomes pregnant and gives birth to a son will be ceremonially unclean for seven days, and on the eighth day the boy is to be circumcised.

It's a sign of the old covenant. Now in Deuteronomy 6, we get a special moment between fathers and sons. I wrote a whole article about this. It's in the Journal of Biblical Manhood and Womanhood. You can read it there.

In that place, I argue that the commands given here in the Hebrew language are from father to son but a good translation is a father should instruct his children so you could say how can you say it both ways well I just think that the son the father-son relationship is very significant And the son is mentioned specifically because someday he's gonna be the head of a household. And so there's a multi-generational vision of instruction here. What do I mean by Deuteronomy 6? Well listen to this. Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today that are to be upon your hearts, impress them on your children. Now that word children is sons. Impress them on your sons is a literalistic translation. The NAS picks it up.

All the others I think rightly translated children because sometimes the word can mean children. But I think there's a focus here on the father's passing on of instructions to the son. Impress these commandments upon your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads.

Write them on the door frames of your houses and on your gates. Now I love verse 7 because it says, you know, impress them on your children. It's literally sharpen them. So there's a sense of wetting, a sense of a whetstone. And so you're sharpening a sword or an ax or something like that, there's a repetition there.

And you're just going to be repeating it. Like Paul does in Philippians 3, one. Finally, my brothers, rejoice in the Lord. It is no trouble for me to write the same things to you again, and it's a safeguard for you. It's a safeguard for your sons and your daughters to repeat these commandments, sharpen them into your children.

Like the father or the husband who says to his wife, I told you the day that we got married that I love you. If anything changes, I'll let you know. And so it is so many fathers are that way with the commandments of God. God said, love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. Anything changes, I'll let you know.

That is not it. We must Saturate their lives with this command. They must be trained how to love God when they sit down, how to love God when they rise, how to love God when they walk along the road and when they lie down. In everything they do, a father is to train the son. And here's where it gets very practical.

In all the work they're doing, in all the play that they do together, when they're eating together, in every moment of life, the Father is training the Son and all of His children. Love God with everything you have. The Son is to be specially trained in this one way. Someday, Son, you're going to have to do this for your children. Get ready for that responsibility, a multi-generational vision than is passed on.

It's even highlighted later in the chapter, in the future when your son asks you, what is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and laws of the Lord, our God has commanded you, tell him we were slaves of Pharaoh and Egypt and the Lord brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand. Now a father has an important responsibility therefore to train his son. He's to train him in the Ten Commandments, honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. And he's even to have him put to death if he's a stubborn and rebellious man at the end of that training. And nothing can be done for him.

And this is a dreadful thing, but it's right there in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 21, It says, if a man has a stubborn or rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, this son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.

Then all the men of the town shall stone him to death. You must purge the evil from among you. All Israel will hear of it and be afraid." It's serious. Honor your father and mother so that you may live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you. It may go well with you.

It's a very serious thing. Far more serious though is if that son loses his soul. For what would it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his soul? And So now, and I'll make this point more clearly in the New Testament, it is vital for fathers to train their sons so that they would not die eternally, not just physically. The entire book of Proverbs, in my opinion, is written so that fathers are able to train their sons in the laws of God, train them and get them ready.

It's set in the context of the relationship. 30 times in the Hebrew, the words translated, my son, is found in the book of Proverbs, 30 times. Proverbs 1, seven and eight, it says, the fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and discipline. Listen, my son, to your father's instruction and do not forsake your mother's teaching. Proverbs 2, it says, my son, if you accept my words and store up my commands within you, turning your ear to wisdom and applying your heart to understanding, and if you call out for insight and cry aloud for understanding and if you look for it as silver and search for it as hidden treasure, then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.

For the Lord gives wisdom and from his mouth come knowledge and understanding. And so sweetly, I love this, Proverbs 23, 26, Give me your heart, my son, and let your eyes delight in my ways. That's a father to his son saying, Please give me your heart. Open up your mind to me and let me teach you. Let me train you.

Proverbs 23, 26, Therefore the setting up of a physical nation, the Jews, in the physical promised land was done to picture the spiritual realities that would come. It was a conditional promise. They could keep that land as long as they obeyed the commands. If they disobeyed the law of Moses, if they disobeyed the covenant given at Sinai, they would be evicted from the land. Therefore, a father's relationship to teach his sons and daughters the commands of God was paramount.

He had to prepare them to carry the burden of the nation's continued existence in the Promised Land through faithful obedience to the laws of God. Now, the line of David pictures this very clearly. David, King David, had a desire to build a house for God. Do you remember that? He wanted to make a tent.

God's ark was in a tent and he said, here I am in a palace of cedar. I think he was feeling guilty. Boy, this is a wonderful dwelling, but there's God in a tent, as though God really were in a tent. Solomon, his son, said, heaven, even the highest heaven can't contain God. But do you remember what happened?

Nathan said to him, well, whatever your heart has to do, do it, for God is with you. But then God told Nathan a better word. He said, go back and tell David something else. Tell him this, 2 Samuel 7, the Lord declares to you, David, that the Lord Himself will establish a house for you. You want to build me a house?

No, I'll build you a house. And when your days are over and you rest with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you who will come from your own body and I will establish His kingdom. He is the one who will establish His kingdom. He is the one who will build a house from My name and I will establish the throne of His kingdom forever. I will be His Father and He will be my Son.

When He does wrong, I will punish Him with the rod of men, with floggings inflicted by men, but my love will never be taken from him as I took it from Saul when I removed whom I removed from before you. Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me. Your throne will be established forever." Now this is a multi-layered prophecy. Ultimately the fulfillment is in Jesus Christ. Jesus is the one who builds a house for David, for he said, I go to prepare a place for you.

Who's building a house for us? Is it not Jesus? And so he's crafting a place where we will dwell forever, and that includes David. So Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment. I will be his Father and he will be my Son.

Those words are spoken directly of Jesus in the New Testament. But right after that comes a strange statement. And he says, when he does wrong, I'll punish him with the rod. He says I'm gonna raise up a son out of your own body who will succeed you on the throne. This is Solomon.

And then Solomon gave birth to a son Rehoboam and on it went. The two of them however are related. The physical lineage of Jesus was traced from that moment, from David, down until the time came when he was born, in the fullness of time, born of a virgin. We'll get to that in the New Testament time. But each one of those descendants of David would be blessed or not depending on whether they obeyed God.

And if the son obeyed God and kept his commandments, then God would bless him with long life and with a fruitful life. But if he disobeyed, he would get spanked with a rod of reproof. And so what do we have in Kings and Chronicles but a story of how well those sons of David did or not? And some of them did well and some of them didn't. But in the end, in the end they were exiled because they did not obey.

You know it's interesting to look through and you just see the accounting. You know, so and so, when so and so died, so and so, their son succeeded them as king and they ruled X number of years and they did right or they did evil and then they died. And it's just this summary. What is your life summary is going to look like? Get it down to three or four lines, what's it going to look like?

And so these kings were described as good or evil in just one statement by the inspired writer of history, these descendants of David. And they picture the degeneration of the nation which led ultimately to the exile. Hezekiah was a godly king, his son Manasseh was ungodly, his son Ammon was ungodly. Look in your Bibles, take a minute and look at 2 Kings 21. 2 Kings 21 Verse 20 and 21, this is Ammon, The son of Manasseh.

Manasseh was a wicked king, the worst of all of them. Of all the descendants of David, he was the worst. And it says in verse 20, I'll actually begin in verse 19, Ammon was 22 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem two years. His mother's name was Mishulamith, daughter of Haruz. She was from Jutba.

Verse 20, he did evil in the eyes of the Lord as his father Manasseh had done. Do you see that? Verse 21, he walked in all the ways of his father. He worshiped the idols his father had worshiped and bowed down to them. Verse 22, he forsook the Lord the God of his fathers and did not walk in the way of the Lord.

Manasseh bears, it seems, a direct responsibility for the way that Ammon carried on his life because his son carried on in his sinful and wicked patterns. The father set a bad example for the son and the son carried it on into his adult years and God judged him for it. And so one of the key principles here is that the sins of the fathers affect and pollute the sons, and they pick them up and they carry them on. But if you keep reading, then his son Josiah becomes a king. Look at 2 Kings 22 right there probably on the same page, verse 1 and 2.

Josiah was 8 years old when he became king and he reigned in Jerusalem 31 years. His mother's name was Jadida, daughter of Adiah. She was from Bozkath. He did what was right in the eyes of the Lord and walked in all the ways of his father David, not turning aside to the right or to the left. And you will find this to be the case.

The assessment of all of the kings in the book of Kings always says something about the immediate father who led them into wickedness or David their father who set a pattern of righteousness. It always says something about the immediate father who led them into wickedness, or David their father who set a pattern of righteousness. It always says something about the father and does the same thing with the kings of Israel, the northern kingdom. How many times do you read about Jeroboam the son of Nebat? I don't know anything about Nebat except that he had a wicked son.

But he's in there again and again, the sins that Jeroboam son of Nebat led Israel to commit. You know what I get out of that? Fathers bear responsibility for how it turns out with their sons. They bear responsibility. David set a good example.

He was not sinless, we know that. But he set a pattern of godliness, a heritage that's still affecting Judah generations later. But in the end, the sins of the Jews, of the fathers and of the sons led to the eviction of the Jews from the promised land. So there is a hereditary effect and an influential effect of sin, but there's a limit to that too. In Ezekiel 18 it says, the word of the Lord came to me.

What do you mean by quoting this proverb about the land of Israel. The fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth are set on edge. Basically, you know, my father sins, he does all this bad stuff and now I've got to pay the price. I'm getting judged for the sins of my father. Well, Listen to what God says to Ezekiel.

As surely as I live, declares the sovereign Lord, you will no longer quote this proverb in Israel. For every living soul belongs to me, the Father as well as the Son, both alike belong to me. The soul who sins is the one who will die. You know what that means? We're all responsible for our own sins and that is something every father must teach his son.

If you don't like what I'm doing, I say to them as a father, if I'm provoking you to anger, if I'm doing all that, if I'm sinning, if I'm acting like sinful Noah and all that, Your response is still your responsibility. You stand based on what you do before God. You are accountable, son, for your decisions. Don't blame me for them. So there's two sides of that coin.

Fathers need to recognize How many times it says, as his father Manasseh had done, there's an influence there. But every soul stands in the end before God based on what they do. No one's going to hell for the sins of their father or grandfather, but for their own decisions and the things that they did. Well, in the end, because of the sins of both the fathers and the sons, the exile came. Jeremiah 3.25, the prophet Jeremiah says this, Let us lie down in our shame, and let our disgrace cover us.

We have sinned against the Lord our God, both we and our fathers. Let's be honest. Both we and our fathers sinned. From our youth to this day, we have not obeyed the Lord our God. And so they were exiled.

They exiled the Babylon. For 70 years they were there. And then came the restoration. Now God had said this would happen. He predicted it.

And he also predicted how they would be restored back to the Promised Land. In Leviticus 26, 39 through 42, he says, Those of you who are left will waste away in the lands of their enemies because of their sins. Also because of their fathers' sins will they waste away. But they will confess their sins, if they will confess their sins and the sins of their fathers, their treachery against me and their hostility toward me, which made me hostile toward them, so I sent them into the land of their enemies. Then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham and restore them.

So what do they have to do? Out there in the land of the exile they have to humble themselves and acknowledge readily that they sinned and so did their fathers. Well a prime example of This is Daniel. In Daniel chapter 9, you don't have to turn there, but it's one of the great prayers of confession you'll ever find in the Bible. And Daniel says, we have been wicked and we have rebelled.

Our kings, our princes, and our fathers, and the people of the land, all of them sinned 70 years ago. And now we, here in Babylon, are continuing the same patterns. We haven't sought the Lord. We haven't looked for His law. We're not following God.

And then he makes his request. This is Daniel now. He says, Now, O Lord our God, who brought your people out of Egypt with a mighty hand and made for yourself a name that endures to this day, we have sinned, we have done wrong. I counted 19 times that he says something like that, that we've sinned or disobeyed. Oh Lord, in keeping with all your righteous acts, Turn away your anger and your wrath from Jerusalem, your city, your holy hill.

Our sins and the iniquities of our fathers have made Jerusalem and your people an object of scorn to all those around us. Now our God, hear the prayers and petitions of your servant. For your sake, O Lord, look with favor on your desolate sanctuary. Give ear, O Lord, in here. Open your eyes and see the desolation of the city that bears your name.

We do not make requests of you because you are righteous, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear. O Lord, forgive. O Lord, act." What is he asking them to do? Restore the Jews back to the Promised Land, the very same thing he said.

He's doing the thing that in Leviticus he was commanded to do. He's humbling himself. He's turning to God in repentance and brokenness and God heard his prayer. And under Cyrus the Great, the Jews returned in small numbers, 42, 000 of them came back, and he re-established the Jews in a provisional sense in the Promised Land, and that continued the history of the Jews that led ultimately to the time of Christ. And that leads us to the 8th and final stage in our look here at fathers and sons, and that is the promise that God made concerning the future.

And that is Malachi 4, verse 5 and 6. This is how it ends in the English Old Testament. Not in the Hebrew Old Testament, but in the English, this is how it ends providentially. It says, Behold, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers, or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.

So Elijah is coming before the great and dreadful day of the Lord. Elijah was John the Baptist and he got the people ready for Jesus to come. But part of the ministry of the New Testament was to turn the hearts of the fathers to the sons and the sons to the fathers, to knit them together in a beautiful relationship. Or else, He says, I'll come and strike the land with a curse. What a word for the old covenant to end with, by the way.

A curse. And how sweet is it that Jesus begins His teaching of His disciples in the Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. So we have looked in a very quick way at fathers and sons in the old covenant. What are a few of the lessons?

First of all, we saw that the first time love is mentioned in both the Old and the New Testament, it is a love of the Father for the Son. From that we discussed that the love of God the Father, the love that God the Father has for God the Son is foundational. It's the foundational relationship in the universe that produced all things, the creation of the universe, the redemptive plan, all of it came out of the relationship that the Father has with the Son. We discussed the origination of God's redemptive plan, a plan based on the love the Father has with the Son, that those whom He foreknew, He predestined to be conformed and brought into a Father-Son relationship through faith in Christ. Then Adam created in the image of God imported sin and death to the human race...

...And all of us have been born in the image of Adam. And we got a sin nature from Adam and we got death, a death penalty from him. We traced out then the centrality of the father-son relationship... ...Through the patriarchs, through Noah, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob... ...God unfolding his redemptive plan, creating eventually, crafting a nation...

...Through Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, the Jewish nation... ...A physical context out of which would come a redeemer, salvation is from the Jews. Jesus would come and he would be a Jew. We discussed the old covenant through Moses, how God gave to the Jews a conditional promise... That they could keep the promised land if they kept the law.

Part of that law was honor your father and mother. And part of the responsibility in the old covenant was for fathers to train the sons and to pass on a multi-generational vision of obedience to God and to that covenant. We saw that God made a covenant with David that He would raise up one of his own sons who would sit on the throne, immediately with Solomon. Ultimately, it's Jesus. And Jesus would reign forever and ever.

And Jesus would build a house where David would live forever and ever. We discussed also the failure of the Jews to keep the covenant. The fathers and the sons both failed. They did not obey. They could not obey because their hearts weren't transformed.

The old covenant made no provision for the heart just told us what to do. And so the book of Hebrews says, it's obsolete and aging would soon pass away. There's a better covenant coming and we'll talk about that next time. But the sins of the fathers and the sons led to the eviction of the Jews from the Promised Land. And we saw also the restoration through repentance of men like Daniel and Ezra and Nehemiah.

And the final promise made through Malachi... That God would turn the hearts of the fathers toward each other. What application? Well, first of all, just praise God for the father-son relationship. Praise God for the security of it.

The father and son will never argue, they'll never have conflict. They love each other perfectly and that's a sure and certain foundation of their love for you. They're bringing you into a solid foundation and it will survive every test and trial of your life. It's a solid and secure relationship. And God is saving you on the basis of it.

And if I can speak directly to fathers and also to the sons, see your relationship as one having eternal significance. You're not accidentally thrown together, but God shows you for each other. See the time that you have together echoing in eternity. It's of eternal significance. Don't let anything rob you of that time.

Take that perspective. Don't let the tyranny of the urgent rob you of time together, of mutual benefit. Don't be so married to your jobs and your careers that you lose out on time spent together. Came across an illustration of this, a man named Brooks Adams. He kept a diary from his boyhood days and on through the years.

And one day when he was eight years old, he wrote in his diary, went fishing with my father, the most glorious day of my life. Throughout the next 40 years of his life, he never forgot that special day that he went fishing with his father. Repeated references were made in his diary on that date, remembering that time that he went fishing with his father. Well, Brooke's father was an important man, Charles Francis Adams, the United States Ambassador to Great Britain under the Lincoln administration. Interestingly, he also had a diary and he wrote in his diary about that same fishing trip.

He wrote simply, went fishing with my son a day wasted. How many fathers have that kind of perspective? And they might even worse not go fishing with their sons... Because they anticipate that it would be a day wasted. You know I think God has already turned the heart of the Son to the Father, but what about the fathers to the sons?

They're looking to you. They want to spend time with you. They cherish that time. Are you making the most of it? Are you protecting it, guarding it?

Are you infusing it with the significance of the New Testament? I almost can't wait to get to the New Testament. We'll talk about how to do that then. But fathers, as I've already said, be like Noah. Build an ark to protect your sons, your daughters, your wives from the coming flood.

And take seriously Deuteronomy 6-7. Sharpen the commands of God into your sons. Those things are still there and into your daughters. Train them and teach them the commands of God. And mothers don't resent this focus.

I don't think you do. I don't think you'd be here if you were of that disposition. But rejoice in it. Pray for it. Enhance it.

Urge the father to spend time with the son. Pray that it would be a rich time. And bring up your daughters to look for the kind of man who will be this kind of father to his son. And daughters, prepare yourself for that day when you can be a helper suitable for that kind of a man to enhance that kind of relationship. This all comes from the mind and the thoughts of a wise and loving father, and it is good and right.

It was part of what God did to set up the new covenant, which we'll talk about next time. Close with me in prayer. Father, We thank you for the brief tour that we've had through the entire Old Testament on this theme of fathers and sons. And Father, I pray that you would take and multiply the truths that we've seen here, that they would be rich and full for us. I pray that we would not consider time spent with our sons wasted, but that we would actually have a vision for the future and for what you can do through the father-son relationship.

We thank you for Heavenly Father for the eternal and perfect love you have for your only begotten Son. This is my son, my only son, whom I love. And we thank you that that gives us security, that you will love us in the same way. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.