Psalm 78:1-8 • The God Who Fathers

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(This transcript was prepared using software tools and has not been reviewed for complete accuracy.)

 A week ago I was at the Global Proclamation Academy in Dallas, Texas, engaged in the training of young pastors from 29 nations. To qualify to go to the Global Proclamation Academy, you have to be recommended as a future leader of a distressed nation's church.



 In other words, they are people who could not ordinarily afford to be in this country. Many of them would ordinarily not be permitted to be in this country unless special arrangements have been made. And yet as I listen to testimony after testimony of these future leaders of Christ Church in distressed nations, as it were the future fathers of the church in those nations, over and over and over again, they talked about the priorities of the developing church being developing fathers for the children of the next generation to worship Christ.



 It's so much of that that the psalmist himself captures when he says, "We will not hide from the children, but tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord, His might, and the wonders that He has done." As you're turning to Psalm 78, let me pray for us that the Lord would inspire and help us be such a church of fathers for the generations to follow.



 Heavenly Father, You give us a privilege even of calling You by that name, that what You have established for families to give relational guidance and respect and a focus on who You are is how You privilege those in the church that You have called to Father, either by their biological relationship or by the way in which they help others within the life of the church.



 You are doing this because You are a father, and You care deeply and profoundly about the souls of Your children for eternity.



 Help us to do the same, to reflect who You are by learning and being what it means to be a father in the faith for the sake of Your children. So guide us this day, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.



 For all the years of her growing up, Kathy's family had a very large, majestic tree in their front yard.



 But just weeks before Kathy's father died, it became apparent that the tree had died.



 And so one of the last active efforts of Kathy's father was to get that tree taken down and properly disposed of.



 In the life of that tree, there had been various times that insects or injury had attacked it and as a consequence, some of you know what happens to oak trees, a burl formed over the injury. As the wood starts to layer, to cover the injury and to heal it, you know what happens. There's kind of a bump that forms on the tree. And inside that bump, as the wood is layering, the wood is denser and thicker and tougher and harder and darker.



 And yet if a woodworker knows what to do with a burl, you can take that injury and that injured part of the tree can be turned into a peculiar beauty with those whose art is to take it and make it into a special household implement, like a bowl, who when it is turned on a lathe by someone with an expert hand, begins to show the beauty of the injury as



 it is used in the hands of someone who is expert.



 I think of that in terms of this particular psalm that has some difficult portions, none more difficult than verse 2, where the psalmist says, "I will open my mouth," in a parable, "I will utter dark sayings from a bowl." That word "dark" is actually a Hebrew word for "naughty," like the knots of a tree, something that's wrong, something that isn't smooth, something that isn't already just perfect.



 And yet in the hands of God is made beautiful.



 The thing that is being described in the psalm is the efforts of a father. But those efforts are described with dark sayings from of old, as though God is reminding us that while there is the calling of a father to be a father, it is not a calling to perfection. In fact, some of what God is calling us to at the same moment that He is calling us to our responsibilities as His Father is to acknowledge there may be a few naughty things in who we are and what we have done.



 But it is not the reason to give up on God in your family or in your life, because what the artist in heaven can do is take what is injured and flawed and dark and make it beautiful for His very purposes.



 How does God do that? He does it surely at first just by reminding us what a father's duty is. It's not really surprising to us. We are to recount to the children of faith the deeds of the Lord what He has done. Verse 2 and 3 are making it clear, "I will open my mouth in a parable. I will utter dark sayings from of old, things we've heard and known that our fathers have told us, will not hide them from our children, but tell the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord." Two things have come together.



 We will not hide the dark sayings, nor fail to tell the glorious deeds of the Lord. This is a long psalm, so we didn't have all of it read in front of us, but verse 12 is beginning to talk about the glorious things of the Lord. What has God done that children should know? This generation said, "In the sight of their fathers, God performed wonders in the land of Egypt. In the fields of Zoan, He divided the sea and let the children pass through it and made water stand like a heap.



 In the daytime, He led them with a cloud and all the night with a fiery light. He split the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink abundantly from the deep. He made streams come out of the rock and cause waters to flow down like rivers." He's recounting the history of Israel, and he says, "Here are the amazing things God did. God delivered His people. Here's what God did to redeem and to save us. These are the mighty, glorious deeds of God."



 But what about the dark sayings?



 What about the naughty, hard, dark things in us?



 That's verse 9.



 The Ephraimites, which is another name for Israel, armed with the bow, turned back on the day of battle.



 They did not keep God's covenants, but refused to walk according to His law. They forgot His works and the wonders that He had shown them. They turned and ran, though God had provided for them. They didn't stand in the time when challenge came. And not only did they not stand for challenge because they didn't want to talk about their failings, they forgot God.



 And as a consequence, they did not tell their children the praiseworthy deeds of the Lord and the wonders that He had done. It is the psalmist speaking of the great dread that we as Christian parents have and we as a parenting church have that by failing to speak of the glories of God, our own children would forget that as much as we press them to get good grades and take them to their music lessons and encourage them to go to grandma's house on holidays, we do all the things that are pushed in the right direction, but by failing to mention the things that they most need to hear of the faith they forget.



 The reason it's so important to go to this psalm is you have to say, "What are they supposed to be remembering?"



 Not just the glorious deeds of God. Remember the psalmist said, "I will not hide the dark sayings, the flaws, the things I didn't do right, the things I haven't matched up on." And nonetheless, God was working in behalf of His people. It's the wonderful message of grace. We know our flaws. We know the injuries. We know the dark in us. And yet God was providing all along, even until this moment that the psalm is written,



 we have dark things we don't want to talk about, and yet our God was glorious. And it's those two things together.



 Not just the glorious deeds of God, but right in the same breath, right in the same account, and this is why we needed the glorious deeds of God. Not our perfection. It's not what we had made right. We ran. We went away from the challenge. We weren't consistent. And yet the glorious God was providing for us a path of redemption.



 Not so long ago in this church, there was a man who decided he needed to get on a plane.



 And he went and spent some time with an adult son and said to him this, "I apologize to you.



 When you were growing up, I made clear our expectations.



 I certainly made clear our frustrations.



 But I have only recently began to understand myself the depth and the wonder of the grace of God, and I did not make that plane to you. Please forgive me."



 Two things.



 The Son said, "I forgive you."



 And Father and Son are talking again for the first time in years.



 The conversation's open. It's begun. As the dark sayings are not being withheld, thy naughty points, the flaws in me, because there is beauty in the injury when we as God's fathers, a church, a people, individual fathers, are able to say, "I want to show you by example, but I know my example is not perfect, but my God is greater than my flaws. And I need you to know that. It is what I do not want you to forget. Forget my example. Forget my expectations. But do not forget my God, who in the midst of the dark things that you know about me has been gracious to me." I think about the influence of that as we look at verse 4, "I will tell the next generation."



 The duty is not just to recount the past. It's always to prepare for the future. I will tell, I will prepare the next generation. Our fathers told us of the grace of God, and we will tell the next generation. As that baton is passed, it is the faithfulness of a church, not just to talk about expectations and behavior, but to talk about the grace of God. And there's no better time to mention that than Vacation Bible School, where some of you went through the torture of caring for ill-behaved children this week.



 And you know it's not just the children who come. Sometimes it's our own children. The church can get so focused about the behavior that we want to have the children do as they should to have us feel okay about ourselves, that we get so focused on behavior we forget about the grace of God.



 We are not here primarily to make sure that our children conform to a standard. That is not the primary reason we are here. The primary reason we are here is to tell a parable, the teaching of verse 2, "It is in dark sayings against the backdrop of the glories of God." This is who we are. This is who I am. These are my flaws, my mistakes, my errors. Didn't make it all right. But here is my God, because when you understand the glories of that God, you as a child begin to put your hope in Him and want to follow that God, because you love Him so even at the cost of risk so that the child doesn't run away.



 At that global proclamation academy, one of the young pastors that I met and had opportunity to talk with was from Egypt.



 And some of you know it is very difficult to be a Christian in Egypt these days. And yet here is a young man helping a church in Cairo establish a testimony for Christ



 where if you actually proselytize a Muslim, you will go to jail.



 So here's what they do. The church, they put medical clinics in the church. Just invite people to come in for issues of hygiene and inoculation and invite people in the church. And there's a table that they put Bibles for free. If they hand the Bible to somebody, they will go to jail.



 But if the people just pick up the Bible, that's okay. If they tell a Muslim about Jesus without being invited, you go to jail.



 But if someone asks, "What's this Bible about?" They can say. Here's what he said. He said, "Even in Egypt, most Muslims are nominal." It's kind of our cultural faith. But most Muslims don't know what they believe. Now you have to think of the sovereignty of God as I'm about to tell you this. He said, "Because of so much violence in the world, including Egypt these days, because of extremist Muslims, even nominal Muslims are being forced to ask, what does our faith teach?



 What do we believe? And those who for generations have not examined their faith are suddenly examining their faith



 and asking what Christianity is about."



 He said, "We are ministering to Muslims as we have not in generations. When Muslims, many Muslims are coming to faith in Jesus Christ."



 Now he walks a narrow line. I mean, you say the wrong thing in the wrong way. He goes to jail. And so I asked him directly, I said, "Why do you take such a risk?"



 He said, "A generation ago, my father established the church when it was even more dangerous.



 And he has told me what God has done.



 And so I am not afraid.



 But believe in the God of my Father and believe He is working powerfully among us. The Israelites ran and so the fathers forgot and their children did. But here was a father who stood firm for the sake of God. And when He did, His Son learned. And through His Son now, generations are hearing of the gospel. Yes, they know all the difficulties. Yes, they know all the harm that could come to them. But they believe in a glorious God who has saved them by grace and the provision of His Son.



 And that supports them in the hardest places in the world to serve. Not only is there a duty of fathers that's being outlined here, but we begin to understand the purpose of God in the way that the psalmist is saying. It's the spiritual multiplication that as we see children, like the vacation Bible school children up here, we don't just say, "You know what? The faith is just their parent's responsibility."



 That we begin to understand that spiritual multiplication is the responsibility of the fathering church and fathers in the church.



 That spiritual multiplication is expressed really in sweet ways in verse 6. Did you see it? As God established a testimony in Jacob and Israel, what happened? It was number...it was verse 6, "So that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and arise and tell them to their children."



 Here's the baton being passed.



 Fathers to children to children unborn to tell the next generation.



 As multiplication is occurring, God is saying, "I want you to know your purpose as a father."



 It's for your children and children's children. This is your purpose as a fathering church. It is for the children who are here and children's children. It is multiplication that is occurring.



 A South African pastor at the Global Proclamation Academy talked about his relationship with his father.



 This South African pastor had been raised in the slums of South Africa, but by remarkable provision and hard work of his father.



 He had gotten a remarkable education, trained to be an engineer, and to the thrill of his father entered an engineering career.



 It is not what the young man wanted to do.



 He had been marvelously saved by the Lord Jesus Christ, and as his heart was set on the things of God, he began more and more to want to serve in the church, to be a minister of the gospel.



 His father would have none of it.



 "You're an engineer, I sacrifice to make you an engineer. That's your training. Your family gets respect by your career."



 And so the young man, driven by a desire to serve his Lord Jesus, began to pastor one church while keeping his engineering career, and then another church, and then another church, until ultimately he was pastoring nine churches at the same time that he was being an engineer, until it broke him in emotional and physical exhaustion. And it wasn't until his father perceived his calling into ministry, his calling to multiply the faith, not just to his own child, but to multiple children that his father released him to pursue the ministry. I want to say that to you as a church, as I recognize that we do a lot for our children to put them on good paths and good careers, and sometimes we are frustrated if they think about ministry or missionary work that we know may take them far away or never put them on the same economic bracket that we are in. And I just, dark sayings, dark sayings truly offered to you. I would tell you my own father was deeply disappointed that I went into the ministry,



 and far into my adulthood was hoping I would change.



 Hurt me, hurt him. I wish somebody had said to us early in life, even to my own father. It's not just your ministry. Remember my father was a lay pastor. It's not just your ministry to which you are called. Spiritual multiplication is your calling. Whatever you are as a father, if you are a Christian father, we have our eyes open to the purposes not just immediately of our children, but of those to whom they will minister, and those to whom they will minister.



 And should God call them into missionary or mission work, or into a career where they are damaged by standing for the Lord Jesus, we ought to be the first to stand up and cheer our own children and the work of ministry if God is calling them into that work. If God is so calling them, it is because spiritual multiplication is not the only responsibility, but spiritual faithfulness.



 Verse 7 is telling. It says, "The reason that we tell our children is so they would set their hope in God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments." They would set their hope on God.



 Not my career, not my income, not my SAT scores. My hope is not in that.



 My hope is in God.



 We all, of course, want to encourage our children with the gifts and the skills that God has given them. But at the same time, we don't want them to hope in who they are, but who their Savior is.



 "I will supply all of your riches according to my glories." My riches and glory, says the Lord. If we believe that profoundly, we can encourage our children in faithfulness when it seems risky, when it seems hard, when it seems difficult, and believe that God has a plan for them. If they are hoping in God, what He does, His grace, His provision, not their own, then I will tell you they will move through life with a desire to serve God. That thing we started with, we want their behavior to be good. I will tell you, if all we push them into behavior, we will push them away from the church.



 But if we are saying, "I want your hope to be in God," not in my provision, not in your provision, not my strength, not your strength, "your hope is in God who provides for you despite who you are and what you've done and what your strengths are," put your hope in God. When they believe in that God, they will want to walk with Him.



 I heard it in a special way this last week when I was at our general assembly for this church, so pastors from all over the nation are gathering. And I met with an old friend for a lunchtime.



 And he put me off a little bit when he said, he said, "I've discovered a new way to evangelize." And I thought, "Oh, brother, what is this going to be?"



 He said, "You know, most of our evangelism is people telling how God saved them from something in the past.



 You know, I was wandering from God, I was addicted, or I was career-focused, or my marriage fell apart. So it's that kind of standard, I was just going through life and then this big rock fell on me and suddenly I became desperate." Now, those are good and helpful stories. But he said, "What I recognize is we're always so proud, unwilling to say the dark things, that we always talk about our salvation in the past tense, our need of grace for something back there somewhere."



 He said, "I've discovered that what really touches people is if you talk about your need for Jesus today."



 Give you an example, he said, "On the plane, on the way here.



 Sat next to a lady, well-dressed, coiffed, professional, and asked what she was doing on a business trip. She asked what I'm doing. I'm a pastor, sure to shut down the conversation.



 On a way to a national meeting.



 Well, you know, why do you all do that?" And he had just a little opportunity to talk about what a church is and how people want to serve God together. And she said, "You know, I believe in God and, yeah, you know, I'm part of a church, you know, back in my background somewhere."



 And he said, "You know what we believe is that we need the grace of God to make us right before God. It's not how good we've done, well we've done, works we've done. It's actually loving Jesus because He loved us first.



 And then we live in response to that."



 Well she kind of nodded, sounded kind of good, and he said, "You know what that looks like today that I believe I need to be saved today?"



 He said, "You know, our plane was delayed and there were complications."



 And he said, "So I went up to the person working at the gate desk and I didn't yell at him



 and I wasn't ugly, but he said, "I'm a pastor, I really know how to make people feel guilty really well."



 And so to get a better flight schedule, I began to say things in such a way that that gate attendant there would feel bad enough to help me out in a special way.



 I tried to manipulate her by guilt.



 The woman said to him, "That's what you said?" He said, "I did." He said, "That's why I need Jesus today, to forgive me for what I did."



 She said, "I do that all the time.



 I hate my tongue and I don't know what to do about it." He said, "Maybe the grace of Jesus will help.



 If we are willing to say what God has done for us today, the dark saying that's not just in the past, to say to child and to neighbor, to father for the sake of Jesus Christ as a church as well as individuals, that God has worked in our behalf, it is powerful for the sake of the church. And that is why God is speaking to fathers here and says, "I will tell you to teach with the dark sayings as well as the glories of God." Now people, why you need God is your hope in Him, or is it just in how well you're doing?



 Because when your hope is in Him, you are giving people something they can cling on to and then they want to serve Him. It's the end of verse 7, it is the proper gospel order. I mean, just think of how this is said, so that they would set their hope on God and not forget the works of God, but keep His commandments. It's hope first, it's grace first, and then we live out of response to that because we're not depending on our obedience, we're not depending on our keeping His commandments, we are living in response to His goodness by wanting to walk with Him. It's the change of the affections, not the change of behavior that ultimately God is after because if we want to walk with Him, then we will delight to keep His commandments. It will change us if we are obeying God out of the response that He has already made for us. I listened to a Romanian pastor explain how it became so important to their church now to emphasize this aspect of fathering.



 In Romania, remember a former Soviet state, families largely undone by the communist system so that a father's role and purpose in a home, unclear, unplanned, fathers lose hope, and in ways this nation has trouble identifying.



 All became the primary escape of a nation.



 What do they do now as a church with a young pastor trying to establish a ministry in Romania? He said two goals for our church. Number one, to train a generation of churchmen to be fathers again. Number one goal, to train churchmen to be fathers again. Second goal, to establish an orphanage to father the fatherless.



 Our goal, he said, is to show our nation, our Father in heaven by being fathers of hope. I love that. Being fathers of hope, whether it's in our home or what our church is doing to become fathers to the fatherless, whether it's vacation Bible school or your helping in Sunday school. I think of when my family was in such tension when I was growing up, the fathers in my own Sunday school, the men who went to Sunday school class and were training little guys like me and my most significant male influence aside from my own father was my third grade Sunday school teacher who was there week after week for me, continued to pray and minister to me even after I was out of third grade.



 And to say, if we are really serious about this, we begin to believe God is doing profound things through fathers.



 He is providing, yes, through fathers, support, relational, material for our families, but nothing more important than spiritual. So that when the relational and the material are struggling later in life, they still know their Father in heaven. They still have hope, they still have strength, they still want to walk with Him to teach young men to follow God by the example of fathers in the church who are doing just the same thing. And I think enough of you know it's not just young men who are influenced by spiritual fathers.



 It is young women too.



 I mean, it just is torrents now of information in the secular research of what is happening to young women in a society where there is so much fatherlessness, whether fathers are out of the home or negligent of their father responsibilities.



 And you recognize that so many of the young women who enter hopeless marriages are desperate and self-destructive because they do not know how to relate to a man or what a respectful man should be because they've not seen it in their own fathers.



 Fathers are training not just young men, they're training young women and they're training generations to come. And God has designed it that way. We are men as fathers to have a legacy.



 The legacy that God gives us is that our children would not be stubborn in their resistance to God, the first part of verse 8.



 But rather they would be steadfast in commitment to God that by experiencing this wonderful expression of grace day in and day out in Sunday school, in church, in youth group, that there are men brave enough, courageous enough to say, "Let me tell you the dark stuff.



 And let me tell you how glorious the grace of God is.



 And let God begin to use that for wondrous design as He brings beauty to your injury for the sake of those who are injured too and believe there is no hope for them." If we are willing and able to talk in that way, it changes our priorities. We begin to think against the priorities of the culture which says, you know, if you have faith in Christ, that's just not manly.



 And it won't be helpful to your career.



 And it's not particularly fun.



 But if we are actually saying, "By faith in Christ, faithfulness to Him, here is true courage and true love on display as the grace of God has profoundly changed me enough that I can confess to you my need of it, my child, and have the child know there is grace when they themselves fail." What would it change in us? It would change some of our priorities, maybe how much time we're spending in certain sports or recreations. Is there adequate time that our children are learning what it means to sacrifice for the sake of another and not just for oneself?



 Is worship a part of our lives? Is getting our children to Sunday school, having them in church, not just so people will approve? But for this influence of the grace of the gospel, touching their lives and framing their thinking so that as they're going through difficult things, they know of a God who loves them despite.



 I think of opportunities where a lot of us who come from kind of difficult father backgrounds are wondering, "What does it mean to be a father?"



 We just get little starts at time. The church can help with something like Family Fun Night that's coming just a little bit later in June.



 Or we get involved with some other men who are learning this fathering thing by life on life discipleship and connect groups. Or we bring ourselves to Sunday school and get in one of those groups where they're young parents learning together what it means to be a Christian parent and just kind of everybody saying, "I'm not sure about all. What do you do when this happens?" And just let the church work together in its fathering of people so that ultimately what is happening is there's a mission that's going on through the fathering of the church for generations to come. I just think of that legacy right at the very end of this psalm. Couldn't get all 78 verses in front of you today. But right toward the end you recognize there's this message that God has chosen David, His servant and Israel to be His inheritance.



 The same nation with all the dark sayings, with all the poor design in it, is going to be an inheritance to God as though God is saying, "Your mind, you're what I get after the grace of God has touched you because you talked about the dark things as well as the glorious God behind all that." When that happens, people are changed forever and the mission of God goes across time and space.



 Young pastor from St. Lucia at the Global Proclamation Academy.



 St. Lucia, a lot of you know because it's where the cruise ships go for partying and honeymoons, right?



 And he said, you know, "All the opulence and wealth and pleasure comes into our island, but people never get beyond the luxury hotels." Where he said, "Beyond the luxury hotels for those who work in the hotels, it is, His words not mine, hell on earth, alcohol, poverty, promiscuity, unbelievable."



 And yet there he is planting a church. He says, "Because we have a plan.



 We are training men, men without hope, to share their faith, to disciple others," and listen to this, "and to teach children to pray."



 Because when men learn to teach children to pray, what happens?



 The men learn to pray and they have hope again and they're able to disciple again. Because here's what he said. He says, "The cruise ships come from all over the world." So here's what we believe as a church.



 They are bringing the nations to us.



 Isn't that interesting? We think Caterpillar and the medical training facilities are bringing the nations to us. And here is this pastor in St. Lucia who says, "The nations are coming to us." How are we going to reach them?



 We're going to train a generation of fathers who will touch children who can disciple the nations as they come to us. It is God's great privilege, dads of biology and dads of the Spirit, that God is using us not only to win our children, not only to show them grace if we'll say the dark things as well as the glorious ones, but to reach generations and nations. It is the calling and the privilege of a father in Jesus' name. Father, would you so work in us, I pray, that as we examine priorities and patterns and think through our own relationship with our children, that you would be helping us, inspiring us with the knowledge of your own plan to use broken, flawed men with dark sayings in their lives, nonetheless as part of your art, your craft, your design for reaching generations and nations.



 So use us, we pray, in Jesus' name, amen.