Happy Father's YEAR

In Luke 1:16-17, the angel tells Zechariah that part of John the Baptist's role is this: "And he will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God, and he will go before him in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared.” (ESV)

This portion refers to the last verses of the Old Testament found in Malachi 4:5-6 which says, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the great and awesome day of the Lord comes. And he will turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers, lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." (ESV)

It's amazing that even Jesus needed to have the way prepared for His coming and that was John the Baptist's role and that incredibly if John the Baptist didn't exist and the people weren't prepared, Jesus' 1st coming might have looked a whole lot more like what we see in Revelation in regards to His second coming where judgement takes place.

But I want to focus on this phrase "to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children." This easy-to-gloss-over statement is huge. Part of John the Baptist's role in preparing the way for people to receive Jesus was to turn the hearts of the fathers to the children (and Malachi goes on to say the hearts of the children to the fathers also).

Why? Why would this matter?

I'm still meditating on this, but I want to share a few thoughts I've come to so far with the Lord:

1) Just as we today have a MAJOR MAJOR problem with absentee fathers or where even if fathers are present, they aren't REALLY present to their children, this has always been an issue. The hearts of the fathers at that time were hardened and the fathers in their pride were just all about themselves. But in order for people to be prepared to receive the gift of Jesus from our Heavenly Father, they needed to see the love of the Father manifested in their earthly fathers. The earthly fathers needed to repent and do what they were called to do. That was part of John the Baptist's role.

2) So today, in order for revival to really occur in the way we want to see, there will have to be repentance from fathers whose hearts have NOT been turned toward their children, and thus whose children's hearts have not been turned toward them. Sometimes in our Christian bubbles we can forget that out there in the real world (and actually much of the church world too), there is a HUGE problem of absent fathers, fathers in jail, fathers not modeling Godly behavior, and fathers whose hearts are not towards their kids in a significant way. It's a huge huge problem and a whole lot of the problems we see in society have a lot to do with this. Mothers are important and I don't want to discount that, but there Biblically is something extra important about the role of a father as it relates to this stuff. And sadly many fathers have completely abdicated their God-given responsibility and those that haven't often don't even know HOW to be a good father because they haven't seen it modeled it for them either. This has been a problem for a very long time.

3) The devil's goal has ALWAYS been to destroy the family because if you destroy the family unit, you destroy humanity. He did it in the days of Noah, he did it in the days leading up to Jesus' arrival, and he does it now. It is no accident that after we just celebrated motherhood with a 1-day Mother's Day and soon to celebrate fatherhood with a 1-day Father's Day (which has always been the "lesser" celebrated of the two), that the devil has managed to hijack a whole MONTH right in the same month as Father's Day to promote an agenda that scientifically cannot further the God-given mandate to "be fruitful and multiply" (Genesis 1:28) and of which said agenda has managed to convince people that a certain 5-letter word is a good thing and not a sin as the Bible constantly refers to it, and has managed to hijack God's own sign he gave humanity to say he would not judge the earth by water. In other words, the devil has managed to get people to thumb their noses at God in arrogance at the Biblical plan of the family unit and instead promote all sorts of other ideas. Incidentally, not PC to say, but actually if the father's hearts WERE really turned towards their children, a lot of said agenda would probably not exist or could be greatly minimized in a generation or two.

As we approach Father's Day this year, it is time that we as Christians really understand and proclaim the importance of fatherhood and while celebrating fatherhood, also call fathers to repentance. And this should be part of our message, not just for 1 day but throughout the year. If the devil wants to take a month, I say we take a year! Every year! Humanity literally depends on it. Let us, like John the Baptist, prepare the way for the Lord's coming into many more people's hearts as we fulfill our mandate to share the Good News of the gracious gift of Jesus from our Heavenly Father. Let us be change agents in helping turn the hearts of the fathers to the children. The alternative is spelled out in Malachi 4:6, where God states, "lest I come and strike the land with a decree of utter destruction." We have been in a season of time since Jesus died and rose again of God's great grace on humanity. But there will come a time when a new season will begin, and humanity seems bound and determined to hasten that day in their arrogant flaunting. Let us do what we can to ensure that as many as possible receive the loving gift offered to them. Let us as Christians showcase to the world what healthy families, healthy mothers, healthy fathers, healthy children look like. It's part of our mandate.

Happy Father's Day! Happy Father's Year!

(P.S. - If you are one that didn't perhaps have the best father in your own life, check out the Father's Day article here.

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This article is Copyright by Christopher Long 2023. All rights reserved. You may quote/reprint this article for any non-commercial purpose without obtaining permission as long as you use the entire text and that all text, including this and all following notices, is not modified or removed in any fashion. For any other usage, you must obtain written permission from the author.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

This is version 1.0 of this document (June 11, 2023).
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This document is provided as a ministry outreach of BodEquip Ministries. www.bodequip.org