This past weekend Eastside Baptist Church hosted the Master’s Plan for Fatherhood. This was two full days of examination from Scripture on the doctrine of Fatherhood. I’m grateful to the Lord for the teaching of Scott Brown, pastor at Hope Baptist Church in Wake Forest, North Carolina.
The conference began with the doctrine of fatherhood from Genesis to Revelation. Following are some of the notes I wrote down…
- You’re either obeying the Lord or you’re disobeying the Lord.
- The first mention of the word love in the Bible is when God speaks to Abraham concerning his son. ( “Take now your son, your only son, whom you love, Isaac, and go to the land of Moriah Genesis 22:2)
- The Bible never stops giving instruction on the meaning and sacredness of the household. (Families are organized for worship)
- Redemption is the work of God and God commissions fathers to bring sons and daughters to glory.
- Broken fatherhood leads to broken churches.
- The fatherless are the responsibility of homes.
- Christ abolishes fatherless.
It is important for me to get these thoughts processed soon before too much time gets by and I forget how they are connected to the doctrine of fatherhood. Essentially, the language of Holy Scripture uses fatherhood throughout to communicate the gospel and to even describe the church of the Lord Jesus. The story of redemption should rule homes. It is the work of a loving father (God the Father) to bring his children and the fatherless children into his home.
Biblical language is easily lost when society loses the imagery of fatherhood. But what happens to a land when the Lord’s people lose the imagery and language of fatherhood? If fathers don’t know how to lead their own households to the promised land how can the church of the Lord Jesus Christ expect to lead anyone to the promised land? This language of fatherhood must not be lost from the Lord’s people. And, we must not treat it as simply ‘language’, it is not wasted language.
Broken fatherhood leads to broken churches. How can broken churches reach the nations? If the church has a mandate to the nations, then fatherhood must be reclaimed.