Moses Was A Crummy Father (Exodus 18:2-5 / Father s Day) By Win Green The fifth commandment is of particular importance to us this morning: Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you. (Exodus 20:12) In this commandment God makes it clear that we are to respect the office of fatherhood and motherhood. Notice, it does not command us to love our parents. It doesn t even demand that we like our parents. Nor does is insist that we obey everything they tell us. The fifth commandment says only that we honor our father and mother which means that even if they are despicable people we nonetheless are to give them the full weight of our respect because of their position. For some this is easy. We had great fathers and mothers. For others, this is possible only with God s help. Our parents were cruel and abusive. Even so, the Fifth commandment tells us that we are to honor the office of our father and mother. Some of us may not like the President of the United States, nor agree with his politics. Nonetheless, we are to honor his office as President. Some of us may not like or agree with the pastor of our church, nonetheless we are to honor his office. The same is true for our fathers and mothers. We are to honor their place and office in our lives. I Moses Failed As Father For Two Reasons: An interesting point to consider about the origin of the 5 th Commandment is that Moses, who first wrote the Ten Commandments, never had the benefit of a father. The Bible tells us that he was raised by Pharaoh s daughter. No father for Moses is ever mentioned, and I m sure that never having had a father must have been a sore spot in Moses heart all his life. I ve read about President Clinton s father. He was a traveling salesman who was thrown from his car on Highway 61 in Missouri, landing face down in a ditch killing him three months before his famous son was Manuscript By Win Green 1
born. The president once told a reporter, I missed a father... It s a sad place inside me. I suspect that the same was true for Moses. Not having had a father must have been a sad place inside of him too. No father to throw the ball with him, to help him with his homework, to teach him how to ride a bike, or what to say to the girl he liked at school. He may well have been hurt as a child and angry as an adult about the absence of his father, but nonetheless it was he who came down Mt. Sinai with the Ten Commandments, the fifth of which was. Honor thy father and thy mother So how does a man who had no benefit of a father and whose mother gave him up for adoption have the guts to give us the command, Honor thy father and thy mother The answer is of course that this is not Moses commandment but God s, and God s commands are not dependent upon our circumstances. Honoring our father and mother is not dependent upon how well we get along with them, or how much love we feel for them. Moses never had a father, and his mother gave him up for adoption, but still God expected him to honor his parents to give them the weight of his respect even if they were not deserving. This is when the work of love is contrasted with the feeling of love. We can t change what our parents did with us, but we can make it easier for our children to be able to honor us. The Bible tells us that Moses had two sons: Gershom and Eliezer. It says very little about these boys and nothing about their relationship with their dad. We can, however, surmise that Moses may not have been a particularly good father for two reasons. First, Moses was a workaholic who felt the weight of the world upon his shoulders. After all, God enlisted him to lead the Hebrews slaves out of their bondage in Egypt, so he probably didn t feel as though he had any time to play with his kids. This is how the Bible describes Moses work habits, Moses sat to judge the people from morning till evening (Exodus 18:13) From morning till evening. Doesn t that sound familiar? It s tempting to use our work as an excuse not to give more time to our children. But I m sure President Clinton has a busy schedule, and I am also sure the Chelsea can interrupt him any time she wants to. I wouldn t be at all surprised if there is a special phone line just for her. Time for our children will never just show up. We have to make the time and take the time. The Bible tells us in Exodus 18 that when Moses arrived in Egypt to confront Pharaoh, he sent his wife Zipporah along with their two sons back Manuscript By Win Green 2
to his father-in-law Jethro s home in Midian. Moses probably sent them away because he just didn t have any time for them, and they were getting in the way of a difficult negotiation. This means is that Moses was probably an absentee father, and what is interesting to note is that neither Gershom nor Eliezer grew up to amount to anything. Love is spelled several different ways. T-I-M-E is one important way to spell it. People talk about spending quality time with their children instead of quantity time, but how do you determine with a two year old just when that quality time takes place. When our children are small they need us to enter into their world. They can not possibly enter into our world, so they need us to enter into theirs. They need us to get down on all fours and play with them. Now some of you might say, Yea, well my father never did that for me. Perhaps so. Perhaps your earthly father never entered your world when you were a child, but your heavenly father did. The whole Gospel message is all about God taking human flesh as Jesus and entering into our world. So if God the Heavenly Father can humble Himself to enter our world, is it too much for any of us to take the time to enter our children s world? A second reason for Moses inadequacy as a father was that he never had a good example to follow. Again, the scripture says that Moses was not raised with a father, but was raised by Pharaoh s daughter, And the child grew and he became her son (Exodus 2:10) One of the great legacies we give to our children is the example of how to be a good parent! After all good parenting is not an instinctive enterprise. I don t know too many people who instinctively like to change dirty diapers, nor do I know many parents who are instinctively skilled at handling a belligerent fourteen year old. Good parenting is an art that is learned, and the most important place that we learn it is from our parents. Make no mistake about it; we are passing down a legacy. When our children raise their children they will look back and remember what we did, what we said, and how we responded. Let s face it, we can give our children all the material blessings imaginable, but if we fail to teach the basic priorities of God, spouse, family, and community to our children then we are not equipping them to be good parents in their own right. I am reminded of a young father who took his kids outside to the back yard to play ball. This was a sore spot between him and his wife because Manuscript By Win Green 3
baseball in the back yard was ruining their grass, burning ugly pathways into the lawn. As his wife watched them sliding and tearing up the yard from the kitchen window she just got madder and madder until she couldn t stand it anymore. She threw open the window and said, Tom, I want the grass to grow and you re ruining it! Can t you and the kids do something else? Her husband, however, didn t skip a beat with his reply. He turned to her and said, Honey, we re raising kids not grass! When our children are born they have certain automatic expectations. They expect that we are going to meet their essential physical, emotional, and spiritual needs. They expect that they are going to be the center of our attention. They expect to be the third priority in our lives: God, Spouse, Children. To fulfill these expectations will require our time. When we meet these expectations we give them a legacy of good parenting. II. Moses Was Human & So Are You! I hope that Moses inadequacies as a parent helps to give you reassurance that even the greatest among us make mistakes as parents. It is very easy to feel guilty about our inadequacies and mistakes as a parent. Pressure is being exerted on all of us to be perfect parents to say the right things, to instill the right values, to give them all our time, our energy, our focus, our money, our everything, and when we don t measure up its easy to be overcome with guilt. But we might be kind enough to remind ourselves that even Moses himself made mistakes as a parent. None of us are above our own imperfections. The question is never whether we make mistakes; the question is whether we are ready, willing, and able to grow from our mistakes. One of the greatest gifts we can give our children is to show them how to deal with a mistake in a mature Christian fashion. Christians are to be different. We don t have to deal with mistakes by looking for blame, or by heaping on the guilt and shame. The Scripture promises, Nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus. (Romans 8:25) not even bad parenting. Jesus made it clear that we all make serious mistakes, but He also made it clear that His Spirit has the power to overcome all such mistakes. God can take our worst and turn it into His best. I knew a father who made a terrible mistake parenting his child, he touched his daughter inappropriately once, and he punished himself the rest of his life for it. But his self punishment certainly didn t help his daughter, nor did it make him any better. Sometimes we just have to ask God and the person we ve offended to forgive us and then let it go. There are some Manuscript By Win Green 4
things we can never make up for. Only God Himself can heal, and He will. God can heal any hurt. He can forgive any sin. He can overcome any mistake that we ve made as a parent, but we have to let go of it so that He can heal it. When I was a kid and would cut myself I would pick at the scab for weeks, and of course my mother and father would say, Stop picking so it can heal. Well that is just what God may be saying to some of you this morning. Stop picking so you can heal. The truth of the matter is that we can do a terrible job as a parent, but if our children are willing to follow God s leadership they can still achieve success and happiness for their lives. God redeems mistakes. He takes our mistakes and turns them into something useful and positive. He turns our scars into stars. Every parent here this morning has made some sort of big mistake raising their children, but the Bible reminds us that mistakes are not fatal. Our worst is opportunity for God s best. It is possible to develop good parents out of bad childhoods, but this is God s work. Our worst is opportunity for God s best. Four weeks ago I traveled home to Pennsylvania for the High School graduation of a girl who had received horrendous parenting. He father is a raging alcoholic and her mother is completely out of control. But when she was ten she decided to put her trust in God the Father. This didn t mean that there weren t hard times, but in the midst of growing in emotional chaos she has become an amazing young woman because she chose to follow God as her Father. III. The Prescription for Good Fathering: So what exactly does the Bible say is the prescription for being a good father? There is one passage where the Bible speaks directly to fathers. Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4) According to this passage the primary role of the father is to discipline and instruct. Of course the big question here is how do you discipline and instruct without making a child angry? When my father used to discipline me he would say, Son, this is going to hurt me more than it s going to hurt you. Of course my reaction at the time was Yea, right! Manuscript By Win Green 5
One way to overcome this is to seek out as many opportunities to say yes to your children as possible. In other words, catch them in the act of doing things right. Heap praise on them! Point out all the things that they are doing well. The father s yes must out number their no. When fathers receive their child s report card we can focus in on our child s C in math or their A in language arts. If we always focus on the negative. If we are forever saying no to our children they will get discouraged and angry. Another way we can avoid discouraging our children and making them angry is not to measure them by the standard of their past mistakes. Our kids are going to make mistakes. They are supposed to. That s how they learn. But if we are always going to limit their future because of their past, then they are never going to get very far in life. One of the great messages of Jesus is that mistakes can be transformed into something good. As a father treats his own children we encouraged you, we comforted you, and we kept urging you to live the kind of life that pleases God. (1 Thessalonians 2:11-12) Here the Scripture makes it plain that we are to encourage and comfort our children and give them the vision for the kind of life that would please God. One was that we can do this is avoid measuring our children by the standard of their past mistakes. IV. Conclusion: Many of us are familiar with the story of the prodigal son. A father has two sons and the youngest goes to his father and asks for his share of the inheritance. The father gives it to him and the boy leaves. He travels to a far off land where the son squanders away the money. What made this son want to leave in the first place? Had the father been too severe in his discipline? Had he ignored his son as he built his career and fortune? Had he divorced his son s mother and taken up with a younger woman? The Bible does not say. It just says that the son left home, and that there was obviously a lot of pain between the son and the father. It would seem reasonable to say that both father and son made big mistakes, but through God s help these mistakes were not fatal. Indeed, they served to bless both Manuscript By Win Green 6
the father and the son with growth and maturity that comes only through a mistake redeemed. Success knows a thousand fathers, but a mistake is an orphan. It is ours alone. But God can use these mistakes of ours to achieve his great purposes. Moses made a thousand and one mistakes, but God always managed to use them to accomplish His great purposes. I suspect that his may well have been on of the great spiritual lessons he taught to his own sons: Don t be afraid to make mistakes! God can use even them. Manuscript By Win Green 7