Legacy I – Inheritance

As Esau did, so too do we. We have sold our birthrights for a poor and humble meal.

Genesis 25 : 29-34 convicts us

I want to look first at legacy; what we have been left, what form we see posterity take, the sins of the fathers and the grandfathers visited on the sons.

I look around me, and I see a culture in which fathers are alienated from their sons, and sons from their fathers.

I imagine feeble hands reaching out in hope and being turned away by careless gestures, fathers abandoning their children because they cannot bear the responsibility of family and sons cursing the names of their fathers because they have not been given the gift of integrity.

I bless and I praise the Lord that I have been spared this, but the pain it holds is not something I can ignore. I can think of times where to approach Daddy has been a difficult thing at best, and times when it’s the thing I want most to do. There is a great ambivalence in the lives of sons when they think of their fathers, for the most part, and that ambivalence corrupts the understanding of “Our Father” that we possess.

In short, the legacy a father leaves his son is made of memories just as much as it is made of material. What we have seen our fathers do, so to do we do.

But that’s not the inheritance that we’ve been promised. No, that is so much more:

John 14:13 – Whatever you ask in my name, this I will do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.

John 15:16 – You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

John 16:23 – In that day you will ask nothing of me. Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you.

We are the inheritors of promise, as sons adopted of God. But we mustn’t let such promise get to be too heady, and so we must remember Matthew 21:22 – And whatever you ask in prayer you will receive, if you have faith. To ask of the Father is to have faith in His provision. It’s what we do with it that matters. The prodigal son is a life study on this, and I’ll post it in its entirety, so that we can deal with it in some of its larger and more revolutionary meanings, a few posts down the road. In the meantime, tomorrow will take up the threads left dangling here.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Legacy – Fathers and Sons V

The legacy of a father.

The inheritance of a son.

This pattern defines the Old and New Testaments both, and is the foundation of the life of a man of God. Whether it is words of blessing, stores of riches or land, or the gift of abilities, authorities, wisdoms and traits, the legacy of a family is the fundamental point of relationship between fathers and sons. These are incredible stores of information, if we ask the right questions.

This is a mini-arc topic; I’ll be spending a few posts on leaving a legacy, the inheritance, and building a future. This is an introduction.

I”ll refer you back to I Chronicles as we go through this, and I’ll also be looking all through the Old and New Testaments. There is great wisdom in looking at patrilineality, and I’ll start by defining this word.

Patrilineality – through the line of the father. Large chunks of I Chronicles, Numbers, I and II Kings deal with tracing the line of the father. Bloodlines, consequences, providential interventions are all aspects of how the Bible deals with the father, the fathers, and the Father. These are a rich vein of revelation, in my opinion. For where do sons get their traits and their dispositions, if not from the f(F)ather? He is the example…he is why the son can do nothing of his own accord. I know that this is a f(F)atherless generation, and I know that we are lost without guidance, without the building of manhood as the Bible teaches. When men are forced to construct themselves, they can often miss out on important parts of what it means to be a father, and what it means to be a son. I do want to acknowledge John Eldredge here; his Wild at Heart and The Way of the Wild Heart are both superb books, although they only address some aspects of the great void that we see before us. My own thoughts are certainly, too, only humble reflections.

Watch and see where it takes us, and I hope that the Father may hear the cries we make, and come to comfort us.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Warrior – Fathers and Sons III

I Chronicles 22:8
“But the word of the Lord came to me, saying “you have shed much blood and waged great wars. You shall not build a house to my name, because you have shed so much blood before me on the earth.”

I say that the Lord did not want a house built in violence, but a house built in peace, that it might truly become a house of prayer for all nations. Our God is not a God simply of sacrifice, but a God of great tenderness also. Solomon was to build the temple in peace-time, to honour the Lord as God among the Israelites when they could truly worship him. It is not beneficial to the Christian to wage war always, because God is then not glorified fully. Although we are no strangers to adversity, we are not meant to be in a perpetual season of strife.

David was a man of conquests as well as a man after God’s own heart. Let us not forget that David slew Goliath, and earned the respect of Israel in this way. He was and remained a warrior for God. By the Lord’s strength and by his grace and providence, David was enabled as a man of action.

Here, in the larger passage, we can see the playing out of a new dynamic – If a man’s father is a warrior, then his son, by the Lord’s will, may be a man of peace. Let us not dismiss the call to be a warrior, however, because if we are men of peace, then we are also men of inaction, and incapability.

The Lord, too, is honouring David’s sacrifices to bless his son. Look further. Verse 9:
“Behold, a son shall be born to you who shall be a man of rest. I will give him rest from all his surrounding enemies. For his name shall be Solomon, and I will give peace and quiet to Israel in his days.” Praise God for offering balance when it is needed. By the cost of the father’s sacrifice is the measure of the son judged, and I would encourage men of integrity to take heed of this.

Next time: Jesus said “the Son can do nothing of his own accord, but only what he sees the Father doing. For whatever the Father does, that the Son does likewise…”

Blessings;

Christ-bearer

Providers – Fathers and Sons II

Jehovah-Jireh – The Lord Will Provide. What more can we ask for?

As I look back on 1 Chronicles, the reality of the passage seems to be tarnishing slightly. By reality, I mean the sense that the Scriptures really are speaking the word of the Lord to me. To you who read this as Christians, you must have had this type of experience…when the Lord just spoke right to you through His word, hitting deep emotional centres and bringing joy, conviction, or clarity out in great measures. When you receive such a blessing, you note the lack of it all the more acutely when you get away from it for a time. This is tangential to what I want to talk about…but not really.

See, the Lord himself is called by the name Jehovah-Jireh, ‘The Lord Will Provide’, and provision is the gift of the Scriptures to the heart and to the soul. That’s something important. God the Heavenly Father is a great provider of gifts to His children, such as edification and splendour in His word. Look no further than James 1:16-17 for the basis of support for this: “Do not be deceived, my beloved brothers. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”

In the same way, David amassed materials for the temple so that the word of the Lord concerning Solomon would be fulfilled materially. One central point of a father’s blessing to his son, then, is to provide some material means by which the purposes of the Lord in the life of his son are to be fulfilled. This is not to say that the purposes of the Lord depend on the work that we accomplish towards them, but rather that the deposit we have been given regarding the purposes of the Lord – spiritual giftings, connections, desires, circumstances, and upbringing – is essential to remember in the work our Father has for us, and is meant as a provision for His plan.

It is not simply in the province of the fathers that we find this working itself out. Part of the Lord’s contract with David was that He would give Solomon rest, for the sake of David’s work to glorify His name. Solomon was expected to use this providence and add to it, and as David’s son, he was to fulfill the desire of his father’s heart in ways that David could not.

To be a man of God, then, is to honour your father’s sacrifices by multiplying his provision through them, doing great things as the Lord has spoken concerning you. Should the Lord see fit to bless a family with sons, it is part of the father’s responsibility to ensure a legacy for the Lord’s work, to provide something upon which to build.

Next time, Warrior.

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.

Builders – Fathers and Sons I

I’ll be on the topic of fathers and sons for the next little while, springing from an encounter with 1 Chronicles 22 : 6-16. There are many facets of one relationship between a father and a son that come to light from this passage, but, as in all Scripture, there’s so much more when the Lord speaks through it. So I’m going to spend the next little while looking at what it means to be a son, what we are shown about being a father through Scripture, and a few more examinations of what we can really mean when we call God ‘Father’ I’ll also be interjecting comments on what it means to be a man of God from my point of view. Keep always in mind the greatest Father-Son team in Scripture: Jesus Christ, who is God the Son, and God the Father.

1 Chronicles 22 tells the story of David charging Solomon to build the temple, and the complete text is found in Representatives Series VIII, my last post. I’m going to spend a few days drawing some of the implications of that passage out, and then I’ll move on to a wider look from there. This time: Builders.

Men are fixers and builders. They accomplish tasks, take on projects, and work at things obsessively. It is an essential quality in their lives, because men must be responsible for building and maintaining their family as spiritual and, ideally, physical heads of the household.

How crucial it is, then, that David gives Solomon this task!

Fundamentally, Solomon is entrusted with a great responsibility to the Lord and to his father, who has laid up for him materials to accomplish this work. The crucial part is that Solomon must add to what David has already done. David directs him to add to the materials stored up, working for himself and learning how to accomplish things as he needs to. This is one of the most important parts of what it means to be, simply, a man.

So where have we lost touch with this? We look at men in sitcoms, proudly slovenly as they are, and we look at ourselves…

And we mimic them.

Thankfully, the new icon of manhood, Jack Bauer, is making his appearance on the screens of millions, and the men are coming back to themselves. I can’t say as I’ve seen 24, but I know many who have. And here we have a father, a fighter, a solver. Jack’s the guy who guys need to be.

But then, more importantly, so is Christ. A builder himself – his trade was carpentry – he worked at this for many years before he started his ministry. And who did he have to train him, to look up to when he was young…Joseph, his earthly father, chosen by God and lauded as ‘A righteous man’ in Matthew’s gospel among others. Master of his craft and well-respected, Joseph laid up in Jesus the materials to which he would add when he himself was nailed to the wood of a cross, rather than nailing wood himself. Here’s a meditation for you:

How many crosses might Jesus have made, connecting himself to the fates of so many others?

Next time : Providers

Blessings;

Christ-bearer.