Jesus at the Center of Our Future
The Father Heart of God • Message 3
Bryan Jones
June 16, 2024
A. Introduction
(Jeremiah 29:11; 1 Peter 5:8)
I was thinking of how my dad impacted me…
Hard work
Home projects
Family
Love for Costco
All of us have been impacted by our dads, good and bad…
As we talk about Jesus at the Center of Our Future… I want to speak about a subject that God has placed deep inside my heart and that’s men. There are too many men, I believe, that are on the spiritual sidelines…
So, as we close those few short weeks on Jesus at the Center of Our Future. I want to speak to you about one area the enemy is attacking and that’s men…
The future of the church, the future of families, and the future of cities will be impacted when godly men step up and lead as God intended for them to.
God has good plans, but the enemy wants to attack destroy and keep men from stepping up.
So today, I want to start off with a word for everyone, then a word for young men, and then older men…
John is functioning as a grandpa at this point…
We are into the 2nd and 3rd generation of Christians, and he wants them to know the Father heart of God. A lot of people have become Christians, a lot of new Christians, so he’s going to help guide them…
B. A Word for Everyone:
First is that…
1. We are forgiven.
(1 John 2:12)
I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name.
1 John 2:12 (NIV)
John is close to 100 when he writes so everyone is a kid. You can call everyone a kid…
But he wants us to know that all our sins are forgiven, past, present, and future… and notice on the account of His name… If we are in Jesus, we have forgiveness, so we don’t need to feel shame or be paralyzed by the past. We don’t have to earn anything because of what Jesus has done…
And the reason that we can receive grace so easily is because it cost Jesus everything…
The next thing God wants us to understand… everyone of us, is that…
2. We have a Father.
(1 John 2:14a)
I write to you, dear children, because you know the Father.
1 John 2:14a (NIV)
Do you know when I meet with people the two things I find people most often struggle with…
Shame from the past
Loneliness
This verse is the antidote….
Number one, you’ve been forgiven…
And you have a Father…
Note 165+ times in the four Gospels compared to only 15 times in the entire Old Testament!)
I believe these two things are really healing… because a lot of people feel shame and loneliness, but John wants us to know we have forgiveness and a Father…
Regardless of what you’ve been given by your earthly father, let me encourage you of what you been given by your heavenly Father… forgiveness, and a perfect Father who gives us a future...
C. A word to young men.
(1 John 2:13b, 14c. C/R: Hebrews 4:12)
There is some debate on what age makes someone a young man… Some commentators say young men are 40 years old, some say 60 … so we will roll with 40…
Listen, if you’re 40 or older, I’m not calling you older, but the Bible is…
I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one.
1 John 2:13b (NIV)
I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
1 John 2:14c (NIV)
I love this… you are strong… but what makes someone strong according to this verse…
It’s not how much you bench press, how much you make, how you deal with feelings…
What makes you a man, biblically speaking, is that the Word of God lives in you. What makes you strong is that you are fighting and resisting the future that Satan has for you… and your stepping into God’s…
But we live in a culture where there are too many sidelined men, and God wants to awaken that…
Did you know more women than men are attending church? In fact, the least likely person to attend church under the age of 40 is a young man.
More women than men are in college
For the first time in our nation’s history, more women than men in the workforce.
I love that now, women have stepped up and found a voice in the 21st century, but somewhere men overall have become distracted. There seems to be a gap in men stepping up…
So, we have a distracted generation. Men who aren’t interested in going to college or getting a particular job and young men who aren’t attending church and learning about Jesus… and what John is doing is he’s sitting us down and saying this isn’t just the way culture does things but that there is a battle with the evil one… That the Father heart of God is wanting men to step into who God has called them to be…
Now, it’s not a problem to act like a boy if you’re a boy… if you’re 16, then it's okay to be 16… my son is 9 if he breaks his arm, I’m not going to say, man up… he’s 9… but it’s a problem to act like you’re a boy if your 35…. Right?
And one of the issues we have is we don’t have a right of passage… like how do you know when you become a man… so we created this stage called adolescence… but in the bible there were two categories young men and old men… in the bible teenagers were leading and changing things…
I’m proud of the next generation… this was my vantage point… Seeing 900 people at Adventure Week watching kids jump up and down for King Jesus got me fired up… I really do believe God is doing something unique here, but we’ve got to keep it going…
Listen, we need the strength and heart in young men to continue to grow… Church pray for that… God placed those desires for adventure and strength in you for a reason..
How many of you when you were a young boy played with toy guns or with swords? You should have, it’s biblical…. When boys are little they like to see themselves as heroes fighting evil and rescuing others and living in some kingdom…. And the reason I believe God puts this desire in boys is because it’s the story line in the whole Bible…
There is a dragon named Satan, the evil one… and guess what? Jesus is the dragon slayer who came to rescue the bride, which is the church, and allow us to live in His kingdom… and now it’s time for young men to step up and be like Jesus, to be a dragon slayer… and how do you do that? What is John telling us? To be strong in the Word of God… In Hebrews, the Word of God is called the sword…
God is calling I believe a generation of strong men, who reject looking at pornography, or objectifying women, a group of young men who have strong character, who take responsibility, who have a knowledge of the Bible and love for Jesus, to be committed in a culture in a consumeristic culture… to have humility in a culture of entitlement… to work hard and in a culture of laziness, to be mature and goldy…
I really believe the church needs strong men to lead in their jobs, families, and in church…
No matter what your family history is… What if the course of your family's history completely changes with you, young men? That if you have had a father that passed on a good baton, then you continue to do the same… but if you have a father who passed on a damaged baton or completely destroyed that you now are changing the whole trajectory of your kids or those around you! And your family tree.
Once you know you are forgiven, once you know you have a father, you can be strong and battle and overcome the evil one…
How do we do this…
I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the Word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
1 John 2:14c (NIV)
If I come over to your house and you’re doing the airplane to feed your 4-year-old child, that’s cute… but imagine I go over to your house and you’re doing the airplane for your 40-year-old husband… that’s just weird, right?
God has called this church, and I believe He’s doing it in this church to have men who are feeding themselves and not being spoon-fed. Dive into this book…
We need young men because you bring life, strength, and vitality…
D. A word for older men.
(1 John 2:13a, 14b)
I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning.
1 John 2:13a (NIV)
I write to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning.
1 John 2:14b (NIV)
Sometimes you’ve got to repeat yourself… he repeats himself twice…
Here at Brookwood, we will honor older men because God does… we want to be a church that is multi-generational…
The younger men have strength… the older men have wisdom.
Notice, it says who you know… your experiences with the Lord are incredibly helpful.
You can read a book about work, but it doesn’t sink in until you do it. You can read a book about parenting, but it doesn’t really sink in until you have kids. You can read a book about navigating pain or death, but it doesn’t really sink in until you have walked through it.
So, take marriage, if you have had a faithful marriage for decades, you have a voice to speak into the younger men and women in the church… and if you’ve gone through a divorce and you’ve made some mistakes, your voice isn’t discredited. You can speak to men about some of the pain, learnings, or failures you’ve made. With God nothing goes to waste, amen…
We want older men who teach the Bible but teach from your life… let people in and see…
Why? Because John’s family chat reminds us that we have been forgiven and we have a Father…
We want older men to say here’s what I learned, here’s a mistake, here’s some things God’s wisdom has shaped… your experiences are incredibly valuable… you are needed…
And that’s why we can’t have older men tuning out and just thinking about retirement, or traveling around, or home project or hobbies… we need men who are going, how can I invest, how can I build up, how can I impact those younger, how can I utilize my most important years in life…
What I desire for you, if you’re an older man, is to have a father’s heart for the young men.
John’s most repeated line in 1 John is dear children… because he’s caring and operating out of a father’s heart. It’s a dad’s heart.
I love what I heard one pastor say. Young men are like the sails, and older men are like the rudder… in church, we need both… Churches that are all young men… they are going fast but right to the rocks… Churches that are all older men, they are heading in the right direction, but it’s going to take a very, very long time to get there.
We have to understand that there is a real enemy who wants to disrupt this… that’s why being a man isn’t just physical, it’s spiritual. That’s why you need to pick up your Bible and pray and walk with Jesus because it matters. The world thinks we are crazy when we talk about demons and the devil and the flesh…
When people have bad things happen… what do they usually say? Why would God allow this to happen? What happens is that we see ourselves, God in heaven, and we forget that third person, the evil one… he wants to cut us off from God… he wants us to be disconnected from the Father heart of God… Those bad things that have happened are evil, and they are not from God… and you know need to now that comes from Satan and yet God wants you to know His Father's heart.