“Honor thy father and thy mother:  that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee.”  Exodus 20:12

It is time to honor fathers.  God tells us to do so.  On Father’s Day 2003, I confidently affirm that the most under-appreciated, wrongly maligned person in America is the father of the family.

Mother’s Day is the busiest day of each year for phone calls.  More long distance calls are made that day than any other in the year.  The number one day for the phone companies in collect calls?  You guessed it!  Father’s Day.

Forty years ago TV programs portrayed fathers as wise, brave protectors and providers for their family like Robert Young in Father Knows Best.  Now the image TV programs give of fathers is best illustrated by Homer Simpson.  Dads on TV are portrayed as bumblers, insensitive, and an appendage at best or an abuser at worst.  These portrayals are unfair, largely untrue to reality, and most of all, un-Biblical.

In pastoring Baptist Churches for nearly thirty years, I recall that my Mother’s Day sermons always exalted the virtues and good works of our mothers and rightly so.  But my Father’s Day messages usually came down hard on Dads to be better leaders, more spiritual and more sensitive.  Surely this challenge was needed, but Father’s Day messages are usually short on commendation and compliments to Dads and long on challenge and sometimes criticism.

Well, this Father’s Day, let us all enthusiastically say, “Thanks, Dad!”  Thank you for taking us to Church.  Thank you for working long hours to make a living to buy us food, clothes, and a home.  Thank you for manning combat lines in our military for generations and giving your life’s blood for our Country.  Thank you for being the strong, often silent, leader of the family that we count on as our protector and defender.  Your physical strength is indispensable when we need it, and your moral strength gives us courage to face life ourselves.

As a testimony personally, I can say that my own father’s Christian witness has been the foundation for everything that has been good in my life.  Though he passed away over forty years ago, his influence has led me in every major decision in life.  Such is the power of a Christian father.

The Fifth Commandment enjoins us to “Honor thy father.”  This is the central commandment and the linking commandment of the Decalogue between the Godward and the manward ordinances.

The command to honor fathers comes with a promise.  Paul reminds us that this is the “first commandment with promise.” (Ephesians 6:2)  What is the promise?  A long life! God promises a longer, fuller, better life when we honor our fathers!  Who would not be thankful for that blessing?  When we honor our fathers, we bless ourselves.

Most of all when we honor our fathers, we exalt our Heavenly Father Who gives us all things richly to enjoy.  “I am come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly!”  John 10:10