No Fate But What We Make

Jeremy Walker (00:14):

And welcome back to another episode of The Last Kingdom. I am your host, Jeremy Walker. This episode is entitled No Fate, But What We Make for June 14th, 2024. Well, today on this episode, we are going to be talking about fathers and Father's Day in particular. We are going to be talking about our responsibilities to our families, protection of our children, how we're supposed to raise them, we're supposed to be teaching them where money and wealth comes from, how to keep them on the track of staying in the faith and how are we supposed to deal with people in this world, and in particular, oppressions in this world.

(01:06):

Well, welcome back everybody to The Last Kingdom again. I want to thank you for joining me again on this episode. We have quite a few things we're going to talk about, but we're going to start with Father's Day. That's right. Father's Day is this weekend and I want to wish you happy Father's Day to all the fathers out there and I want to have a discussion that's going to be focused around parenting, fathers, in particular, our responsibilities and even our responsibilities to our fathers as well. So let's start with our scripture reading from Exodus chapter 20 verse 12. Very popular passage, but I think it warrants discussion about fathers and Father's Day and responsibilities both of fathers and us to them. "Honor thy father and thy mother that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee."

(02:04):

On Father's Day and Mother's Day, which was just right around the corner, just not too recent, we celebrate fathers and mothers and well, we should. But we too often do it with a sense of emotionalism. That's right. We tend to think about our experiences as a father or a mother and how that relates to our children and the fulfillment that we get from it, and that is true. We should be proud to be fathers and or mothers. We should get a sense of pride in our children as well, and it is an emotional subject. It very much so is. But for most people that's kind of where it stops. We don't really even discuss the subject of when we are celebrating fathers on Father's Day, are we celebrating fathers because of how they act or because of their positions? And the same goes with Mother's Day. Because are all fathers equal? Are all mothers equal?

(03:10):

Well, that is a simple subject. Most people would say, "Well, of course they are." And then when you start talking to them, all people can do is complain. Complain about their parents and have endless amounts of grudges and complaints about their parents and what they did and didn't do. We were celebrating Father's Day and my family runs a Christian school here, a preschool in southwest Florida, and we were taking photos of all the fathers and Father's Day, had a little donut presentation, pictures with dad. And all the fathers were, of course, coming in taking pictures with their children. Most of the men of course, were doing so because their wives wanted them to, not because necessarily it was always their idea, but they would come in and take their photos.

(03:58):

But then of course, being in childcare and in America today, there is a epidemic of fatherless homes. That's right. There is a massive epidemic of fatherless homes and we had many people coming in and the women were very upset, some of them, about the subject of celebrating fathers because, of course, deadbeat dads and all that, and that is true. There are deadbeat dads, but there are also deadbeat moms. It goes both ways and it is a moral subject, but is it that we are celebrating what they do in their actions or are we celebrating and being thankful for them as parents because of a position?

(04:49):

Now, there is a giant difference here between those two things. See, it doesn't say to obey parents all the time. It says to honor them. Now, honoring them is not the same thing as not looking at reality. If you have the deadbeat dad that abuses the wife and abuses the children, sleeps around on mom, refuses to take care of the kids, is a criminal, whatever the case might be, it's perfectly okay to understand the moral deficiencies of a person, be it be a father or maybe even a mother, same as anybody else. But to purposely go out of your way. That's right. To have somebody disrespecting their parents on purpose is a vast sin and a mistake. I watched a little video that was on the internet. There's tons of them out there, and it was of a split custody case and this woman was dropping her kids off with I'm guessing the father of the children. She had three kids, seven and a couple of younger kids.

(05:57):

And while she was dropping them off, she was doing nothing but berating and insulting the ex-husband or boyfriend, whatever he might be to her at the moment, but the father of those children. And of course, while she was there, not only demeaning him in front of the children on purpose because she hated his guts and she wants the children also to hate his guts. She then looked at the eldest child and said, "You will never respect him." And that right there is a major problem because honoring is not the same as listening to or understanding that people have sins and moral deficiencies. There's a giant difference between those two things. And to go out of your way to demean father and mother is a major, major problem.

(06:53):

To go back into where this idea comes from and to put some scriptural teeth to the subject matter, I think it's important to understand what the Bible says because that is going to be where everything comes from. And if you go back all the way into Genesis, we had the story of Noah. And people love to tell the story of Noah because you had Noah's Ark and you have the flood and how Noah was the righteous man and all the rest that comes with it. But shortly after getting off the ark, Noah then makes a vineyard and he of course makes wine just right out of the gate, and he obviously liked wine, and he got himself nice and drunk. That's right. He got himself nice and drunk. And so drunk that he was inside his home, whatever type of home that was, and he was stark naked. That's right. Just stark naked. And one of his sons sees him in his current inebriated drunken state, naked inside his home and he of course disrespects his father and his position. Not just understand that dad has done something that he shouldn't do.

(08:06):

I mean a father should not get slobbering drunk, he should not give cause for people to look at him with disrespect, with a sin. We should be attempting as best we can to be virtuous, to be righteous, but man is man and none of us are going to be perfect in this life. We are going to mess up. But then the question comes, not only is it our responsibility not to sin so that people can have respect for us, but what is it if we see sin in our parents, what is it that we are supposed to do? Are we supposed to be like the deadbeat mom who was telling her children to hate the deadbeat dad? No, it's not. In that story, the one son runs out and tells the other, snickering as he goes and says, "Come look at dad. Come look at dad. He's drunk, he's naked," and basically making fun of his father for his mistake.

(09:08):

The other two sons are not the same. They though understanding dad's oversight, his drunkenness, his mistake, his sin, that he has now done, they come into the house not even wanting to see the sight of their father in such a state. But they cover themselves up and go in backwards so they do not see their father's nakedness or his current state. They covered dad up and they fixed the scene so dad is now no longer in a state of shame. Well, once Noah eventually comes to and is no longer drunk and the next morning, he curses his son for what he did, for the disrespect that he gave him, though giving cause because he should not have been in a state where he is drunken and naked in his home. But his son had no right to then make fun of his father. It is a shame and instead of trying to help and cover his father and to cover the sin, he wanted others to know about it. He wanted others to disrespect his father. He wanted others then to see this problem.

(10:26):

Not because it was a stated fact as if he was some habitual sinner, that the family is having to separate from because of habitual sins like a church discipline kind of concept where you have to understand a person's position, the sin that they are currently either themselves in or the sins that they are protecting, whatever that might be. That's a different subject matter. But those sins that people commit, that are, you could call it private sins in his home naked. He could have himself, the son, gone in and covered his father up and never told anybody about it, but he chose instead to have everybody know what his father did to cause shame upon his father and he was cursed, he was. And he never recovered. Him, and his generations after were going to be cursed because of what he did.

(11:21):

Now in our Bible verse, it talks about how, "Our days are going to be long upon the land which the Lord thy God gives us." That has twofolds, in many of the laws that God gives, there are many death penalties for those people who disrespect their parents. That can be verbally cursing their parents. That is a death penalty. Striking their parents physically is a death penalty. Those people who refuse to listen to their parents. Now we're not talking about young children, we're talking about those people. We would call those delinquents, the juveniles. We all know what a juvenile delinquent is. It's not a young child. These are children who've now gotten old enough to know exactly what they're doing and the parent has tried and they just have a juvenile delinquent who at this point I'm guessing as well, is going to be in that verbal side of cursing parents, very much so going to be striking parents. Being in education as I am, we see this all the time, this kind of stuff. And God's laws do get rid of these types of people, the people that refuse to honor father and mother.

(12:31):

So it's not some mystical thing that people like to try to put it out there that God's going to come down from on high and He's going to shorten your life just some mystical way. No, actually God's law was put into place to prevent children and young adults and adults from disrespecting their parents, from cursing their parents, from striking their parents and so on. So it is a very important subject that parents, us as fathers and or mothers, understand that we are supposed to be respectable. Part of that, of course is just knowing God's commandments yourself and then obeying God's commandments.

(13:11):

Now, we are not going to be sinless. Noah was not sinless. He was in his home completely drunk and naked, but of course he got up and this was not a habitual characteristic of who he was. This was the mistake. We have confessions of sins for these subject matters where Christians, when they mess up, it's not a part of their lifestyle. This is an oversight, a great way to understand the differences of what we call sin are two different types of sin. The one type of sin is like what Noah did, where it was an oversight on his part, a mistake. Like you're traveling down the road but you kind of drive off the road a little bit or you take the wrong exit and then you have to get back on, but you're still traveling in the right direction. Those are the sins that Christians commit, these missing the marks, you could say, a not perfect life, but right direction of living. Always in obedience, and when we do sin, we get back on track. That's one type of sin. That's the sin that Christians commit.

(14:19):

Then there's the other type of sin, which is the sin of rebellion. This is a different type. These are the non-Christians. For them, their oversights are accidental obedience. That's right. Their lives are summarized and identified with the idea that they are absolutely deliberately breaking God's commandments. And they want to. Just turn on your news and media, look at the people, look at the things going on in the world, and you'll see people doing everything they can deliberately and purposefully to break God's commandments in any way that they can. In fact, they find out what God wants and then deliberately break those commandments on purpose just to show their rebellion. That is the sin of rebellion. That is not the sin that Christians commit. And so we do have to know ourselves which direction we're heading. And if we're Christians, we are supposed to strive for perfection. And if we stumble, if we fall like Noah did, and other many people in the Bible, supposed to get up, confess our sins and get back on track the way we're supposed to go.

(15:27):

But it does not give children a right to disrespect their parents because they're not perfect. That's right. You're not supposed to be cataloging all the failures of your parent just like they're not supposed to be cataloging the failures that you have. We get up, we brush ourselves off and we keep moving forward. So on this Father's Day, I want each and every one of us that is a father to remember our responsibility of obedience to God. We are the leaders of our homes, we are the leaders of our wives, of our children, of our communities, and it is our responsibility to first destroy sin in ourselves.

(16:12):

That's right. Do not let it even hold onto you for five seconds. When you stumble, when you fall, get back up, confess your sins and get back on the path of righteousness and then we can then teach others because you cannot lead your wife or your children in the path of righteousness if you are not on it yourself. We have a vast responsibility and our sins are not the same as the sins of our children. They're not the same as the sins of our wives. We are more culpable, much more than they are, and it's very important for us to understand our position, our duties, and our responsibilities.

(16:59):

Now having said that, I mentioned that our title, at least for this episode is called No Fate But What We Make, and if you are a movie enthusiast, you might understand where that comes from. The movie Terminator 2: Judgment Day came out many, many, many years ago now at this point, and that was one of its major slogans. "The fight against the future." Skynet was eventually going to cause Armageddon, wipe out mankind or at least nearly wipe out mankind. And the whole thrust of the movie was trying to avoid the judgment of this [inaudible 00:17:41] future and there is no fate. We can make our own fate, we make our own futures.

(17:49):

Now, as fathers in particular, we have to understand that that is not the case. When we are ourselves looking to the future, we should understand that it is the future belongs to God. It is God that predestines. And because of that, we can just try to govern ourselves, our families. We don't have to look to the future as if it is something that is out of control. And on this podcast we've talked about that a lot. But as fathers, that is very important because you can have confidence in what's going to happen tomorrow and do your job today. If you are going to obey God today, good things are going to happen. If you are going to obey God today, you're going to have a prosperous, prosperous marriage. If you're going to obey God today, then your children are going to be blessed in the future. That is going to happen. And of course if they go off kilter and they go awry, but you did your job, then God is still being glorified even in the destruction of the sinful.

(19:05):

And that might even be one of your children, but you did your job. You are not responsible for the sins of others and they're not responsible for your sins either. And that's kind of what is very important about being children, and if you had a wayward parent or not, that's between them and God and your sins or your righteousness is between you and God. These things are very important.

(19:30):

Now in the news and media, I have a lot of different media stuff here that I want to pull out as we are continuing discussing the Father's Day and what our jobs are. I ran across one thing on social media that said, "You are here because your dad's not queer. Happy Father's Day." Well, you have to admit that's a very true statement. Whenever people are going to follow and obey God, they are not going to be sexual deviants. That's right. They are going to want to have sexual relations with their wife and only their wife and that will produce children. Absolutely. People that are sexual deviants destroy themselves and their futures, they have no future. And all the people that tried to listen to them will have no futures either.

(20:25):

I heard a man who was from an African country that was being talked to and interviewed. And the subject matter came up along these lines. He says, "You take 50 men and 50 women and put them on an island and come back in 100 years and you will have a thriving community of families." He says, "However, you take 100 men and stick them on an island, come back in 100 years and they'll all be dead." And that right there is a really, really good analogy for that. And that's why I say we can have confidence in the future. Your children don't have to worry about people in the world who themselves are sinners. Their time on this world is very short. And the people that they can influence, if they are allowed to be influenced by these people, they're not going to have a blessed life either. They cannot be sexual deviants in this world and prosper and there is no future for them. Absolutely none.

(21:27):

So our children, if we teach them right, the future belongs to them, it belongs to Christians and it belongs to people who obey God. So as a father, that's something you should be promoting. There was a sad tragedy that took place about a week ago, I think it was this week, where a woman stabbed a mother and her three-year-old outside of a shopping center and the three-year-old died. Now, we as fathers have to understand that we do live in a very dangerous world and it's full of sinners. One thing you are going to have to do is you're going to have to keep your family safe. And I have 11 children and I've tried to teach them to be safety conscious. And one thing I tell them is this, "If you are going to get yourself into trouble 99% of the time it's because you're in a place you're not supposed to be with people you shouldn't be doing things you shouldn't be doing." That's number one.

(22:24):

Number two is, "You don't keep your mouth shut." However, there are those cases kind of like this one where a woman had just gone to the shopping center and she was doing what she should have been doing, doing what she should be, shopping with her child. But tragedy strikes. So as parents, as a father, how do you live with this? How can God let this happen? You tried your best to help your wife keep your child safe and this happens. What's a person to think? Well, we have to have confidence in God's plan. And those plans, we do not understand how can good come from evil, but it does. And so that's how you put your faith is in God.

(23:07):

This sad couple lost their three-year-old because of violence and people lose children also not through murder in this case, but also through miscarriage and many other things, sicknesses and all kinds of things. And we have to ask ourselves, how do we keep going? But we keep going because we are men of faith. That's right. People of faith who trust that God has our best interests and that of our families. We have our responsibilities and then God has His. And it's important that we understand the difference. We are not God, but we do have to have faith in what God is doing.

(23:47):

So I think for me, if I was going to tell you what is it that we are supposed to do as parents, that's it. Raise your children the right way. Teaching them God's commandments will help them to take care of themselves, get a job, grow a family, have a future. But it all starts with trusting God, teaching God's commandments and keeping them yourself. So as fathers, happy Father's Day, I want you to work hard at being somebody that can be respectable. And whenever you fall, whenever you sin, quickly confess, quickly get up, brush yourself off, and get back up on the horse and be a man of God. Well, thank you again for joining me for The Last Kingdom. This is Jeremy Walker, wishing you a wonderful day. Thank you and God bless.