Mark Ordus: Well, happy Father's Day. We're so glad you decided to spend your Father's Day with us here at Ward Church. And to all the dads, here today, know that we are with you, we are for you, we are praying for you today. And, for everyone here, we recognize that Father's Day always isn't the most exciting holiday for some people, especially if they've experienced significant loss. So, we want you to know right up front.
We're gonna have people right up front here as we always do every Sunday. They would love to pray with and for you. Whether you're missing someone today, or if you feel kinda overwhelmed as a father today, we would love to lift you up in prayer. So, wanted to say that right off the bat. When we were coming up today, you know, we're on the heels.
We just finished our series on the book of Hebrews, which if you weren't able to catch that entire series here at Ward Church, I encourage you to go back and watch through it. It was such an encouraging service, such a powerful service or series, and you can go to war.church to check that out. Highly encourage you to do so. And we're coming up pretty soon here on our series all about the book of Psalms. So, I was trying to think today, what would be a good message, not only for fathers, but for all of us to share with you all today?
And, when I think of dads, the word that comes to mind is hero. I think about this because for a lot of people when they're growing up, not everyone, but for a lot of people growing up, their dads are their heroes. You know, they think their dad is the strongest guy in the world. They think their dad can beat up your dad. You know?
And and we look up to our fathers in our life for a lot of us. And and speaking as a father, we kind of love it. Right, dads? Like, we love being somebody's hero. We love thinking that through the eyes of our kids, especially when they're young, we can do anything.
We can we can literally save the world for them. And and it's not just for dads. Right? Because everyone loves being a hero. Everybody wants to be someone else's hero.
I remember a movie came out a couple years ago called Age of Ultron. You all seen this movie before? Anybody? Oh, man. Same reaction in first service.
You all got to get out more. Watch more movies. You know? No. You've probably seen it.
But anyway, in this movie, right at the start of it, there's this guy named Tony Stark, who's Iron Man. And he's he thinks he's come up with the ultimate hero. This ultimate hero that forevermore will keep peace in the world, will keep peace from things outside of this world. Again, it's a comic book movie, you understand. But he thinks he's finally done it.
And and as the movie carries on, not to give you a spoiler, but I'm gonna give you a spoiler. You know, obviously, Tony Stark had never seen Terminator two. The machine comes self aware and tries to kill everyone. You know? That old story.
You know what I mean? But, throughout the movie, I kind of get what Tony Stark was going for though. Right? Because he wanted to create this ultimate hero to bring ultimate peace. He wanted once and for all to create this epitome of human protection by creating this hero.
By creating this ultimate hero, a hero for all heroes. And now, if you watch any of the Avengers movies, you learn, one, Tony Stark is a pretty arrogant guy. But at the same time, I kind of get what he's going for. Right? Because if we could have this perfect hero I mean, think back to even when you were a kid.
All of us wanted to be superheroes. Right? All of us wanted to have some kind of superpower that could help us save the world. And I remember every time I watched Batman or Captain America or Superman by the way, Batman is a superhero, and I will fight you on this if anyone wants to later. Thank you.
No. I'm just kidding. I'm not a fighter, you know, because Jesus wouldn't do that. But, saving people. That's what I wanted to do.
I wanted to save people. I wanted to save the world. And I mean, all of us can relate to this feeling. Right? We wanna be heroes.
We wanna save people. And part of what makes heroes so great is stopping the bad guys. Right? Stopping the bad guys, saving people, saving the world. In fact, there are some people who've taken this quite literally.
There was a documentary that came out a few years ago. I don't know if it's still out there about real life superheroes. Maybe you've seen this? These are guys who get dressed up, you know, and go and fight crime at night and stuff. Actually, when I went to college at Spring Arbor University, oh, I I expected to cheer.
Yeah. Spring no no okay. Yeah. It's fine. It's fine.
It's small school. But in Jackson, which was right next to Spring Arbor, there was actually a real life superhero named Captain Jackson. Maybe you guys have heard of Captain Jackson. He gets dressed up at night and, you know, goes out and fights crime and keeps people safe. Now, these real life superheroes, they might be a little bit unstable, you know, but I think we can relate to the heart of what they're trying to do.
Right? Because all of us want to be a hero. All of us wanna save people who who are in danger. And I think for for those of us who follow Christ, we get this feeling too. We get this feeling of sometimes, we get this desperate compassion to save the world.
Whether it's a desperation to see our friends come to know Jesus. I remember at a winter retreat years ago, I had this girl come up to me bawling her eyes out, which everyone does at winter retreat. It's like, you know, Saturday night, everyone's crying and everything. You know? And, but she was bawling, and I'm like, hey, hey, what's going on?
You know? And and she was she was bawling because she was so distraught that she had friends who didn't know Jesus. And, this really, really bothered her. And, I think it does for a lot of us. Right?
That we have friends who don't know the loving knowledge of Jesus Christ, who don't have Jesus in their lives. She wanted to save them, but at the end of the day, she felt like she couldn't. So sometimes it's that. Sometimes it's a desperation to save our friends from addiction. Sometimes to save our friends that are in relationships we know aren't good for them, or to save the relationship that's falling apart that is good for them.
Sometimes, we're desperate to save our kids, or our families, or our city, or our state, or our country. And we can try, just like Iron Man and Batman and Superman, but the reality is there's always gonna be another bad guy. Right? You never read a comic book that it gets to the end of it, and they're like, and just everyone lived happy from then on for the rest of time. Right?
There's always another bad guy. And the reality is we can try to save the world all we want, but we really can't be the hero we want to be. But the good news is God doesn't need heroes. He needs disciples. There's a story of a guy in the Bible.
Probably heard of him before. He he tried to be a hero, and it didn't go very well for him. See, in the Old Testament of the scriptures, which is the first section of the Bible, it's the story of the people of Israel. And and on this journey of trying to follow God with everything they had, and unfortunately, screwing it up a lot of times. But, towards the beginning, when the nation is established, when God establishes His people, He He has kind of a theocracy set up for them.
And, what that means is that God was their ruler. They didn't have like a president or an emperor or anything like that. They just followed God. And, God would speak to them through His prophets and tell them exactly what was right for them. And, God made this promise with them, this covenant, that if they followed God and listened to His word, then they would prosper.
They'd be strong. They'd be a strong nation. At some point though, the Israelites got to this point where they're living in a time of wars and rumors of wars, and all around them, they're seeing nations with these strong leaders, these strong emperors. Right? These kings who are big and tough and a symbol for the strength of their nation, and the people of Israel get to a point where they say, you know what?
We need one of those. We need a hero. We need someone who's tall and handsome. We need someone who's powerful. We need someone whose face can go on our money.
We need someone that could they they could write comic books about. Right? We need a hero. So finally, after pleading, God gives in, and he gives them their hero. They so desperately wanted, he gives them their king, king Saul.
And king Saul comes in, God's chosen king for God's chosen people. And at first, things are great. Saul recognizes that if he just trusts God and still follows God, even though he is kind of the instrument of God's word to the people, If he follows him, they will prosper. But at some point or another, Saul decides that he wants to be the hero in his story. He wants to be the hero.
He wants to be the one with all the notoriety. So, he starts making decisions different than what God told him to do. He starts making decisions other than what God told him to do. And, we see how this pans out in first Samuel chapter 13, where Saul is leading his own way once again. And, we're gonna start in verse 13 of first Samuel 13.
And it says this, you have done a foolish thing. This is Samuel who was a prophet talking to King Saul. He says, you've done a foolish thing. You've not kept the command the Lord your God gave you. And if you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel forever, for all time.
But now, your kingdom will not endure. The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people because you have not kept the Lord's command. Now, you hear stories like this about people in the Bible, you think, man, what an idiot. You know? Like, he had everything.
He was the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, and all he had to do was follow God's commands, which, by the way, God was the author of it all. God knew everything that was coming and everything that was going, and all he had to do was listen. But he got to this point where he wanted to be the hero. And I think as much as we wanna look back at king Saul and think, you know, what a dummy. I think we all get to this point in our own lives.
Right? We do the same thing. When things are going well, we take all the credit and the glory. But then when things don't go well, we take none of the blame. We blame God.
Why did you do this to me? Why would you bring this into my life? We try to be the hero just like king Saul, but the reality is God doesn't want heroes. He wants disciples. We're gonna turn forward a cap a couple chapters to first Samuel chapter 16.
We're gonna start right at the beginning in verse one. This is the story of the calling of King David, the one who came after King Saul. We'll start in verse one of chapter 16. It says this, the Lord said to Samuel, how long will you mourn for Saul since I have rejected him as king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil and be on your way.
I'm sending you to Jesse of Bethlehem. I have chosen one of his sons to be king. So God's ready for the nation to move on from King Saul, and he he orders Samuel, who's a prophet, to go and and and get the next king of Israel whom God has already chosen. So Samuel goes to Jesse's house, and Jesse comes out and starts lining up all of his sons. And I kind of picture them lined up in like a cell phone signal, you know, like tallest to shortest, because he wanted to pick the best one.
Right? The most hero worthy. So he brings them out, his son Eliab, who's an obvious choice for king. And God tells Samuel, no. That's that's not the one.
So then there was other sons, Abinadab, there was Shammah, there were seven others that Jesse presented to Samuel, and God kept saying, no. No. No. That's not the one. That's not the one.
Until finally, Samuel says you can imagine he's probably getting frustrated at this point. So we asked Jesse, are these all the sons you have? They're still the youngest, Jesse answered. He's tending the sheep. And Samuel said, send for him.
We will not sit down until he arrives. It's interesting. I I tried to do some research this week about why David wouldn't have been in the lineup, why he was left out of the lineup. And and theologian theologians disagree on why this might be. Some say because maybe he was shorter than the rest.
Others say maybe because as the baby of the family, he wouldn't be known as the leader of the family. Right? That would be the firstborn or the oldest. I even looked up some, Jewish scholars, their thoughts on this about why David wasn't considered. And some of them kinda argue that maybe he was working with the sheep because that was a very low position in a family.
Everyone else would have other jobs, but you kind of give tending the sheep because it was dirty, it was hard. So, they'd give that to someone who might even be outed from the rest of the family. Others argue maybe it was because he was small, but I don't think that holds up because my wife is four eleven. I believe good things come in small packages. Amen?
Thank you. But no matter what it was, David was not hero material. But the passage continues in verse 12. So he sent for him, being Jesse, sent for David and had him brought in. He was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.
And then the Lord said, rise and anoint him. This is the one. So Samuel took his horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers. And from that day on, the spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David. So the obvious question here is why?
We we knew the king was gonna come from the house of Jesse. God had told Samuel that. But why did he go with the youngest? Why did he go with the one who had the lowest position in the household of tending the sheep? Definitely not hero material.
And I think the answer is because God doesn't want heroes. He wants disciples. And as you see the rest of David's life unfold, sure, you see, he was definitely a man after God's own heart. He made a lot of mistakes. Some would say he screwed up royally.
Get it? Because he was a king. That's a joke. Making sure y'all are awake today. Alright.
It's a dad joke because Father's Day okay. Anyway. Alright. So he screwed up quite a few times, which is to be expected though because he's not a hero. But he was faithful.
He was faithful. So, what does this story have to do with us? What what could we learn from the story of David's calling? Because at first, it seems pretty hopeless. When I'm up here telling you, you can't be a hero.
You can't save anyone. You can't save your family and all these kinds of things because you're no hero, and you can't be a hero. No one person can save the world. Even if we had superpowers, we couldn't supernaturally change people's hearts. Super strength couldn't save our marriages.
You can't be a hero, but the good news is God doesn't want heroes. He wants disciples. Okay. So how do we do that? I'm no hero, but does that just mean I sit here without hope?
Or does that just mean I sit back and watch the world burn? You know? And I'm so glad, you asked because I remember do you all remember COVID? You remember that? Maybe you're it was about six years ago.
You know, we were all locked up in our homes and everything. And for the first week, it was like, this is great. I don't have to go to work. And then the second week, you're praying, man, I just wanna go back to work, you know. Get out of this house.
We were going through it, man. We we have four kids, Lisa and I, and we were trying to figure out how to do the home schooling thing, and and how to deal with all six of us being cooped up in one house, all these kinds of things. So we started to do different things, like we started making a list on a dry erase board. Like, maybe if we write everything down, that'll help us teach math to our kids that we don't know how to do ourselves. You know what I mean?
And so, we wrote it all down on a dry erase board, and man, it was tough. It it was a tough season. Don't know I have to tell you guys. You know, it was a tough season. But then, one day, my wife did something.
She erased the whole dry erase board, and she wrote a scripture on it. And, I remember thinking like, yeah, but our list, you know, everything was going so well with the list. It wasn't going well with the list. But she wrote a scripture on there, and, I asked her why, and she said something like this. She said, I always look at this list of tasks on this board and get depressed.
So I thought maybe for a while, I'll write scriptures on there. So when I look at it, rather than getting overwhelmed, I'll get encouraged. And I was like, oh, yeah. Okay, pastor's wife, whatever, you know, and everything. But, I remember the scripture she wrote on the board.
It was from Ephesians chapter five, the one we heard earlier. Chapter five verses one and two. And, you know, you think when you're a pastor, you go to Bible school, you know pretty much everything that's in the Bible. Silly. But this one verse, I'm sure I'd read it before.
I'm sure I studied it for a class in school and everything, but it hit different in this season of our lives. Here's what it says. Ephesians five one and two. It says, follow God's example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love. Just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
I I really love what the message does with this passage. The message is a paraphrase of the scriptures. Normally, I don't like preaching from it, but I I think this is worth hearing for us this morning, for us as fathers, for all of us as Christ followers. It says this, watch what God does and then do it. Like children who learn proper behavior from their parents, mostly what God does is love you.
Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious, but extravagant. He didn't love in order to get something from us, but to give everything of Himself to us. Love like that.
See see, we as people tend to hear this and think, no. No. No. That's too simple. There's too much work I have to do.
I I have to save my family. I have to save my friends. I have to save my country. All these other kind of things. I need to save the world.
And the reality is, no. You because God already did. God already saved the world. He already sent the hero. The one hero for all time that would sacrifice his own life so that we could be free.
The hero's already come, and the hero is still here today. What we're being called to do is follow him and be faithful to that calling on our life to live and love like Jesus. See, we all we all wanna be heroes. We all wanna save the world. We wanna save ourselves, our families.
The reality is God doesn't want heroes. He wants disciples. People who will go out and love like God loves. To quote the book of Ephesians, what do we do when things come against us? What do we do when people hurt us, when relationship fails, when stuff is going wrong?
To quote the book of Ephesians, do what God does. And mostly what God does is love. I love the way the message puts it here and and breaks it down a little bit and says, watch what God does like children watch their parents and wanna be like them. Because when I was a kid, I remember I so badly wanted to be like my dad. My dad had darker hair, and my hair was lighter when I was young.
Then it got darker, but then it got lighter again. It's weird. Circle of life. But, I used to wet my hair so it would look darker to look like my dad's. I used to wear knee high tube socks with colored stripes on them.
You all remember those socks? I wore them because my dad wore them. You know? And, apparently, those are cool again too. Who knows?
Circle of life. But I wanted to be just like my dad. I wanted to play baseball because he loved baseball. I wanted to play hockey because he loved hockey. I wanted to be just like him.
And I know some of you might not have those same feelings. Maybe you didn't know your dad, or maybe you wish you didn't. I remember I was on a retreat, a mission trip with this guy in my youth group, big football player, and he's just in my arms crying, saying over and over, I just don't wanna be like my dad. His dad was kind of a mess. So I told him, dude, listen.
You don't have to be. Look to your heavenly father and be like him. You know what God did to save the world? He loved. He loved so much, in fact, that he sent his only son for you.
To save the world God loved, he is our one true hero. He's already saved the world by sending his son, Jesus Christ. He doesn't want or need heroes. He wants disciples. Those who will look to him, do what he did, and live and love like Jesus.
Let's pray together. God, as we come to you this morning, a lot of different emotions come with days like Father's Day. But, God, I'm thankful that we have the perfect father, the father who loves us unconditionally, the father who is always there for us when we call to him. God, help us help us as your children to wanna be just like you when we grow up. Help us help us to take this love we found in and through you and go and love this world just like Jesus did.
Love every person we encounter like Jesus loves them. God help us to go and live and love like Jesus. We pray this in Jesus' name. Amen.