I want to begin with a few words of wisdom for Fathers:
By the time a man realizes that maybe his father was right, he usually has a son who thinks he's wrong. – Charles Wadsworth
A child is not likely to find a father in God unless he finds something of God in his father – Austin Sorensen
You’ve got to do your own growing, no matter how tall your father was – Old Irish Proverb
“Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected”.
There’s lots of ready wisdom about Fatherhood out there, but let’s face it – most men don’t really like being told how to do things.
I told you last week that I got an i-Pod touch for my birthday and when I opened it up one of the things that amazed me was that there were no instructions with it. There was just a wee sliver of paper with some basic information and a website address, but hardly anything else to tell you how to work the thing. Classic Macintosh minimalism!
And my guess is that the reason they do that is because they know that no-one reads those things anymore. If you want to, you can go to the website and download a manual the size of a phonebook telling you how to work it, but most of us just want to jump in there and figure it out for ourselves. All we need is the basic information and we’re away.
I think that’s the way most of us who are dads approach parenthood too. We’re not inclined to read the manual - not until things start going wrong, maybe! - but we really want to know how to do the basics well. If we can master that, not much can go wrong.
Today’s story from Genesis is a God-send in that respect, because packed into these few verses are most of the things we need to know about raising kids.
What we heard together earlier is one chapter in the long long story, of the family that grew to be the nation we call Israel today. Abraham was the patriarch whom God chose and promised to bless; Isaac was his son, and Jacob and Esau his twin grandsons.
And today’s story begins with a family dispute. Two family members bickering over money and land; something that would, of course, never happen in our day.
Jacob and Esau were at loggerheads. Esau, the firstborn, was an outdoor kind of guy who loved hunting & fishing; Jacob was a gentler, more introverted kind of man. Isaac favoured Esau, while Rebekah, his wife, favoured Jacob.
Now in the 27th chapter of Genesis, Isaac has grown very old & blind, & he’s decided it’s time to pass on the blessing to his oldest son.
Now a Jewish father’s blessing was a formal passing on of the father’s authority to his oldest son. And since the oldest son was assuming the leadership of the family, he also received a double share of his father’s possessions. So this was important stuff.
In vs’s 2-4 Isaac tells Esau, “You see that I am old and may die soon. Take your bow and arrows, go out into the country, and kill an animal for me. Cook me some of that tasty food that I like, and bring it to me. After I have eaten it, I will give you my final blessing before I die.”
So Esau leaves, and while he is gone, Rebecca seizes the opportunity to secure the blessing for Jacob, because he was her favourite. She quickly prepares some tasty food & tells Jacob to put on Esau’s best clothes. To help fool blind old Isaac, she puts goat skin on Jacob’s hands & arms to make them feel hairy. Then she sends him in with the food to ask for the blessing.
Listen to vs. 19, “I am your elder son Esau; I have done as you told me. Please sit up and eat some of the meat that I have brought you, so that you can give me your blessing.”
Now Isaac was suspicious because Jacob’s voice didn’t sound like Esau’s. So he asked, "How did you find it so quickly, my son?" Jacob replies, "The Lord your God helped me find it."
Then vs. 21, Isaac says to Jacob, “Please come closer so that I can touch you. Are you really Esau?” Jacob moved closer to his father, who felt him and said, “Your voice sounds like Jacob's voice, but your arms feel like Esau's arms.” He did not recognize Jacob, because his arms were hairy like Esau's; so he blessed him."
And the blessing that was given is found in vs’s 27-29. As he came up to kiss him, Isaac smelt his clothes — so he gave him his blessing. He said, “The pleasant smell of my son is like the smell of a field which the Lord has blessed. May God give you dew from heaven and make your fields fertile! May he give you plenty of corn and wine! 29 May nations be your servants, and may peoples bow down before you. May you rule over all your relatives, and may your mother's descendants bow down before you. May those who curse you be cursed, and may those who bless you be blessed.”
After he received the blessing from his father, Jacob left. Shortly afterwards Esau came in with the meal he’d prepared to receive his father’s blessing.
Listen to vs’s 33-34. "Isaac trembled violently & said, `Who was it, then, that hunted game & brought it to me? I ate it just before you came & I blessed him - & indeed he will be blessed!’ When Esau heard his father’s words, he burst out with a loud & bitter cry & said to his father, `Bless me - me too, my father!’"
If you want to know how the story ends you’ll need to read on in the book of Genesis, but it’s this business of Isaac’s blessing I want us to focus on this morning.
The author Gary Smalley reckons there are 3 ingredients in that blessing that should be present in every family home, and when they’re there and practiced consistently, then our kids grow up secure & confident in themselves, able to go out into the world & function well.
The first ingredient is meaningful touch.
Jacob went close to his Father, who reached out and touched him and embraced him. And almost every time a blessing’s given in Hebrew culture, it involves touching - the laying on of hands, a kiss, an embrace - something that conveys acceptance & love.
Mark tells us that that people regularly brought children to Jesus so that He could give them his blessing, and he’d take them in his arms, or set them on his knee and hold them tenderly as he prayed for them.
He knew exactly what children need to feel loved & accepted.
A kind touch is a precious gift, and the need and desire for that gift stays with us throughout our lifetimes.
When our first child, Ross, was born the midwife got me to remove my shirt while she cleaned him up, and then she plonked him down on my chest while my wife was being attended to. It was a wonderful experience: skin to skin contact within moments of his arrival that helped him feel safe and secure and made me feel proud as anything.
And then last week, at the other end of the age spectrum, I encountered a man with dementia who’d previously been a little difficult when I’d visited the nursing home he stayed in. This time I crouched down to his level, held eye contact and took his hand, which he proceeded to stroke like a pussycat! But that physical contact made all the difference in our relating.
Touch is one of the most important ways we communicate our love and acceptance of someone.
But words are important too – and that’s our second ingredient: appreciative words.
Listen to what Isaac says as he blesses his son in the last part of vs. 27, "Ah, the smell of my son is like the smell of a field that the Lord has blessed. . ."
Now to our ears that’s not an obvious complement, but when I was thinking about it I remembered what it’s like when my kids come in and give me a hug after a whole afternoon in the garden. They carry some of that breezy outdoor freshness in with them on their clothes.
And to an old outdoorsman like Isaac the smell of the wind and the fields was a great smell. It was a compliment, a positive message that communicated his love & affection.
We cam be so quick to criticise and so slow to praise, can’t we? And yet those words of praise and encouragement have an immeasurable effect on the one they’re spoken to.
Rob Parsons is the Director of a charity called Care for the Family and he’s spoken worldwide to millions of people on strategies for raising kids and building strong marriages. He’s a brilliant communicator now. but when he was a wee boy he didn’t do well at school because he struggled with the academic side of things and his self-esteem was rock bottom.
Rob’s teacher was on the ball with this. Every day he’d get a child up to hold the paper for him while he cut it with a guillotine, and they’d do it on a rota system so everybody would get a turn. And when his time ccme, Rob took his turn like everyone else.
But the next day the teacher called him up again, and the next day and the next. Nobody knew what was going on. At the end of the week, Rob was called up again and as he turned to go back to his seat, the teacher said “Robert Parsons is the best holder of guillotine paper in this school”.
And for all his achievements in later life, Rob still says that’s the kindest and most important thing anyone has ever said to him.
The amazing power of our words. Let’s use them wisely.
The third and final ingredient is the affirmation of worth.
Notice what Isaac says in vs. 28, “May God give you dew from heaven and make your fields fertile! May he give you plenty of corn and wine!”
He’s saying, "May God give you the best, because you’re worth it”.
But what is the best? That’s one I think our culture gets wrong too often, especially as we deal with our children.
Too often we think that giving our kids the best is about buying them all the stuff they need or worse still, all the stuff they want. We live in a part of the world where that’s possible for many of us because salaries tend to be high. And we want to show our kids that we love them, so we buy them stuff.
But is that really the best we can give them?
Deep down I think we know it’s not.
What they really want are the most valuable things we have to give them: our time and our attention. And there’s a cost for us in that which hurts much more than dipping into our pockets for the latest gadgets.
A famous author was once asked why she thought she’d become so successful. Was it down to the books that had influenced her, or the education she’d had, or the ideas she’d crafted? She smiled and said it was none of those. She’d become a great writer because when she entered her father’s study at home he’d greet her with a smile that lit up his whole face and let her know she was loved to the very core. The way he treated her let her know she had worth, and that made everything else possible.
Our friend Julie Canlis tells of a time in her childhood when things were difficult for her and she was shocked when one day her dad stopped by her school and pulled her out of the class.
“But I’m not sick” she said. “And you’re supposed to be at work”. “Yeah, I know" he said. "But this isn’t a sickness day. This is a wellness day. Let’s go and be well together.” Took a day off his work just to be with his daughter, eat ice cream, go to the park and visit the museums. She knew she was worth something by the end of that day.
Are you affirmed in your worth this morning?
Are you affirming those you love in their worth?
And lest we leave this conversation on the purely human level, have we realised that the greatest affirmation of our worth doesn’t come from those we live with or work with or socialise with, but from the God who gave us life in the first place.
The God, who the Scriptures tell us, gave up his own Son on the cross, so that we could be set free from the power of sin and death.
If your sense of your own worth is based solely on things - even good things -that will pass away, like people or careers, or wealth, then your worth is transitory.
But if it’s based on the truth that you are the beloved child of God, known from all eternity, redeemed at the greatest price, then no-one can ever take your worth away from you.,
When I worked in inner-city Glasgow there was a resource we used in children’s work which was especially geared to the needs of urban kids. And I’ll always remember one piece of advice it gave; it said you can’t expect children to understand the concept of the love of God if they come from homes where they don’t receive much in the way of human love. With that in view, we realised that our task in working with these kids wasn’t so much to teach them something, as to model God’s love to them.
And that principle holds in general, I think.
If we want not just our children, but all the folk in our lives to know something of the love of God, then we are the ones who have to model it and make it real for them. And there’s no better place to start than those three simple ingredients: meaningful touch, appreciative words, and affirmation of worth. The way of Isaac’s blessing.
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