All right. Welcome back. Let's turn to everybody's favorite verse in the Bible. What? No, that's not what I was talking about. How dare you? Deuteronomy 6. Yeah, I just had to mess with you. I knew you would say Ephesians 5. How dare you think that I would think such a thing. Deuteronomy 6, we're gonna talk about something very, we're gonna beat up on the men again tonight, because there's so many of them here. And I know. But this, whether it falls here or across the internet, would be my hope, is going to be a very important sermon. Not that the others weren't, and not that there's anything special about the preacher, but the ideas here really need to be out in the airwaves, and people need to understand the devastation of not having a father at home. and that's what we're gonna talk about this evening. So let's read Deuteronomy 6. Let's read verses one through seven just for fun, and we're gonna bounce around a little bit. We're gonna talk a lot. There are gonna be a lot of statistics in this sermon and a few Bible verses it will turn to, but let's just get the word of God in our hearts and minds and the context flowing in our heads, and then we will dive into the notes. Verse one. Now these are the commandments, the statutes, and the judgments which the Lord your God commanded to teach you. Now, in English, you can do what we just did. In Luganda, you can't do that. It's very hard to say commandments, statutes, judgments, and commanded. In Luganda, basically those are all the same word. all of them. So you have to figure out a way to accurately say this and also not violate our long-standing tradition of not changing the Word of God. You talk about a difficult task. There's another verse in Deuteronomy that has like seven of these words in it. Ordinances are added, same word, in Luganda. There's a couple others that are added, and so it's very difficult to really pray for those translators. They have a tough job ahead of them, but they're doing a great job and doing a great work. keep them in your prayer, but that you might do them. Isn't that interesting? So what are commandments, statues, judgments, and commands for? Well, they're to teach you and then for you to go do them. It's so amazing to me, you stop people on the street and you say, hey, you're going to go to heaven when you die? Of course I am. How are you getting there? I keep the Ten Commandments. Oh, good. What are they? I don't know. If you don't know them, you're certainly not keeping them, and you're certainly not doing them, and you're certainly not teaching them, and you haven't learned anything from them, so how in the world are you gonna stand there and tell me with a straight face? that you're going to keep something you're completely unaware of in order to go to heaven. Makes no sense whatsoever. So, the Lord's commandments, His statutes, His judgments are there to teach you, and then, once you have been taught them, you go do it. This book is not a book full of empty words. It's not a good luck charm to throw in the dash of your car and carry around just to provide people an image of what you think you are. You've got to do it. Now, in the context of the Jews, that you might do them in the land, whether you go to possess it. One of the primary reasons for the law was to govern Israel in the promised land. In fact, the promise they were given is, if you will keep this law, then you'll be able to stay in the land. You keep violating this law, then I'm going to remove you. And God removed them multiple times. And even now, they're hanging on by a thread in a tiny portion of the Middle East, in a tiny fraction of what is the promised land. So they got to obey them and do them, teach them, know them. Verse two, that thou mightest fear the Lord, thy God, to keep all his statutes and his commandments, which I command thee, thou and thy son and thy son's son, and all the days of thy life, and that thy days may be prolonged. And now here's the other thing for the translators. Once you decide how you're going to express these different terms, then you've got to remember it all the way through the Bible. Every time that word comes up, you've got to remember, you've got to go back and remind yourself, how did we use this term? It has to be congruent, it has to be perfect, it has to be right. It's a very difficult task. Verse 3, Hear therefore, O Israel, and observe to do it. that it may be well with thee, and that they may increase mightily as the Lord God of thy fathers hath promised thee in the land that floweth with milk and honey. Here, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord, and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might, And these words which I command thee this day shall be in thine heart. So it's the words that God gave. That's the focus. What do people need? The word of God. They need the gospel from the word of God. Then once they get saved, they need to be taught the word of God. And then once they hear it and learn it, they need to go do it. seems self-explanatory, but when you look at the way Christians live today, it must not be very self-explanatory. Verse seven, or what did we leave off? Verse six, and these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them. This is very practical. What the Lord is saying here should be applied to your life every day. All right, now, you're going to teach them diligently unto thy children, and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house. Turn the TV off and talk. And don't just talk about the weather. Don't talk about tomatoes. Don't talk about cows. Don't talk about football. Talk about the Lord. They don't want to talk about it. You're in the wrong house. I don't know why you're here. Whatever it is you want to talk about, not likely to be welcomed here. But if you want to talk about Jesus, we can talk about Jesus all night long. You want to talk about the Bible? I've got lots of books, I've got lots of notes, I've got a big Bible. We can sit here all night and talk till the cows come home. How about that? And when thou walkest by the way. Can you walk me to my car? Why? We can talk. You want to walk out to the mailbox with me? Why? So we can talk. Just talk about the Lord. Tell people about the Lord. And when they'll lie us down, putting the kids to bed, tell them about Jesus. Wake them up in the morning, tell them about Jesus. Lay in the bed with your husband, with your wife, tell them about Jesus. Talk about Jesus. That's what the Lord wants us to do here. And when thou liest down, and when thou risest up, and thou shalt bind them for a sign upon thine hand, and they shall be as frontlets between thine eyes. So he just, he wants the word of God everywhere. He wants you to talk about it. He wants you to tell others about it. He wants it to be the subject of your conversation and every aspect of your life. It's very, very important. Now let's pray and then we'll see what we have tonight and see if we can make sense of it together. Father, thank you for being so good to us. Lord, we pray. Our anticipation is that these seats will be filled with families. And Lord, we pray for your help. We sure need your blessing. We sure need your encouragement. We sure need your wisdom and prudence and all the wonderful things that you promised to give if we would ask. And Lord, I'm asking and asking diligently that you would provide these things and bless this church and help it to grow after a godly sort. Lord, there's no other way I know to do it, so we pray for your help, we pray for your wisdom, we pray for your blessing, and pray for good guidance from you on what to do and how to do it, Lord. Please help us to build families that love the Lord, that wanna serve you, that wanna be faithful. Lord, I have no time and no interest in these shallow families that are so distracted by this world. We just pray that you'd help with these things. In Christ's name I pray, amen. Now, this nation is at a crossroads. It's hard to see that right now. Well, it's not as hard at the moment because the crowd that won the election are now bickering and fighting amongst themselves over the direction they think that the president that they supported should go. But just a few months ago, it was hard to tell that this country was still at a crossroads because everybody was riding on the high of winning a conservative election. And people are still under the misunderstanding that winning an election is somehow equivalent to, I don't know, trusting in Jesus or the second coming. I'm not sure what they thought was gonna happen when we won the election, but it didn't quite turn out or pan out to be what they were hoping. But we are at a crossroads, and it's a very dangerous crossroads. while we boast of being founded by godly men, which I'm not 100% sure where that idea came from. Everybody keeps saying America is a Christian nation. That's a foolish, foolish notion. Now, it is true that a large part of the American government and the structure thereof did come from biblical principles, and we did enjoy the benefits of that for a long time, but we're a long ways away from that. We now face an unprecedented crisis that threatens the very fabric of our society and our churches. If this is not corrected, you will not only not have a country, you're definitely not gonna have churches. It takes families to build a church. Can individuals do it? Sure, God can use anybody and can do a lot with an individual, but ultimately it takes families. That is what is needed. And that is what is so broken in our country. You can't get people to get married. If they get married, you can't get them to stay married. If you can't, if they get married, you can't get them to be faithful to each other. You can't get people to take care of their children. They just have kids. And then those kids just sort of exist. They're frustrated that they exist because they'd rather go play video games or they'd rather go out with the girls or whatever it is that you would rather do than stay home and take care of your children. None of that is acceptable. But that's where their head is at. Just, I need time for me. You don't get time for you. You got married. When you got married, you lost time for you. Then you had children. When you got married and had children, you basically put time for you in a triple negative. Just not happening. Get over it. The statistics are staggering. 18.3 million children in America live without their biological father in the home. Now that number is much smaller than I thought it would be. But here's the hard thing, the difficult thing about using statistics. They come from the secular world. If I were to, you know, and I'm depending on the State Department and the CDC and all that for these statistics to try and get something that is hopefully semi-accurate, but if I were to dive into what they're calling a father in the home, I probably wouldn't agree and that this number is probably staggering larger, probably much worse. This represents nearly one in four children growing up in a father absent household. Out of every four children you will encounter today, at least one of them does not have a father in the home and has no father actively involved in their lives. And then when you break that down by demographic, you know, what everybody hates to do, white people, black people, all that, it gets even worse depending on the demographic. And that is, when it comes to the social issues of the different demographics, this is the source of it. A broken family, a broken home, that is the problem. And until that's fixed, those demographics are not going to change. Now the United States has achieved the dubious distinction of having the highest rate of single-parent household of any nation in the world. That is a shame. That is horrendous. Now, you know, you got all these politicians trying to fix all these things. Why don't you give some incentive for families to stay together? Look, I'm not advocating that you legislate the Bible, though it'd be better for you if you did, but it is at least, at a very base level, it would be better for you to give families incentive to stay together rather than giving them incentive to leave and break up their household. What was once 11% of children living in father absent homes in the 1960s has now tripled to 25%. Now what happened in the 1960s that would be significant? Well, there are two things primarily. You had the sexual revolution and feminism really take off. And with that, promiscuity became acceptable and women breaking free from the bondage of being a mother and a wife and go out into the world and get a career and work next to a bunch of smelly men. Congratulations. This is not a social trend. It is a spiritual and societal catastrophe that demands immediate attention. You want to declare an emergency? I would declare an emergency on the family. If you don't have families, you have nothing. What do you think you're going to build in a society with no families? Where do you think it's going to go? There's nowhere for it to go. The Bible is clear about God's design for the family. We've looked at it. In Ephesians 6, 4, the Bible says, And ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath, but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This verse establishes the father as the primary spiritual leader in the home, responsible for the training and discipline of his children. Those children should understand that when the father, I told you before about this, I saw this video online of this little boy, his mom was just trying her best to get him to obey her, and he is throwing a massive fit. I mean, just being wild. and refuses to obey her. But in the background of the video, his father walks in the room. And that screaming and throwing a fit immediately ceases. And whatever it was she was asking that boy to do, he immediately went to do it. That is desperately needed in the home. Now the child should have been listening to the mother, But at least there was that contrast. When the father walked in the room, the tone changed. All the, I can get away with this with mama, came to a screeching halt when daddy walked in the room. But how many homes have no father walking in the room? Even worse, you have homes where The man walking in the room is a boyfriend or a stepdad or someone who has no real biological relationship to the child, so they kind of coexist in the same house and really have no clearly defined relationship. So you still don't have that same effect. Our passage, Deuteronomy 6, verses 6 through 7, and these words, which I command thee this day, what are you supposed to do with the words that God commands? You teach them, and then you do them. Shall be in thine heart, and thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children. If you're not teaching God's word to your children, that is an epic failure. If your children do not know and understand God's Word, you should have so saturated their minds with the Bible that by the time they are teenagers or adults, they have so much Bible to jump over and to climb over in order to go out in this world and do things they don't want to do. And I don't mean beat them up with the Bible, I mean sit down and lovingly teach them and tell them what the Bible says. and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up. So when should you do it? When you're sitting, when you're laying, when you get up, when you go to bed, when you're walking, when you're talking, talk about the Lord. Of course, the father is called to be the chief instructor of his children in the ways of the Lord. You've got to teach the Bible. You can't just say, well, I took them to church. Great, you should take them to church. But it's your responsibility. It's, number one, the father's responsibility, secondarily, the mother's responsibility, and mothers play a massive role in this, in reinforcing, it is likely in most traditional homes that the mother is spending overwhelmingly more time with children than fathers are. Father's supposed to be working, supposed to be doing something to provide for the family, and that necessitates a certain amount of time away from the home. Hopefully, the mother is home taking care of the children and teaching them and leading them and guiding them and reinforcing what the father is supposed to be teaching. Now, let's talk about the devastating impact of fatherlessness. My mom was 16 years old and homeless when she had me. I've never met my father and it shows. There are things I struggle with and will always struggle with because I just never had a father in the home teaching me, guiding me, helping me to understand how men do things. The absence of fathers creates a pipeline to prison that cannot be ignored. 85% of youth in prison come from fatherless homes. Now, I'm not telling you there's a direct correlation, but that number is pretty hard to overlook. 85%. This means that the vast majority of young people behind bars grew up without the guidance, the discipline, and the protection that a father provides. It's devastating. It's destructive. The statistics become even more alarming when we consider that 80% of rapists come from fatherless homes. And children from father absent homes are 20 times more likely to be incarcerated. Furthermore, these children are 279% more likely to carry guns and deal drugs. I don't mean carry guns in a negative way. I think you should carry a gun if you have the legal right to do so. But this is a thug on the street illegally carrying a gun and using it improperly and selling drugs along with it. What about educational failure? The classroom becomes a battleground for children without fathers. and teachers who can't get these children under control. I heard a statistic the other day. I don't remember the exact numbers, so I won't try and repeat it, but here's the gist of it. Here's the idea. A massive number of men have left elementary school, middle school, high school. There are no men. There are very few men teaching now. And there's a correlation there with the rise of these men leaving, or incoming these female teachers, many of whom are LGBTQ, or many of whom have, there's this rise in a rash of young teachers having inappropriate relationships with their students. You need honest men with integrity in the lives of these young people. It has to be there. 71% of high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. 71%. There's nobody there to say, I don't care what you think, you're gonna shut your mouth and go do what you're supposed to do. Or you're gonna suffer the consequences. When there's no father there, there are no consequences. There's no direction. There's nobody to want to make proud Who they end up wanting to make proud are their friends in the streets, because there's no father there. These children struggle to find the motivation, the discipline, and the support necessary for academic success. It's not there. What's the motivation? I can go hang out with my friends all day. Maybe a few of them end up with a coach in their life or, Lord willing, a pastor, somebody that will engage them in that way, but it's rare, it's not many. In stark contrast, research shows that children with actively engaged fathers are 33% less likely to repeat a grade and 43% more likely to get A's in school. We're not even talking about the dropout aspect, they just don't drop out. But over and above that, they're a lot less likely to repeat a grade and a lot more likely to get straight A's in school. They're also twice as likely to attend college, whether that's a good thing or not, compared to those from father-absent homes. Of course, then they go to college and they're taught that having a father in the home is a characteristic of an oppressive patriarchy and that you shouldn't do it. Isn't that amazing how that works? Total confusion. Your father helped you objectively, statistically, not only get through your elementary, middle school, and high school years, but you were 43% more likely to do so with good grades, only to get out of high school, go to college, and be taught that what your father did and the strength he was in your life was wrong. Congratulations. What about the mental health crisis? The psychological damage of father absence manifests in tragic ways as well. 60% of youth suicides come from fatherless homes. 60%. There's no strength there. There's no father figure for them to go to when they're shattered, when they're broken, when their emotions are getting out of control. It's desperately needed. These children often struggle with depression, anxiety, and behavioral problems at rates far exceeding their peers from intact families. Children who grow up with a mom and a dad who are at least moderately engaged in their lives don't have these issues. At least not nowhere near to this extent. 90%, 90% of homeless and runaway children come from fatherless homes. So you see kids running the streets, 90% of them didn't have a father at home. Without the stability and security that a father provides, these children often flee to the streets where they face even greater dangers but feel like they're free. Then there's the economic devastation. Fatherlessness creates a cycle of poverty that spans generations. One of the number one ways you can live above poverty in America, you might even be able to suggest that you would live middle class, is to get married, stay married, and have children after you get married. That's one of the number one statistics of people who are successful in America. Children from father absent homes are four times more likely to live in poverty. That's amazing. When divorce occurs, family income drops by 41% and food consumption falls by 18%. You sure you want to get that divorce? I just feel like I should. Yeah, I know. It's all about you. No, no, I'm doing it for the children. No, you're not. If you're doing it for the children, you would stay. You'd make it work. You think I should stay? I'm not in love anymore. Yeah, I think you should get over that and stop talking like a moron and fix your relationship. You were so excited when you stood before whoever it was that married you, in sickness and in health. Whatever comes our way, we're together. A year later, I just didn't know. Well, you should have known. You should have thought about it. Single mother families are significantly more likely to suffer from economic insecurity than two parent families. The absence of a father's income and stability creates financial hardship that affects every aspect of the child's development. Every aspect of your child's development will be significantly impacted by a divorce. Why would you do that? Because you don't care. It's all about you. You don't care about anybody else. What about teen pregnancy and sexual behavior? How do you think that goes in the home with a father who's engaged in the life of his daughter? It doesn't. Now, does it happen? Sure. But it's much harder and far less common. Perhaps one of the most devastating consequences of father absence is its impact on daughters. This part made me want to just go hug my daughter, just putting it together. It has a massive impact on a daughter's sexual behavior. Girls whose fathers left before age five have seven to eight times higher rates of teenage pregnancy. Even girls whose fathers left after, who left later, still face two to three times higher pregnancy rates in high school. Now that, and that number is, you start getting in the rabbit hole, going down the rabbit holes of that, of those numbers, it's no longer pregnancy rates in high school. Now it's pregnancy rates in high school and in middle school and lots of sexual activity in elementary school. How? I don't understand the biological concept there. I don't even want to know. We're in trouble. We need fathers. Research reveals that 70% of teen pregnancies occur in fatherless homes. 70%. The timing of father absence is crucial. The earlier the father leaves, the higher the risk becomes. You need to stay home and you need to take care of your children. You need to stay home and you need to be actively involved in the lives of your children. Then there's substance abuse. Our community might know something about this. The connection between father absence and substance abuse is undeniable. 75% of drug users come from fatherless homes. 75%. Three quarters of all drug users did not have a father. Additionally, 75% of adolescent patients in chemical abuse centers come from fatherless homes. Girls with absent fathers face particular risk for substance abuse as they attempt to fill the emotional void left by their father's absence. You think it's not gonna harm your children for you to just disappear on them? You're a fool. The research shows that involved fathers serve as a protective factor against substance use disorders, whatever those are. Sounds like it's a fatherlessness disorder, not a substance use disorder. But of course, the terminology they use, they have to make the person using drugs a victim. It's a disorder they have. They couldn't help it. It's not their fault. But then there's the positive impact of engaged fathers. The presence of an engaged father. Now, you hear the terminology, right? not a father, but an engaged father, one that is concerned, that loves their children, spends time with them, especially if he's a godly father, it transforms a child's life trajectory. Research consistently shows that 22 of 24 studies found positive effects of father involvement on children's development outcomes. I mean, out of 24 studies, 22 of them said it's overwhelmingly positive. Two of them didn't have anything negative to say, just maybe didn't come to the overwhelming conclusion. Fathers who are actively engaged in their children's lives produce children with higher IQs and better language and cognitive skills. Do you want that for your children? Is that important to you? Better emotional regulation and social skills. Who's going to provide that firm objective side that your son and your daughter need to see if you're not there? Reduced behavioral problems and increased self-control. You know where that comes from? a firm hand willing to make them get themselves under control and understand what they did wrong, then when they get out on their own, they remember that and they regulate themselves. They live temperate lives rather than just being completely out of control. Today, you have children with no father in the home or a weak father in the home who does not engage in their lives. And so what everybody does is look at the child and say, he has ADHD, give him drugs. It's not ADHD. It's called, I'm a child. I'm hyper because I'm a child and nobody's here to regulate me and teach me to control myself. Greater academic achievement and educational success, that's all statistically driven. Children with involved fathers are twice as likely to enter college, 75% less likely to have a teen birth, 80% less likely to go to jail, and half as likely to experience depression. It's pretty amazing. How do we solve all this problem, all these problems? Well, you could tell fathers to stay home. Stop running around like some wild dog and stop being lazy. Stop being distracted by video games and toys and go do something with your children. Spend time with them. And so here's what we need. Number one for fathers. The responsibility lies squarely on the shoulders of every father. You are called to be the priest, protector, and provider in your home. That is your responsibility. If you fail to do that, you are subjecting your children to everything we just read about from the negative perspective. And if you will engage, then you will subject your children to the positives we just read about. It really is that simple. This means spiritual leadership. Lead your family in daily Bible reading and prayer. Spend time with your family teaching them the Bible. Tell them about Jesus. Tell them what the Bible says. Consistent discipline. Provide loving correction that points children toward righteousness. Right now, everybody here knows I believe the Bible, and there's a biblically suggested form of discipline, and I think you should exercise it. But at a very minimum, you gotta do something. That child has to understand there are consequences for doing wrong. Whatever you're going to apply, that's up to you. Obviously, abuse is never acceptable in any way, shape, form, or fashion. But there has to be some level of discipline for them to understand there are consequences to making bad choices. And if a father's not going to be there to engage in that way, well, they're going to grow up and rob people in 10 years. They're going to grow up and be a drug addict. It's going to be teen pregnancies. It's going to be all sorts of issues. Active engagement. Spend quality time with each child, showing interest in their lives. I work constantly. I'm between, when switching from one job to the other, I'm exhausted. Sometimes I'll just go, just to let my brain rest for a minute, I'll go lay on the couch and I'll make one of the kids come lay down with me and just talk to them. What did you do today? What was your favorite thing today? And you'd be amazed at what children say was their favorite thing the other day. Today, I asked Adrian. I came back last night and got home last night, and my family came back today. And I asked Adrian. So we had this whole time away from Monday, Tuesday, and they came back Wednesday, well, Sunday night. I said, what was your favorite thing? Now, we were staying in a house that was right on one of the inlets off the ocean. So it was brackish water. It was a river. It was a very nice place. It was fun. And his cousins were there. We all stayed in the same house together. His aunts and uncles were there. They were fishing. They caught a turtle. snapping turtle at that, a big one. They let him go, obviously. A lot of meat in there. I don't know why they let him go, but you know, they let him go. And then they almost caught a drumfish, which I didn't know what a drumfish was. I kept asking, is it a snare drum, a kick drum? What kind of drum? But they almost caught one that was huge. Anyway, so you got all that going on, and he's running around playing, he's having fun. And I said, what was your favorite thing out of the whole time? The tunnel. Driving through the tunnel in Mobile, coming back here. That was his favorite thing. So you just never know what they're going to say. But if you're not there, you're definitely not going to know what they're going to say. I enjoy those little conversations. It's hard to get them to sit still and just talk to me, but I make them do it. Even when he wants to go play, he's like, Daddy, I want to go play. Well, I'm talking to you. Too bad. But I love those moments, and they're desperately needed. And then there's biblical instruction. Teach your children the word of God through both formal instruction and daily conversation. When you sit down, when you stand up, when you lay down, when you rise, talk to them. Then there's the church. For the church, we have to support and equip fathers for this role. Aged men are supposed to teach young men. Aged women are supposed to teach young women to carry out, hopefully, the roles that they themselves have successfully performed from a biblical perspective. That's the idea. That's the goal. There has to be father-focused training. That's why we're doing this in July. We're going to teach the Bible. We're just going to talk about the family from the Word of God repeatedly. And we do it every year because it's highly important. There's got to be some sort of mentorship. That's Titus. Let the aged men teach the young men. Somebody's got to show them. Preferably men who have been successfully married and raised good children. I just don't see how If your children grew up and they hate you, I don't think you're the one that should be going around teaching people how to raise children. It just doesn't seem like a good idea. You gotta address father absence. If we have families here and that father's not involved in the life of that family, it needs to be, I gotta talk to him. What's going on? What are you doing? Why are you not involved in the life of your family? Look, I am unbelievably busy, but I have to take some time and spend with my children and can do better at it. But you have to take the time if you just do nothing more than just sit down with them and talk to them. You've got to do something. You've got to be there. And then preach biblical manhood. Of course, men are under attack today. It's not as bad lately with just a year ago. Up until just a year ago, it was horrendous. But it's quieted down a little bit, but they haven't gone away. As soon as that party, that side regains the power and the prestige they once had. Right now, Hollywood is in shambles and the music industry is in shambles. All their videos came out of them. P. Diddy's going to jail raping people and all these things, allegedly. Right now, they're all kind of... They don't know what to do. They're trying to regroup. They don't know what to do and where to go. So their typical attacks on the family and on men, they're in sort of disarray at the moment, but they're not going away. These things have to be taught continually. And so the statistics paint a clear picture. Fathers matter. Fathers' lives matter. Get a t-shirt made. Their presence or absence literally determines the trajectory of a child's life. Literally. I don't know that I can overstate that. That's not hyperbolic. It is unbelievably clear that the role and the presence of a father doing what he's supposed to do, being actively engaged. I'm not talking about perfection. Are you going to make mistakes? Sure. But they need that firmness there, and they need that side. The man's presence desperately needs to be there, but even more so, it needs to be there and actively engaged. And it's very important. In the discipline, in the teaching, in the loving, all of it needs to be there. Has to be there. The crisis of fatherlessness is not a social problem, it's a spiritual problem. It's a crisis. We're in trouble, we're in serious trouble. And so as we look at, you know, we looked at Ephesians 6, 4, and we saw God's non-negotiable job description for fathers. Provoke not your children, but bring them up. in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. This is prescriptive. It's a command. Sometimes as a missionary, I'd go on podcasts, people would invite me on podcasts and we'd talk and I would tell them how we're doing things and I would always say, this is not prescriptive. I'm not telling you, you have to do it this way. This is what we did and God blessed it. Well, Ephesians 6, 4 is prescriptive. You have to do it. It is a command. And the Lord said in Deuteronomy 6, when I give you a command, it is to teach you and then it is for you to do it. And then I want you to go and take that command and teach it diligently to your children. It's desperately needed. The future of our nation depends on men who will answer this. And so I pray that the, Anyone that hears this, any man who hears this will step up. Be a father and lead your home. Provide the strength and the love that only comes from walking with the Lord and that they need to see from a father. Don't be some distant, hard, cold father in the home. That's not helpful. It'd be better for you to be there than not, but that's, you know, it's not very helpful. And don't be some weak, flimsy pushover in the home. That's not helpful. You need to be a man and you need to lead your home, but you can love your children and be compassionate towards your children and also put your foot down and be firm when it needs to happen. It's very important. And so, the statistical data in this sermon is from multiple sources, including the U.S. Census Bureau, the Department of Justice, the CDC, and various academic studies. But the overwhelming evidence confirms what Scripture always taught. Fathers are essential to the healthy development of children and stability of society. You make with that what you want. It's the patriarchy. Whatever. call it what you want, but you keep taking fathers away from the home, you're going to destroy your society. Now, if that's your goal, it's a successful plan. But if it is not your goal to destroy your society, then I urge you, stop encouraging men to abandon their homes. Teach them to stay home. Teach them to be men. Teach them to be there and to lead and to love and to do all the things they're supposed to do. Amen? Amen. All right, let's pray. And then you'll be dismissed, and you can go do what I just said. Amen. Father, we thank you for being so good to us. Lord, help us with this matter. Help our country, our nation. We pray for Lewisdale, that you would raise up men in this city. We pray for George County, that you'd raise up men in this county. We pray for the state of Mississippi, that you would raise up men in Mississippi. Lord, please strengthen our country with families led by good men, men of integrity, men of honesty, most importantly, men who love the Lord. and that they'd lead their homes and guide and lead and not make light of this unbelievably important role and place in the lives of children, in the lives of wives, in the lives of so many who need their father. Not a father, not any father, not a stepfather, not a boyfriend, none of this broken garbage. They need their father in their home to raise them up in the admonition of the Lord. And we pray for your help, we pray for wisdom, we pray for guidance, and thank you for your goodness. In Christ's name we pray, amen.