by Alistair Begg:

“You are 365 days nearer death than you were at Father’s Day last year, 24 hours nearer death than you were this time yesterday morning. We are dying. We will never die as Jacob died unless we live as Jacob lived. You cannot die in faith unless you live in faith and you cannot live in faith unless you come to faith. You cannot come to faith until you see yourself as a needy sinner before Christ, repent of your sin, ask Him to save you, cry out for His mercy and has Him to come and invade your life by the power of His Spirit.

“That’s where the journey of faith begins-not because you decided to get religious, not because you wandered into a church, not because you are trying to do a little better-but because you encountered God. Jacob had such an encounter…Then (after we encounter God personally) we will be ready to die, but not until. We may be dead before the day is over.”

“Until you have addressed the issue of dying, there will be no worthwhile blessing coming from you to your children. What am I blessing my children with? Are we blessing our children? We can’t bless them with a patriarchal blessing in the manner of Jacob, but we can bless them in the way we love them, in the way we are firm with them, in the way we establish parameters and say, ‘This is it.’ We can bless them in the way we pray for them, in the way we instruct them, in the way we guide them, in the way in which we take an interest in them.”

“Jacob is 147 years old and he is worshiping God…Do your children know you to be a worshiper? How would they know? They would see you in worship. They would join you in worship. They would know whether worship for you was something that came out of the fullness of your heart or whether it was just something to get by one hour in the week to get on with the rest of life. When the pastor calls on your home and gathers the children around him and says, ‘Tell me some of your father’s favorite hymns,’ will they be able to answer? Or if he asks them, ‘Tell me some of your dad’s favorite verses,’ will they have anything to say? [If he says] ‘show me your dad’s well-worn Bible,’ will there be anything to pick up?”

Dr. Begg then illustrates the point with his own father and how, as a young boy, he sat beside his dad each Lord’s Day and saw him worship. This had a lasting impact on him.

“I don’t know what day it was when I passed the rubicon between sitting beside my dad and grinding through every moment of what was being said by this guy (the preacher) at the front and suddenly listening. I don’t know when I passed from winding my mother’s watch round and round on her wrist so as to take her into eternity with an indelible mark of the fact I was always saying, ‘When will this be over?’ I don’t know when it changed, but it changed. And every song I sang and nearly every verse I know and almost every conviction of my life today has been framed by the fact that I lived in the house of a worshiping dad. I remember putting my hand into his hand in a Sunday evening service, wondering what the guy (preacher) was on about, but happy just to hold his hand. I remember, as if he was beside me right now, the way that hymn book always shook, even when I was tiny. And I remember thinking, ‘My dad must be old; the book shouldn’t shake like this.’ Will your kids remember? Will they remember that for you it was one hour on a Sunday morning and forget it for the rest of the week? If you die tonight, what kind of legacy have you left as a worshiper? Are you going to sit home and watch Bonanza tonight? If so, then remember this: every Sunday night spent watching Bonanza instead of worshiping in the house of the Lord is adding to the legacy that you are leaving for your children on the day when you aren’t blessing them any more because you died and you checked out.”

You may hear the audio of the entire sermon here: http://www.truthforlife.org/broadcasts/2010/05/17/where-have-all-fathers-gone-part-b/

First Baptist Church of Perryville is located one and a half miles east of Rt. 222.