This is no trivial detail – a product of the fact that (unlike Simon and Andrew, in the previous verses) the sons of Zebedee happened to be on a job with their dad on the day when Jesus called them.  It’s a pattern that Matthew keeps returning to through the rest of his gospel.  For the disciples, the call to follow Jesus means literally leaving the family and the family business to travel around Galilee and Judea to go on the road with the itinerant rabbi Jesus.

This side of Jesus’ resurrection and ascension, ‘following’ Jesus obviously doesn’t mean wandering around Galilee with him.  But the core question of whether you are prepared to rank your loyalty to him even higher than your loyalty to family (and Jesus ranks that pretty highly) does not fade away at the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry.

When Jesus sends his disciples on mission in Matthew 10, he gives instructions that seem to be deliberately intended (eg. v. 18) to anticipate some aspects at least of the mission to the Gentiles that they will be sent out on after the resurrection.  His words in vv. 21-22 and 34-37 about being prepared to endure even the hatred and opposition of your brother or your father or your children are repeated in more general terms in Matt. 24:10.

The ‘leaving’ decision in this age may not always be the decision to leave a secular career for a paid ministry job – in fact for most Christians it won’t be that – but it may be.  Or it may be a decision to do the same job in a different part of the world, for the sake of Jesus and the gospel, or a host of other decisions that involve forsaking comforts and possessions and opportunities in order to serve God’s mission in the world.

The preparedness to ‘leave’ and to be ‘hated’ – even by your own father – is at the heart of what it means to be a disciple.

* David is married to Nicole and is the father of Jacob, Rebecca and Elsie. For work he lectures at Morling College in Sydney.

When Jesus wanted to give an example of how the people of his day used religious traditions to dodge the word of God, the particular word from God that he picked out to focus on was Moses’ commandment to ‘honour your Father and your mother’.  According to Jesus, God is not impressed by people who use religious commitments as an excuse for avoiding the more difficult and God-honouring task of honouring their parents – really, genuinely honouring them, in a way that costs time and money and continues all the way to the time when they are demented and dying.

We will have some translating to do in order to apply these words of Jesus to our own situation.  We are not under the law of Moses, and we don’t have a ‘korban’ tradition that we could use to hide from it even if we were.  But we worship the same God who commanded the Israelites to honour their fathers and their mothers, and the way we honour Him is tied up with the way we honour them.

Raising up children for Abraham and teaching them to walk in his ways was a serious business, and the whole Old Testament, from Genesis to Malachi (e.g. Mal. 2:15), is full of reminders of how important God saw it as being.

Which is why John the Baptist’s words in Matthew 3:9 are so jolting.  God doesn’t need Israel and the children of the Israelites.  If he wants to, he can raise up children for Abraham from the stones by the side of the Jordan river.

At one level (a bit like the story of the virgin birth) John’s words function as a huge challenge to human fatherhood and family.  Viewed as an end in itself, human fatherhood and family is an idol that God is perfectly prepared to cut down and bypass.

At another level, John’s words are an urgent call to take the business of raising up children for Abraham a whole lot more seriously.  The fact that God has an axe at the root of the trees, ready to cut down the trees that don’t bear fruit, is not a reason to give up on being a tree.  It’s a reason to bear fruit.

No-one is automatically a child of God, simply by virtue of being born into the right family - this side of the cross, as the gospel goes out to the nations, that is even clearer than it was in John’s preaching.  People enter God’s family not by birth but by the new birth, through the work of the Spirit (cf. John 1:13; 3:6; Rom. 2:29).  But the normal means by which the Spirit works is through God’s word (cf. 1 Peter 1:23), which can be learned from infancy and is able to make a person wise for salvation and equipped for every good work (2 Tim. 3:15-16).

So whatever else we fathers do in our lives (including our ‘ministry’ lives), we ought to be praying for God’s Spirit to be at work in our kids’ hearts to give them saving faith in Jesus, and teaching them (by word and example, with discipline and patience) what the word of God says and how to believe and obey it.

If we do everything else except those things, then our fatherhood is falling catastrophically short of what it was created for.  John’s words to Israel carry an echo that functions as a warning for us.  God offers no guarantee of permanence to half-hearted faith and obedience half-heartedly passed on from generation to generation.  There is an axe at the root of the tree.

God can do without human fatherhood – he managed to bring the Messiah into the world without even needing to use one of us as a sperm donor.

But just as Joseph’s story in Matthew 1-2 provides us with a deliberately humiliating reminder of how dispensable we human fathers are, it also gives us an extraordinary example of how God uses us and our fatherhood in his plans.

When God breaks the news to Joseph that Mary’s child is from the Holy Spirit, he immediately gives Joseph two commands:

First, he tells Joseph not to be afraid to marry Mary. Unlike his ancestor Ahaz, whose decisions were ruled by the fear of men, Joseph is to fear God and despise the social shame that he will incur by marrying Mary.

And second, he tells Joseph that when Mary’s child is born, ‘You shall call his name Jesus’. The main emphasis in that command (as the rest of the verse goes on to explain) is on the last word: You shall call his name Jesus. But the first word in the sentence is significant too: You shall call his name Jesus. Joseph is to name the child, and take on the responsibility of fathering him. Which he does (verse 25).

And then, in the following chapter (vv. 13-14, 19-21) it is Joseph’s actions as a husband and father that God uses to save the life of the Saviour of the world. All we know about Joseph’s life from the gospels is that he chose to marry Mary when God told him to, that he worked a job as a carpenter (Matt. 13:55) and that he acted to protect his family when they were in danger.

Marrying, working, protecting a family – nothing fancy or religious here, just the basic, secular, ordinary realities of human fatherhood as God created it to function (under the pressure of some extraordinary circumstances and assisted by the odd dream) lived out by a man who feared God and trusted his word, and used by God as part of his plans to save the world.

This is the first in a series of five short(ish) posts on human fatherhood in Matthew’s gospel. (There’s also a lot in Matthew about God’s fatherhood, but that would be another whole series…).

The first thing to get straight about human fatherhood, according to the gospel of Matthew, is that God doesn’t need it.

Matthew begins his account of ‘Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham’ with a genealogy that is all about fathering – sixteen verses about who was the father of whom, all the way from Abraham down to Joseph, as God put together the family line of the seed of Abraham and the sons of David. And then, having laid out that long chain of human fathers and sons, God suddenly snaps it at the very last link, and causes Jesus to be born of a virgin.

The virgin birth is never explained in Scripture as some sort of device to avoid passing on original sin – as if the sin gene was carried on the Y chromosome. But it is explained, right back in Isaiah, as a sign of judgment on faithless, blustering, self-reliant, fearful men, like Ahaz and the house of David. (Have a read of Isaiah 7-8 and you’ll get the picture.)

At the very centre of the story of how God chose to save the world is a man who was conceived without a human father and who never became a father himself. That has to have implications.

David is married to Nicole and is the father of Jacob, Rebecca and Elsie. For work he lectures at Morling College in Sydney.

When tempted, no one should say, “God is tempting me.” For God cannot be tempted by evil, nor does he tempt anyone; but each one is tempted when, by his own evil desire, he is dragged away and enticed. Then, after desire has conceived, it gives birth to sin; and sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death. Don’t be deceived, my dear brothers.

James says that when we are tempted, no one should say “God is tempting me” for the simple reasons that God cannot be tempted, nor does he tempt anyone else. Instead James points the finger of blame, not toward God, not even towards the Devil alone, but towards our own personal desires. From our own evil desires comes temptation, and when given in to, sin and death are not far behind.

As I was reading this part of James, a few thoughts came to mind.

1. Temptation isn’t always external, but comes from the wickedness of my own heart and its evil desires. I often treat my struggles with temptation as an assault of the Devil, yet James lays the burden of responsibility at my own feet - from my “own evil desires”.

2. Temptation highlights my evil desires and shows them for what they really are. When I look under the hood of my desires, they are so often pathetic, self interested and so small. I want to impact the world and honor the Lord Jesus in all I do, but for this to happen, I desperately need God to change my pathetic and selfish desires

My kids are in bed now, sleeping soundly, and for the moment I am spared the “but Dad it wasn’t me it was her fault..” routine. Tonight as I go to bed, Im praying that God would help me to take responsibility for, and fight temptation. I need his help to teach my kids to be responsible for their own sin, not looking to blame others or God? And Im praying that God would so powerfully work in their little hearts, that their desires would be God honoring, big and bold, rather than selfish, pathetic and measly.

What adventures have you had in fighting temptation? How have you approached temptation with your kids and do you have anything to share about encouraging and inspiring bold, God honoring desires within your children? I’d Be keen for your thoughts or comments?

I did my best to listen to her fears, asked her what was worrying her the most, and then, not wanting to give her a “Dad answer”, we listened to U2 up really loud all the way home. Later that evening it got me wondering, how do we best teach our kids about perseverance? How do we help them face hardships and times of trial in their lives, particularly when they are young and see most life-changes as trials and hardships. The book of James in the Bible says:-

“Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. If any of you lacks wisdom, he should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to him.”

Why does God allow difficulties in our lives? How can I encourage my kids to deal with these trials and hardships. James gives two answers.

1. Trials ought to be received with joy, for out of them something good develops - perseverance. And as perseverance grows, God matures and develops my character so that I am “complete, not lacking anything”.

2. Wisdom is needed as the gift from God in order to perceive & receive trials in this way. So my kids and I should be asking God, regularly for the wisdom to see things his way; to understand and receive trials and hardships joyfully, knowing that in and through them, God is making me complete.

Over the coming couple of weeks I hope to share more with you as I read James and try to learn, along with my kids, to be joyful in the face of trials as God grows us in perseverance. Pray with me that God would give us wisdom to see trials and hardships his way.

Before I go, what about you and your kids? How have you encouraged your kids to persevere in the face of trials?

“I’ve been at work all day, earning the money to pay for your Ballet lessons. I have a head ache and just want some alone time. Please make the noise go away.”

I may not even say these words, but at times I know I think them.

The grown up pride of my little world has recently been challenged as I have been reading through the book of 1 Corinthians in the Bible. Earlier this week, a few sentences jumped out at me.

“If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”

It got me thinking that I can be the best person in my job at work yet if I fail to do it with love, I am a nothing. I can earn lots of money and provide very well for my family, but if I don’t have love I am a nothing. I can even be a really nice guy, be well respected by my friends and peers, yet if I am not characterised by love especially by those who know me well, then I am nothing more than a resounding gong or noisy cymbal.

My prayer is that tomorrow afternoon when I walk through the front door, that as I am assaulted by the whirlwind of kids and all the noise that goes with them, that I wouldn’t be a noisy gong or clanging cymbal…but that I would have love. That’s the kind of Father I want to be.