Luke 1:17 “And he will go on before the Lord, in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the parents to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”

Just yesterday I preached on how John the Baptist was the fulfillment of Isaiah 40:3, and here we have Gabriel saying that John will also fulfill Malachi 4:5-6, the last two verses in the Old Testament. John was very much in God’s plans, though he was not the Messiah. He was so powerful in God that many people thought he was, so he had to repeatedly say he wasn’t. However, the thing that strikes me about what Gabriel says here is turning the hearts of the fathers to their children. A major cause of the societal ills in the world today is the failure of fatherhood. Of course, the devil has been pushing this with all he’s got, because he knows that all fatherhood comes from God, our heavenly Father, (Ephesians 3:15) and he hates God! The thing is, when fathers fail, their children have no anchor for right and wrong. This isn’t to slight mothers, but the biggest failures have come with fathers, because a man can have a good time and then go on, never knowing or even caring that he has brought a life into the world. That’s not the case with women! A mother is important in expressing discipline to her children, but she needs the authority of the father to back her up, or it’s much less likely to penetrate. Dennis Prager says he has asked many people who never used drugs why they didn’t, and the universal reply, with variations in wording, has been, “My Mom would have killed me!” Some women bemoan “the patriarchy,” not understanding that God our Father established fathers as the heads of their respective households, (Ephesians 5:23) and when that breaks down, everything else breaks down. Such women did not have fathers whose hearts were properly turned toward them, and as such, are deeply wounded. If we want society to heal, we’ve got to start with the family.

I was blessed to be raised in a very functional family. Most discipline was meted out through my mother, but I knew without question that my father was behind it. My father was a very busy man, and he had a moment of revelation, at the point when I was the only child left at home, that he hadn’t made his children as high a priority as he should have. Even so, I think he ranked pretty high on the scale of fathers! How well I did is a question to be answered by God and by my daughters, but both of my daughters are productive members of society, having done pretty well by their own children. As a pastor, I am a spiritual father to many, and I must never take that lightly. At the same time, I must never think that it’s all about me, but rather allow the wisdom and power of God to flow through me to my children as He desires, when my heart is properly turned toward them.

Father, thank You for this reminder. Help me indeed be the father and grandfather You desire and intend, drawing my descendants, both biological and spiritual, to You as their heavenly Father, for their blessing and Your glory. Thank You. Praise God!