BE A MAN MY SON!

By

Shelby G. Floyd

Today is the Lord’s Day. Our Heavenly Father has appointed this day to honor His Son, Jesus Christ. You have come for that purpose and we have honored Him today in our singing, in the Lord’s Supper to remember His death, burial and resurrection until He comes again, in the prayers, the contributions that we have made to advance the kingdom of God and in the meditations and study of His divine word. But today is also Father’s Day, a day that has been set-aside by man to honor our earthly fathers. It’s right and proper to do that. Paul said to the Ephesians, “Honor your father and your mother.” We honored our mothers a few weeks ago and the fathers ought not to be left out. So today we have chosen a topic that I hope and I believe will pay tribute to not only our Heavenly Father, but to all of you who are fathers.

THE STORY OF RUDYARD KIPLING

There are a few poets that I really enjoy reading. Recently I read about a story of a poet that I really like. I want to tell you about him today. His name was Rudyard Kipling. He was born in 1865 in Bombay, India. Before he was six his parents shipped him back to England along with his sister, Trix. They were put up in a boarding house. The woman who was over the boarding house treated him awful. She beat him, she berated him and sometimes she would lock him up in a cold, damp cellar for hours. But young Rudyard Kipling decided that he was going to will himself to be happy in spite of all the dreary circumstances in which he found himself. Later in his life he said that he decided then that that experience had drained him of all personal hate toward anybody. As he grew up and became a man he started writing stories for children. Like most authors who have made it good, he did not always have it so. The critics put him down and said that his works were not any good, but they continued to grow in popularity and acclaim. As he grew older he was one of the outstanding writers of England. Everybody was seeking his works. Children were born into his family. First a daughter, then another daughter and finally he prayed for a son and God gave him a son. He named him John. The two younger children were Josephine and Elsie. Then in the late 1800’s he took the children on a trip to the United States. While he was here he and his oldest child Josephine came down with pneumonia. Rudyard Kipling, after a few days, came out of the pneumonia, but his oldest daughter died of pneumonia. He couldn’t bear to hear her name mentioned or look at pictures of her. Finally he said to himself, “I cannot go on like this. I must pick myself up for the sake of my daughter and my son that remain.”

Many, many years went by and one day he received a box in the mail. It was from France. Inside the box there was a French translation of his novel, Kim, and there was a bullet hole in that manuscript up to the last twenty pages of that novel. Also there was the medal for bravery of war given by France to her soldiers attached to that manuscript and a soldier sent a letter along stating that had it not been for that manuscript that he was carrying in his pocket written by Rudyard Kipling he would have died. It stopped the bullet and he wanted Rudyard Kipling to have that French translation copy of his novel along with the Medal of Honor that he had received for bravery in war because it had saved his life. Kipling thought that was the greatest honor that he had ever received. He was a Nobel Prize winner and all of that, but he cherished that honor more than them all because of what the man had given to him for saving his life. But then he got to thinking that he wished he could have saved another life and that was the life of his son, John. As the boy was growing up Rudyard noticed that he had a lot of spunk. He had a good sense of humor. He had a good attitude. When he would win at sports, he never bragged about it. When he would lose a game, he didn’t whine and cry. When he took a job and failed, he accepted responsibility. And Rudyard Kipling admired those qualities in his son so much. One day he was thinking about that and he sat down and he wrote a poem. “My son, you’ll be a man if you continue in these qualities that I admire in great men and in which you have already begun so much.” The poem he wrote is a great verse and maybe some of you in school have memorized it. Those of you that have taught have probably read it before your class. It goes like this:

If—

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you;

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting, too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good nor talk too wise,

If you can dream—and not make dreams your master;

If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim,

If you can meet Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two imposters just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distant run,

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

Psychologists and psychiatrists tell us that the concept that children have of their Heavenly Father mirrors their concept of their earthly father. Today it is no wonder that so many children do not have a true concept of the Heavenly Father. If a son or a daughter grows up in a home where the father beats their mother or berates their mother or divorces and puts away their mother, how can a son or a daughter have a proper concept of a Heavenly Father, because their concept of their earthly father gives them their concept in childhood of the Heavenly Father? If a son or a daughter has a father who gambles away all of his earnings or goes out and spends a lot of what he makes buying booze and drinks and brawls and lives a riotous life, how can that son or daughter have a proper concept of the Heavenly Father? How can that son grow up to be a man one day when he does not have the right father image? Fathers, you have a great responsibility weighing upon your shoulders. I don’t think the fathers in America have done as good a job as the mothers. Counselors, people that deal with family problems today tell us that the big problem is so many children are being raised today without a father in the family. When the home breaks up or when children are born without love and marriage, they have no father image. And did you know that over ninety percent of the violent crimes being committed today are by young teenage boys and men. Boys and men today are committing most of the violent crimes. Why is that? It is because they do not have the right kind of fathers and the right kind of father image. Therefore, they do not have the proper image of a Heavenly Father or the God in Heaven.

QUALITIES OF GOOD FATHERS

The way then to correct the major problems in our country is for fathers to start studying the Bible to find out the concept of how a father ought to be. The best way to do that is to study the traits, attitudes, actions and the qualities of our Heavenly Father. Let me give you just a few of them.

A Good Father Listens To His Children

Some fathers don’t take the time to listen to anything that their sons or their daughters have to say to them. That’s not the trait of a good father. A good father listens patiently to his children when they want to talk to him. And did you know that God is like that? That’s the reason He is a good Heavenly Father. Peter says in quoting David, “The eyes of the Lord are over the righteous and His ears are open unto their prayers” (1 Peter 3:12). God listens to His children when they want to talk to Him and so should you fathers. Don’t get so busy that you haven’t got the time to sit down and listen to your children. I remember the picture of John F. Kennedy. Personally, I don’t have a very good estimate of John Kennedy in a lot of ways, but I did admire him, because even though he was President, he took time out to play with his children and listen to his children and do things with his children. That’s a good quality, even though he may have had other qualities that were not good, he had that good quality of taking time to listen and be with his children.

Good Fathers Are Loving With Their Children

Some fathers today are cold. They are not affectionate. They are distant. Fathers need to take the time to put their arms around their wife and let the children see that they love their mother, to kiss them, to show affection, because that son and that daughter’s idea of love and marriage and sex is first going to be learned from the relationship of their father and their mother. If they see a father that is cold, distant, shows no affection either to their mother or to them, it is going to be hard for them one of these days to be affectionate and loving when they grow up and become adults and marry themselves, because, again, our idea of love and marriage mirrors the concept that we have of love and marriage that we see on the part of our parents and if it is a bad one, it is hard to overcome that concept. But did you know God our Heavenly Father is not cold and distant? “He shall feed His flock like a shepherd. He shall gather the lambs with His arms and array them and carry them in His bosom and shall gently lead them that are with young.” So the idea there is that God loves and shows affection to His children.

Good Fathers Talk To Their Children

Some fathers do not talk things over with their children. I see parents today that don’t spend any time with their children and what they do is to substitute and try to buy them everything under the sun. That’s part of the problem today. Parents are giving them material things as a substitute for talking with them, listening to them, training and teaching them the will of God. God talks to his children: “I will instruct and council you and watch over you” (Psalms 32:8). So God talks to us. The Bible is His message in which He talks to us and tells us about Himself and about us. The Bible not only reveals God to man, but it reveals man to himself! It’s the best book on earth for self-revelation and self-knowledge.

Good Fathers Discipline Their Children

Some fathers do not correct or discipline their children. A child has an emotional need to be corrected and disciplined. All children when they go over the boundary line want a father that will step in and say you can go so far, you can’t go any farther and when you go farther than that, you’re going to receive pain and punishment. But a lot of children are growing up without any correction, without any discipline, without any chastisement and their emotional need of discipline is not being met and it is going to create problems in their adult life. God is not like that. In Hebrews 12:5-6, the writer says,

“My son, do not despise the chastening of the Lord,
Nor be discouraged when you are rebuked by Him;
For whom the Lord loves He chastens,
And scourges every son whom He receives.”

NKJV

Yes, God loves us and His discipline grows out of a heart of love. Now that’s the concept that we ought to have of God.

We have a heavenly Father that listens to his children; a heavenly Father that is affectionate and loving and not cold and distant; a Father that talks to us and reveals his will, his character, his promises and his threatening; and a Father that corrects and disciplines us when we go astray. Those are the very same concepts that you fathers ought to have in your fatherhood and in the rearing, the discipline, the training of your children. Remember, our children’s concept of God mirrors the concept of their earthly fathers.

RUDYARD KIPLING AS A FATHER

Now, let me get back to the story of Rudyard Kipling. In the early 1900’s, he started warning the British that there was going to be a war with Germany. They laughed at him; they criticized him as an imperialist, a jingoist. They criticized him; they mocked him, but he was not the kind of person that got lifted up when people applauded him and he was not the kind of person that got discouraged when people put him down. You have to learn to be that way in life. Don’t be too elated when people compliment you. Don’t be too sad and dejected when people criticize you. Hold to your principles. Hold to the truth. Hold to what is right. He held his ground and he was proved right. War with Germany broke out. They started calling for the young men to go and fight. Rudyard Kipling himself started traveling to France and other countries urging them to get involved in the war effort because it was a fight for freedom, for civilization, for what was right. His own son, John, that he had prayed for, the one that he wrote the poem about, You’ll Be A Man My Son, If… was seventeen years old. He had some physical defects. His eyesight was not too good, so he could not get in as an officer. Finally, Rudyard Kipling worked and he got him in as an officer in a detachment from Ireland. He waved goodbye as he went off to war. It wasn’t too long until Rudyard Kipling received word that his son had been killed at the Battle of Lose. Rudyard Kipling started trying to travel and find out what had happened. He went to this detachment and that detachment. Nobody knew anything about it. Years went by and finally he found a person that had seen his son die in battle, but they were never able to find the body. So he joined a group that honored the war dead and he was the one that came up with that phrase, “His name lives eternally known only unto God”—the place of the burial of the Unknown Soldier. He spent his life in that behalf. When he would be lying in bed at night awake, he was wondering, “I gave up the greatest sacrifice that I could, my only son, and for what purpose—why did he die? Why did I have to give him up?” And then one day he got a call from that man who had sent him that manuscript, the one that had the bullet hole in it that had saved his life and the Medal of Honor for bravery in war. They had kept in contact through the years and he wrote Rudyard Kipling to let him know that his wife had just had a son and he asked Rudyard Kipling if he would be the godfather. And Rudyard Kipling said, “Yes, I am honored that you would ask me to be the godfather. But you must take this manuscript and Medal of Honor back for your son.” And then it hit him just like that. “Why did my son die? Why did I have to give up this great sacrifice?” It came to him like a light. He died for the unborn. He died for this Frenchman’s son that he might live in freedom and he wrote back to this hero of France, “Yes, I will be a godfather to your son, but you must name him in honor of my son, John. He must be given the French parallel of John, Jean.” And so, that’s the story of the son of the great poet, Rudyard Kipling.

WHY DID GOD THE FATHER SACRIFICE HIS SON?

I read that story and thought about it. I thought about our Heavenly Father that had a unique only begotten son, Jesus Christ. I wonder after Jesus died upon the cross if the Father ever said within Himself, “Why did I have to give up such a perfect gift? Why did I have to let my son die on the cross?” And then it came to God, because it was part of His eternal plan of redemption. “My son, Jesus Christ, died for the unborn, for little children that are not yet born into our world. He died for people like the bad Samaritan woman who said, “I have no husband,” and Jesus said, “You spoke truly, because you’ve had five husbands and the man you now have is not your husband.” She was living in open adultery. He died for her and for all the other sinners. That’s the reason God let Jesus die.

You will be a man, my son, if—if we’ll be the right kind of fathers and we will raise our children up in the way they should go, our sons and our daughters will be the kind of sons and daughters that God wants them to be. And the father will be a blessed man:

Psalms 1:1-6

Blessed is the man
Who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly,
Nor stands in the path of sinners,
Nor sits in the seat of the scornful;
But his delight is in the law of the Lord,
And in His law he meditates day and night.
He shall be like a tree
Planted by the rivers of water,
That brings forth its fruit in its season,
Whose leaf also shall not wither;
And whatever he does shall prosper. The ungodly are not so,
But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.
Therefore the ungodly shall not stand in the judgment,
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous.

For the Lord knows the way of the righteous,
But the way of the ungodly shall perish.

NKJV

You’ll be a man, my son, if... That’s a big word—if. You’ll be a man my son, if you have God as your Father. God is our Heavenly Father and He wants us to be his spiritual children. He sent Jesus, His son, to die for you. Have you made Him your Lord and your Master? If you haven’t, we encourage you to come forward in penitence and make the good confession of Jesus Christ and obey the gospel in baptism for the forgiveness of sin. Respond while together we stand and sing.*

*Shelby G. Floyd delivered this sermon July 20, 1993 at the South Central Church of Christ, 265 E. Southport Road, Indianapolis, Indiana. Copyright © 2001, 2002, 2012 Shelby G. Floyd All Rights Reserved

Shelby G. Floyd