Tools of The Trade
by Darrell W. Johns
June 19, 2022 · Atlanta West Pentecostal Church (Lithia Springs, GA)
Kind: sermon
Scripture: Exodus 31:1-5, Revelation 21, Psalms 74, Proverbs 22:6, Ephesians 6:4, Joshua 24:15, Isaiah 53:6, Proverbs 22:15, Proverbs 29:15, Isaiah 28:24, Hosea 10:12, Proverbs 27:17, Colossians 3:21, Isaiah 22:23-24, Deuteronomy 6:4, Acts 2:38

Source: https://acts238.life/repository/sermons/darrell-w-johns--tools-of-the-trade
Published by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon transcript on that page.
Free to copy and share with attribution.

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exodus 31 1. then the lord spoke to moses saying see i have called by name bezalil or bezalel the son of uri the son of her of the tribe of judah and i have filled him with the spirit of god and wisdom and understanding and knowledge and look how this was manifest or deployed in his life and in all manner of workmanship to design artistic works to work in gold and silver in bronze and cutting jewels for setting in carving wood and to work in all manner of workmanship what an anointing to do work with your head your heart and your hands and with that i'd like to speak to you on father's day on the subject tools of the trade god bless you please be seated i will add a note of appreciation to all of our children's ministries workers who are back in ships while we are in church they are to be thanked in our parking lot team everybody who misses church so we get to attend have you ever tried to do a job without the right tools you didn't have the tool in your toolbox and you're looking around and you just don't have the right tool have you ever tried to do a job and couldn't find the tool at all you knew you had it wasn't that you didn't own the tool you just couldn't find it have you ever tried to do a job with the tool other than the tool that was designed to do that job for example have you ever used a pair of pliers as a hammer or a screwdriver as a hammer more than once i don't know i have slot head and phillips head screwdrivers and star drives and all that and i don't know why every time i pull the screwdriver out it's the wrong one it's a slot head i needed a phillips they're supposed to be organized but they're not and i remember a time more than once i used my finger as a nail not on purpose whatever your line of work it always requires the right tools of the trade tools to maintain a home or a car are common denominator for all men and many women as well but it's father's day so i'm talking to mostly men today but even if you're not a good handyman i'm not the best handyman you need a lot of good tools and you need to know how to use them my dad was a carpenter by trade and he had a lot of good quality tools back in the day sears craftsman's tools were a lifetime warranty my dad always tried to buy sears craftsman tools and i've been to sears with him numerous times sometimes to exchange and my dad always had really good tools that's how he made a living so he made sure he had the best that he could afford my dad passed away in 2015 and he retired years before that he was 88 when he retired but my dad had so many tools two sheds of tools and my brothers my sister and i and our kids have enjoyed the tools that my dad left behind that were the tools of his trade and all kinds of other trades that he did he could kind of do everything where whether it was carpentry or some electrical or almost anything mechanical my dad was really good and that's why i'm really not because dad always did it and i tried to watch and learn and i've used my dad's tools pretty often that my dad handed down to me and my dad earned a living with his head and his hands but he couldn't have built much without adequate tools of the trade and if you get good tools and a great craftsman you've got a winning combination you need the right man to use the right tools if you're going to get the job done right the lord instructed moses the man of god and the leader of israel to build and completely furnish a portable church called the tabernacle in the wilderness moses was a leader who was raised in a palace in egypt and then he worked for 40 years as a shepherd he was not a craftsman moses really wasn't much of a speaker either but he certainly was not a craftsman he was a man of god he talked to god face to face as a man talks to his friend but the lord gave him this man named bezalil to be an overseer and a chiefs chief craftsman to construct the tabernacle in the wilderness all of the furnishings and the objects of worship it's an amazing thing that the lord filled bezilio with the spirit of wisdom now we talk a lot about spiritual gifts in the church sometimes we interpret that as the ability to sing or play an instrument or speak but i thank god that not everybody wants that gift or has that gift the same spirit of god that moved on moses moved on bez allele and gave him supernatural wisdom to be able to know how to work with tools to build a place that god could fill with his glory god said i filled him with the spirit of god wisdom understanding knowledge and all manner of workmanship he could do all kinds of things he was a multifaceted gifted man an artesian a worker and then additionally the lord gave him another man exodus 31-5 he gave him a holy ab and the bible said in the hearts of other wise-hearted men that god put this kind of wisdom to build and to know how to use tools i've learned that when god calls you to do something for him in his kingdom it is always bigger than you and it doesn't just involve you but if god calls you he will give you people with gifts you don't have to accomplish the work of god and if you can be selfless and get over your ego you can evolve other people to build bigger and better than you could ever do on your own god will give people in areas that you have no gifting when god made man males he gave them the gifting the equipment emotionally mentally and physically to be a father there's a lot in the news right now about men who compete as women and unfortunately for the women who compete those men are physiologically stronger they're they're bigger they've got bigger bones and stronger muscles and typically they win not because men are better but god equipped men for a role in life just as he did women amen amen now fathering tools though don't always come naturally they come naturally if you had a good godly father who is a good fatherly role model but just like acquiring wisdom it doesn't lay on the surface as proverbs says you've got to mine it you've got to dig for it you've got to search for it it's hidden golden and treasure and i believe that fathering is like that that you have to apply yourself observe good fathers educate yourself and develop yourself to be a godly good father amen if you're a man god can help you have the skills of fathering if you are a father or will become a father i've talked about my dad many times he's not the star of my sermon today but he could be but i want to just remind you that my dad did not have a godly father my paternal grandfather was a deadbeat dad he left their family he was a gambler he was immoral he walked out of my dad's life my dad turned to sports which was a good thing he went into the navy and when he got out he was invited to a pentecostal church where he received the gift of the holy ghost was baptized in the name of the lord jesus christ and in the church my dad found godly mentors who taught him how to be a father the church gave me a dad that was godly that was stable when my dad passed away the day before my dad and mom had been married 66 years they he died the day after their 66th anniversary many of you have a story like that you may not have a legacy of six and seven generations but you had a god who brought a dad out of darkness and he made him a godly father like he did my dad [Applause] my siblings and i are blessed beyond measure because the church gave us a godly father and last night my brothers and i exchanged a few text messages about our dad and grandfather and how influential both of them were in our lives and how blessed we are because of them there is a pressing urgent need in our culture for men to step up and to be good and godly fathers brother jury quoted some statistics i want to share some of them and and maybe a few others 18 and a half million children grow up in homes without a father which is cause the united states to become the world's leader in fatherlessness if you can fathom that 80 percent single-parent homes are led by moms and i commend the single parents in our church and especially the single parent moms who have continued to be godly and faithful and strong in spite of a father who was deadbeat and walked out of your kids lives so that means 25 of young people grow up without a father in the home it's a staggering statistic that is destroying the nuclear family that is unraveling the fabric of our culture in every place it happens amen so if you raise without a dad five times more likely to live in poverty than a two-parent home children without fathers in the home nine times more likely to drop out of school 90 percent of all homeless children run away or homeless children are runaways or they come from those kinds of homes 85 percent with behavioral disorders and and all of that and i want to say to every young man who is unmarried today that is it is one thing to father a child you may be biologically able to father a child but that does not make you a father in reality what makes you a father is being present and engaged in that child's life amen that's what makes a father a real dad i recognize that some men did not know how to be a good father they had no role model their dad was absent perhaps abusive but i've learned to not make excuses but to make decisions to look around i found men that did some things better than my dad and i've tried to model my life after them as well as my amazing father grandfather uncles pastors who were mentors in my life i'm sincerely sorry for people who were raised in families where they did not have a godly father and i pray that the lord would help you forgive them and not be bitter against him i hope that you don't hate men to women to daughters you know and and sons as well who did not have a father and i hope god would help you not have an unhealthy desire for a relationship with a man that leads to immorality or perversion whether you're a girl or a boy today my goal is to encourage to help to strengthen not to chastise or try to belittle anyone for all of us are doing our best to be our best in every role we feel in life there's not a deadbeat person in this room you want to be your best you don't want to be that kind of person who walks off the set and is the cause of all of the the ills that i've just spoken of so i want to share some tools for fathering when god made men as i mentioned he gave you the basic tools the masculine nature your mind your will your emotions your physique he made you to be a godly father now there are a lot of neat tools mentioned in the bible this was an interesting study for me something that i've not really done before to try to find out every tool that was ever mentioned in the bible how it was used why it was used and to learn a few things about them and i take a little liberty today today from jesus who like to use examples word pictures metaphors to try to demonstrate a concept he wanted to communicate he talked about himself as being the bread of life the light of the world a good shepherd and the true vine he gave us those metaphors of his own self he spoke of the kingdom of god as seed planted in different kinds of soil as a tiny mustard seed as yeast and dough as a net that pulls in all types of fish so today i want to use some tools and just make some practical applications with scriptural principles to them the first tool i want to talk about is what the bible calls a reed or a measuring line this is a good old new fashioned metal yardstick in the bible reeds are mentioned a lot they had multiple uses but are mentioned 19 times in the bible 19 times as a measuring device ezekiel revelation talks about measuring lines a lot i was fascinated to go back and read in revelation 21 when an angel came to john zebedee john the revelator and he had a golden measuring stick a golden reed in his hand and he used that reed to measure the holy city now a typical measuring line was probably 18 inches long a cubit some people say a cubic have been could have been 21 inches but we'll go with 18 is kind of a standard cubit in the bible and this angel measured the holy city the new jerusalem it was 1400 miles long wide and tall now i was hoping he had a a laser measuring rod because if he laid down an 18-inch measuring line until he got to 1400 miles john was in a really long vision fourteen hundred miles in a cube and walls 216 feet maybe thick in the bible a read was the very best measuring tape that they had and i want to talk about the read as a means to standardize to standardize a read set a standard for length that did not deviate it was a it was not a subjective unit of measure in other words it wasn't one reed that was 14 inches and 118 by our measures it was always the same it was a cubit it was what they used to measure whatever they needed to calculate it wasn't the kind of thing where god said when they were you were going to measure to each his own just do it however you want it doesn't really matter just use your own subjective standard of measure for us a yard is always 36 inches a meter is always a hundred centimeters or a thousand millimeters or in imperial measurements 39.37 inches it is always the same on planet earth and our cultural structure in the united states and the western world is crumbling because it is being built by subjective man-made measures in other words what has happened is our culture has abandoned the word of god that sets a standard for morality for life amen for salvation and it never changes it is forever settled in heaven and you can never you can never build a sound structure without consistent standards as a side note i was looking at psalm 74 that describes past generations as building and the current generation as tearing down what was built i intend to study psalm 74 more but whether you're building a dog house or your house or a skyscraper it pays to not just throw it together you don't use and match an eight foot two by four with a 10 or a 12. if you're building walls you use the same length of board every time you don't just say it doesn't matter if the walls are not or excuse me the corners are not square and the walls are not plumb if you're going to be a build a house that will stand you want to make sure you have a standard of measure and you build to the standard every time there's a building code for life amen it is called the bible and we need to build by the bible and understand that god established a standard that does not deviate nor should it ever [Applause] reads measuring devices standardized proverbs 22 6 here's a standard of measurement train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it here's the standard ephesians six and four fathers do not provoke your children to anger by the way you treat them this is the new living translation i i'm reading this translation on purpose rather bring them up with the discipline and instruction that comes from the lord we do not leave the eternal destiny of our children to chance amen as fathers we don't say anything's go anything goes amen we don't say just use any length board just come in anytime you want from being out at night hang out with anything anybody you want watch anything you want to watch we don't do that as fathers nor do we do that but our mother's in our church but we say we have a goal we have a standard that dictates every value every relationship every behavior and our goal is not to dumb down the standard it's to live up to what god ordained in his word amen so when it comes to involvement at school or extracurricular activities in our dress in our alliance with other people we always make sure that we have the measuring line of god's word to guide us and we make sure that our conduct measures to this line and not some subject subjective standard and every father should stand like joshua and say as for me and my house we will serve the lord father should say follow me as i follow christ because of the subjective standards of our world we're facing fundamental battles in our culture they go far beyond external uh dress codes they go to the internal nature that's why the external dress guards the internal nature of male and female amen there's a generational shift of those who struggle with gender identity not because of biology but because of the conditioning of our culture and i don't have time to get into that today but the increase is not because of biology it's because a different message that does not match the standard of god's word has been taught in schools in media and everywhere you turn but let's get back and let's raise our kids according to the standard of god's word reeds are measuring sticks that standardize amen next tool not all tools are created equal in time allotted in the sermon axes they cut and they shape amen they cut down trees they shape if you've ever seen anyone build with a hatchet or an axe kind of chop away it was just a stump and turn it into a piece of artwork that's because we understand the power in the bible of an axe axe heads were made of iron but they actually could float if you are a man of god and work a miracle but axe heads typically did not float axes are tools and not toys although camden was headed for my acts after the first service amen now i know that your children are perfect but ours were and are not and we learned that there are some things about them that needed to be kind of chopped away some rough edges some rebellious nature some independent thinking you say oh not me well i'll just quote a verse for you all we have gone astray we have turned everyone to his own way amen that's the essence of sin is self-will so you've got to have a tool amen it's called discipline that shapes the character and the behavior of your kids now contrary to how this sermon may be abused i am really not telling you that you should do using acts to discipline your children anyone who says that is lying but the bible says that foolishness is bound in the heart of a child doesn't say wisdom and the rod of correction will drive it far from him a child left to himself will cause his mother shane and his father that's why we give the rod and reproof according to proverbs 29 so our children do not bring shame on us we don't let our children choose what they eat hopefully we don't let them choose their friends when they're young we guide them and especially when they're really young we mandate what they do because we're teaching them to obey in the teenage years we're guiding them to learn how to make wise decisions on their own our goal is different but early in life we need something that chops away and shapes the moral character of our children and in the bible this tool and acts was used to chop and to shape whatever was being worked with so here's what i want you to understand permissive parents raise problem children i will say that again permissive parents raise problem children if we don't shape our children with the acts of correction one day they could become spiritually worthless john the baptist spoke about the acts being laid to the root of the tree and every tree that does not bring forth good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire john the baptist came preaching repentance turning from sin to god but when national israel refused to repent john said they have reached a place where they are spiritually incorrigible there is nothing we can do but just eliminate them and cut them down so what i'm telling you today is if you do not start early and often and shape your children there may come a day when their life is spiritually worthless and they are cut down and thrown into the fire of god's eternal judgment so i am warning you i'm encouraging you i'm challenging you to shape the character and behavior of your children a little pruning from the ax may save a lot of cutting from the lord the next tool i want to talk about is a plow it's used often in the bible it's used to break up hard packed ground and prepare the soil for planting plows are necessary because the ground can be resistant to growth isaiah 28 i love this passage says does the plowman plow all day to sow got thee open and break the clods of his ground this plow was made to turn up the soil there's numerous ways that you could apply what the plow does the bible tells us to break up our fallow ground it's time to seek the lord but in speaking of parenting i want to just relate plowing to cultivating i want you to see your child as a field that is uncultivated there's nothing there but dirt maybe weeds something growing there that you don't really want but by god's grace you come along with godly instruction and correction and good habits and you begin to cultivate in your child what could become of their future you see what they could become and you begin to plow into their life correction and godliness and instruction you teach them what is right and then you talk about it all the time but if you do that you have to see the potential harvest of what your children can become you look at a field and you see a crop you see something worth spending time with and you spend time in that field and you cultivate day by day amen our children are grown we have grandkids that means we get to love them and send them home but i'm reminded again being around our kids how much time parenting takes you don't have a lot of discretionary time that's because you're cultivating something in the next generation that will pay off big if you will stay with it and cultivate amen cultivating is not a one day thing it's not just go to church on sunday although that's very important cultivate is a continual process of loving your children and being with your children spending time with them and investing in them to help them be their very best for the glory of god seats are not always all the same isaiah talks about this and so they have to be cultivated by using different methods you know the nature of your child some need more firmness some need more softness some need understanding we adapt our approach to our children according to their nature so we can get the best harvest out of their lives good fathers cultivate the potential of their children they study the nature of their children determining the best approaches i said they introduced the seeds of greatness to get the very best out of their kids plows in the bible and today they cultivate the soil so that a healthy good crop can grow not just a weed farm but something that is good i shouldn't say weed in 2022. sorry the gateway drug files now they're solves in the bible a lot of really cool tools but i selected these on purpose thinking through now they could be applied files a file is not an act if i want to really cut deep i'm going to swing an axe left handed but if i want to just kind of put an edge on a sharper object i want to make a sharp object sharper then i'm going to use a file the files were used often in the bible they're mentioned in the bible and they're a pretty interesting tool proverbs 27 17 says iron sharpeneth iron so a man the countenance of his friend the interaction of friends helps sharpen us and make us better it's a pretty cool verse about friendship but the application of this is that the purpose of a file is not to grind a blade down to nothing but it is to just put a little edge to make it more effective at what it does files sharpen other tools so that those tools can be more effective in cutting a file makes other tools better now some files like this one are pretty coarse and some are a little bit more fine and you may need to use both in trying to sharpen your children like the grit on sandpaper some is fine some is coarse and filing some files are designed to be coarse and some are fine but this art of filing is to understand how you can put a sharper edge on your children so that they have every advantage in life amen if you sharpen the blade you can do the work quicker if you're cutting down a tree or whatever you're doing in life wise fathers do not grind on their children until there's nothing left of them until they're hopelessly discouraged wise fathers use relational finesse to bring out the best in their children you know sometimes in our culture we say i'm honing my skills right that's a that's a figure of speech that i'm trying to get better at what i do whatever that might be and that's the idea of trying to to file to hone to perfect your children so that when you release them in life to do the work that god has called them to do there is sharp mentally emotionally spiritually and with their giftings that they can possibly be we want to maximize their potential that god has put inside of them so they can be their very best so file away but file carefully to help be the best that they can be now i've already talked about ephesians 6 and 4 where the apostle paul said to provoke not your children but i want you to see colossians 3 21 a kindred verse fathers provoke not your children to anger lest they be discouraged to not provoke means to not embitter them to not exasperate them to not aggravate them the kids i see some boys looking at me right now they're going man i'm going to memorize this line from pastor john's right now and i'm going to use it on my parents when we get home today don't pile me down to nothing don't beat the daylights out of me so you knock the wind out of me amen the harshness of some parenting causes kids paul said to the colossians lest they be discouraged i kind of see it as a punch to the solar plexus that knocks the wind out of your kids where one translation says they lose heart in asp in several translations use that phrase they do not lose heart i've told you i'm a former youth pastor i'm a youth pastor in an older body they made me become a pastor you can't be a youth pastor anymore you're too old something like that but i have seen many many kids and because of the way they were parented it's like somebody knocked the wind out of them they didn't have motivation because instead of love balance with discipline it was discipline with no balance it was correction without encouragement so this file today i'm encouraging you to use the file to sharpen your kids and to make them the best they can be for the glory of god files sharpen [Applause] hammers i have several of my dad's hammers i'm pretty sure this is one of his mine would never look this old and used hammers secure now they're common tools in the bible they can beat metal into shapes big hammers sledgehammers can break rocks the bible talks about the word of god like a hammer that breaks the rock but hammers can also drive nails and pegs to secure them into a wall that's the way i want to imagine the work of a hammer today that a hammer works to secure or to fasten isaiah 22 23 speaking of eliakim isaiah the lord said and i will fasten him as a nail in a sure place and he shall be a glorious throne to his father's house the lord said i'm going to take eliacham and i'm going to fasten him to a wall so that you can hang the hopes of a generation on him it says in the next verse they shall hang upon him all the glory of his father's house he's going to be so strong and secure that you can trust him to not budge and not move so today i want to encourage every father that above every other thing that you work to secure the salvation of your children that you fasten them to the lordship of jesus christ that ultimately with everything else you do your number one goal is to drive truth deep into their hearts to fasten them to the walls of the church so they never fall out fasten their faith secure their salvation salvation is not optional it's not like well are you going to be a plumber or a carpenter you're going to be an orthodontist or pharmacist you know you could be either one while things being equal you can still be saved but when it comes to salvation there are no acceptable options there's no alternatives if you're saved other things matter but if you're not saved nothing else matters that's why the number one job of a father and a mother is to make sure you're fastened the hearts of your kids to the lord jesus christ with kindness and love fathers need to drive home the importance of salvation to their children a hammer's job is to secure and similarly fathers should do everything in their power whether you're building walls or setting floor joists or ceilings whether you're building a doghouse as i said early or your house or the lord's house you've got to have a nail and a short place that doesn't vibrate loose that is strong enough to hold so i encourage you to secure the salvation of your family and i hope you see that i'm trying to pound this thought home today i've worked with my dad just a little bit i wish it could have been more he usually left the house i went to school he went to work he worked for someone else but i built a few things with my dad a deck a field to finish the basement i worked with my dad when we worked on my grandparents home i've seen him start a nail and then with like pam set that nail he was so strong in what he did and i was thinking about that imagery about this that we need to make sure we set this nail deep it's not a little tap here and a tap here this is eternity this is salvation this is heaven or hell and it's got to be all or it is nothing drive truth deep into the hearts of your children drive your children to church tell them bible stories teach them the plan of salvation from the earliest ages we had a pattern the thing that we did and our boys started with ryan ryan how many gods are there the right answer was one what's his name jesus what can he do anything we want our boys to know wanted our boys to know that there is one god that his name is jesus and that he can do anything it doesn't matter what happens in your life what you confront in your life there's a god in heaven there's only one his name is jesus you can call on his name and he can do anything there's nothing too hard for him [Applause] i wanted a quote over our boys and over every grandchild the first thing i said to them when i held him in my arms hear o israel the lord our god is one lord then peter said unto them repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of jesus christ for the remission of sins and you shall receive the gift of the holy ghost every child every grandchild i wanted them to understand the essentiality of salvation the essentiality of repentance of baptism of receiving the gift of the holy ghost i wanted to pound it home in their lives try to do my best as a father to secure their salvation and fasten them to a relationship with god i'm not saying that to say that i've been perfect or we've done everything right but that we understand the value of a soul that will live forever somewhere so father's day i encourage you to make sure your family knows what really matters in life that we would secure their salvation so what have i said i've said that reeds they standardize right ax is cut in shape plows cultivate files sharpen and hammers secure building godly children is the reason that god gave fathers the tools of the trade and in the same way that god gave bezalil and a holy ab the giftings to construct the tabernacle in the wilderness god gave every father here the raw ingredients to build and develop the tools of the trade of fathering and if you've got deficits in your life because you didn't have a father or your father took you in the wrong direction instead of building you destroyed you tried to destroy you whether purposely or unwittingly today is a brand new day you don't have to be the product of your environment however it has shaped you to this day jesus christ can remake you and reshape you to be a man of integrity a man that knows how to use the tools of the trade of fathering