Today is Father’s Day, so I want to bring a message on fatherhood. The Bible contains a few examples of good fathers, but not many. In fact, many of the fathers we find in the Bible do not provide a good example for us to follow.

We would hope that a character in the Bible who has the word “father” in his name would be a good father, and there is a person like that. Of course, I’m talking about Abraham. Today, we’re going to look at one particular verse about Abraham’s quality as a father.

In Gen 17.5, God changed Abram’s name to Abraham. “Abram” means, “exalted father.” “Abraham” means, “father of a multitude.” Remember that Abraham had only two sons, Ishmael and Isaac. But Abraham did indeed become the father of a multitude, because the entire Hebrew nation comes from him. Christians consider themselves to be sons of Abraham by faith. So Abraham certain was a father of a multitude. Several billion people today trace their physical and/or spiritual ancestry or heritage back to Abraham.

Let’s read Gen 18.19. In the middle of this story about God destroying Sodom and Gomorrah, we find an interesting comment that God makes about Abraham. All Christian fathers should hope to be described in this same way.

We can learn several important truths about godly fathers from this text.