This morning, I want to gather my thoughts up under the following sermon title, "Comfort for Manoah's Kin." And of course, we have just discovered that Manoah was the father of Samson, and so it will be helpful as the message unfolds to keep that in mind. Billy Sunday was to his generation what Billy Graham has been to our own. Sunday's ministry unfolded for some 39 years. He was prominent at the turn of the century and through the 1920s; interestingly enough, as a result of his national ministry he presented the gospel of Jesus Christ to more than 100 million Americans. The following is a statistical fact: Because of this man's incomparable faithfulness, he is actually credited to leading one million Americans into a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. This, of course, was before there was radio, or at least a radio that would go from coast to coast, and television and the kinds of media that we have available in our day. Sunday was a tremendous and powerful soul winner, and he was something of a prophet. He stood against the rampant problem of alcoholism in his day and encouraged the whole temperance movement. He was certainly a mighty man of God; however, I want to go backstage of his life for just a moment and raise an important question: What about his family, his children?
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At the height of his ministry, his oldest daughter was away at college, but their three sons hit adolescence while mom and dad were laboring in the fields that were rich with harvest, and his sons had barely hit the teen years when the trouble began: shoplifting, cheating in school, propensity to be bullies, they terrorized many a young girl, they refused to do homework, they were expelled time and again from school. When they arrived at young adulthood, they were constantly in debt, became flagrantly promiscuous, and later had disastrous marriages. In fact, two of their ex-wives even blackmailed the Sundays by threatening to go public with the embarrassing details of the kinds of boys these national soul-winners had raised, something that, in the culture of that day, most certainly would have destroyed their ministry. Tragically, in 1933, the oldest son committed suicide. After his son's death, Billy pondered his own life in a busy moment with his son, Nell, and what I am about to share with you comes from the pen of Lisle Dorset, who has written a remarkable biography on Billy Sunday titled Billy Sunday and the Redemption of Urban America. This is what he writes: "Billy stood gazing out the window of their Winona Lake home watching the autumn leaves fall and looking wistfully towards the lake. He turned to her with tear-filled eyes and said, `Ma, where did I go wrong. I thought we heard God's call to evangelism, but look at our boys. Where did I go wrong?"'
Many a Christian parent has asked that very same question. Now, of the few biographies I have read about Mr. Sunday, none of them, or no one has ever concluded, at least in print, what I am about to say. So this may not be true of Sunday, but it does represent a mentality that some Christians fall to, namely, listen to this, "If I really sacrifice myself to God, then he will bless me with a happy family, and the more I sacrifice, the more insurance I will build up against disaster, especially with respect to my children." I have actually heard that preached. In other words, if you really dedicate yourself to God, and it may be all consuming and require all of your heart, mind, and soul, everything that you have to offer, so that you really cannot give yourself to your children as you would like to, you can, nevertheless, entrust your kids to the Lord. But think about that for just a moment. Do we really think that religiosity can buy God's protection? I mean, when you step back and ponder that thought for a moment, it is really convoluted logic, isn't it? I mean, do we really think that we can buy God's protection through religiosity? I mean, it was not that Sunday was a bad parent; he just wasn't a parent at all. He was literally gone eight, 10 months a year, and when he was home, he was all used up; he was just not there emotionally, and his wife managed his ministry. She was as deeply involved as he was. So, his kids did not get what they needed. In fact, they really didn't get anything. It is tragic. It can happen. Over the course of my ministry, I have seen it time and again — young and promising pastors, energetic and faithful, who had gained many in ecclesiastical words of affirmation and praise, only to lose their children. Nothing, nothing for this pastor has ever been more frightening.
