Bad Oversight and Parental Neglect

Praise God, another Lord's Day to gather here together. Go ahead and open in God's Word to Proverbs 29. We're going to look at a verse there, and then we're going to go to 1 Samuel.

Proverbs 29. You know, Tim just a few weeks back preached on asking God for wisdom, and one place we sure have a lot of wisdom. Not as much as we'd like, not dealing with as many situations as we would like, but it's the book of Proverbs, right? You got all manner of wisdom here that we want to consider.

Proverbs 29.15 The rod and reproof give wisdom, but a child left to himself brings shame to his mother. My sermon this morning, I know I've done some Mother's Day sermons, I keep getting to 10 a.m. on Mother's Day for the last few years. So I think there could be something here for mothers, and this is how you could look at this message that I'm about to bring.

You could view it as a Mother's Day present to the mother, in that I'm wanting to challenge your husband, I realize there's mothers here who don't have a husband, but challenge your husband to not let your children get their own way. Because when they do, and the parent gives away their authority, they've lost the ability to take charge, and what does the text say? It leads to the mother experiencing. A child left to himself brings shame to his mother.

No mother wants to feel shame, right? Embarrassment. No mother wants that. My Mother's Day present, if received and applied correctly, is that your husband will all the more take initiative and feel the weight of his responsibility as a father, and hopefully that will lead you to rejoice.

And that's actually what he goes on, if you look at verse 17, you have a positive statement. Discipline your son, he will give you rest. He will give delight to your heart.

Oh, isn't that what we all want as a parent? We want delight in the heart. And while we're in the passage, another verse here is going to matter. If you look at verse 19, By mere words, a servant is not disciplined.

For though he understands, he will not respond. That's going to be an important verse to consider in all of this. So turn to 1 Samuel 3. 1 Samuel 3. Delight to your heart.

It's the phrase, bring you happiness. So one of the greatest gifts a husband, that I could give my wife as a husband, is to be a diligent leader who fears God above all else, and therefore I'm actively engaged in training my children and disciplining my children. And don't forget Proverbs 29 15.

I hope you noticed there was a pair there of two focuses. The rod and reproof. I believe that's talking about two distinct things.

It's not just discipline, but reproof and instruction. And it's not just instruction, but there's discipline that's happening. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that parents encounter is they just focus on one aspect.

The rod or they focus on reproof. They don't have both paired together. And so as we read this passage, we're going to look at Eli.

And as we look at Eli, you're going to notice that Eli really left out one aspect. He left out an aspect. And he had the aspect of the verbal reproof, but what he miserably felled in was the aspect of what you could call the rod.

There was no true consequence, as it should have been, even in this case where a man has adult children. Eli is somewhere in his 80s. He's got sons.

Their wife is pregnant with a grandbaby. And we're going to find some things the Lord is going to say to Eli. And so we're going to read this, but let's first pray.

Let's pray right now. Father, Lord, we thank you for the great weighty responsibility that you've given us as leaders, leaders in our home. For those of us, Lord, who are men.

And, Lord, we want to manage our household well. Lord, we see that coming up in your word. There's something that's managing the home well, and then there's something that's not doing that well.

And, Lord, as we look at this example of Eli, Lord, who was an overseer of Israel, but, Lord, in many ways he fell to oversee his own house. And it affected the nation in a great negative way. Lord, we don't want that to happen in our lives.

And so, Father, I ask you to help me right now, even in what I share, that it be received right. Lord, that you would help us, Father. You know the areas that us as parents, Lord, even me as a father, areas where I fail, that I'm blind to, areas where I might be off balanced in my own life.

Lord, I pray that you would help. Help all of us, Lord, with these things. Lord, do help the men.

Lord, help us to be better leaders in our family, in the church, Lord, in any context where there's leadership, Lord, that we wouldn't fail in the way that Eli does in this passage. Lord, give us the grace. Lord, we know at the end of the day we can only serve with the strength that you give.

Lord, we don't have the power in ourselves. Lord, we can't self-will ourselves into seeing these things be fruitful in our lives. Lord, we don't have that power.

But we look to you, Lord, as those who know the Lord, as those who have intimacy with you. Lord, we trust you've given us your Spirit. You've not left us without a helper.

You've given us a helper to help us, to strengthen us, to guide us into all truth, to help us live out your Word. And so, Lord, give us that grace, please. In Christ's name, amen.

So 1 Samuel. 1 Samuel. And what I want to do, we could get bogged down reading too much in this chapter.

At the same time, I don't want to read too little and assume you're really familiar with it. And so what we're going to do is, starting in chapter 2, I'm going to read some verses, give some comments, and we're going to keep reading verses that I believe are really relevant to what I want to look at. And that's, again, this example of Eli, where he's felling as a leader within Israel and as a parent.

And there's something here for us men specifically to really consider and take to heart in our own lives. And even you singles, you know what? You want to gain wisdom now. The more wisdom you can get now while you're single, the more effective you could apply it, Lord willing, if God gives you a wife.

So 1 Samuel 2.12. 1 Samuel 2.12. Now the sons. This man's got two sons. Brothers.

Companions. Working together in what you could say the family business. And it's a joy to have children, right? Not the Giles.

The Sams. They've got one on the way. Others have children.

You get two sons. This man had two sons. It's incredible.

God gave the man two sons. What a joy. And you know what? You could see this if you read all this passage.

You see Hannah. How badly did Hannah want to have children? Right? And God gave her kids. Here a man has two sons.

Now the sons. This plural. It's two.

He's got two sons. Next word. Now the sons of Eli.

They've got a father. Right? It doesn't have their mother's name and that they have no father. These sons have the mighty privilege of having a father.

And the father, he was the high priest. It says in chapter 1 verse 9. And he was the judge. It says in chapter 4 verse 18.

They had a dad in the picture. They weren't fatherless. And this dad was in a very high spiritual place speaking within Israel.

So far, this is glorious, right? You've got a father and God's given them two sons. The brother has a brother. They can influence and impact one another.

The dad can influence and impact the sons. But it shifts. 1 Samuel 2 verse 12.

Now the sons of Eli were worthless men. They were scoundrels. They were wicked men.

They were corrupt. Can you imagine someone writing about you? About me? When I'm in my 80's, someone writes something about myself and they describe my sons as worthless sons. None of us here want that to be said of us, I trust.

Oh Lord, no. No. At this point in their life, this is how they're described.

The ultimate reason they're worthless men, he goes on to say, they didn't know the Lord. In the KJV, it says they were sons of Baal. In the New Testament, Baal is another word for Satan.

And so Eli's sons had another father. Eli wasn't their ultimate father. He was their earthly father.

But they were children of the devil. And you know what's shocking to me? Was it one of his sons who ended up like this? It was both of his sons. You've got a father who's got two sons.

And they're both worthless sons. They're both children of Satan. You read this.

It's such a statement. A father has two sons. They're worthless.

They don't know the Lord. That just makes me want to stand up and think, Lord, whatever I've got to learn from this passage, help me to learn it. Because God does use means.

We're going to see at the end of this message, we're going to see something from the same context where we're going to ultimately realize we're all cast on the grace of God. We really are. But you know what? We could minimize our responsibility as parents by overly looking at we're ultimately cast on the grace of God.

Both are true. I want to do everything I can in my means to train my children and lead them in the way of the Lord. At the same time, I recognize that doesn't guarantee any result of all my children being converted.

And I'm ultimately cast upon the grace of God. But both sons don't know the Lord. Both sons are wicked.

Is this a father's failure affecting all the kids? Is there no connection to the father? Verse 13. The custom of the priest with the people was that when any man offered sacrifice, the priest's servant would come while the meat was boiling with a three-pronged fork in his hand and he would thrust it in the pan or the kettle or the cauldron or the pot. All that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself.

This is what they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. They put a new practice. This family has had such an influence upon the nation of Israel, they've decided we're going to alter the ways the Levitical priests should be doing things and we're going to make a new custom.

This is not a new custom that's meant to do anything good. Verse 15. Moreover, before the fat was burned, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give me meat for the priest to roast, for he will not accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.

And if the man said to him, so the man's wanting to respond, let me then burn the fat first and then take as much as you wish, the servant would say, no, you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Isn't that amazing? That's what the father's sons are doing. This manipulation.

This domineering over these people. No, you've got to give it now, and if not, we're just going to take it by force. Verse 17.

Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord. You think very great. Where else does something come out of the Bible about someone being told to not partake of certain food just as Levitical priests were to not have certain portions, but now they're saying they can't have those portions.

Brethren, that happened all the way back in the garden. God gives a law. You're going to get this amount.

You can partake of all of this, just not that. And that's what's happening here, and they're going beyond that. They're creating a new custom, and no judgment of God has fallen like it did on Adam and Eve, at least not yet.

And so then the custom becomes the natural way of life, and they retrain an entire nation that these things are how they should be. It's absolutely shocking. It's sad.

And then it says, if you look at verse 17, Thus the sin of the young men was very great in the sight of the Lord. Then it says, For the men treated the offering of the Lord with content, and many would take the men. It's most likely referring not to the sons, but to the men of Israel.

In other words, as he's saying, the nation now abhorred the offering. You can imagine, you're going in to offer your offering, and you've got some men there whose servants are saying, give it now. If not, we're going to take it by force.

Well, we want to do it like the law says. No, no, if you don't do it as we say, we're just going to force it from you. And the brothers' disobedience that made something that was good now be despised in Israel.

It's shocking. This is what's happening. You get to the point where you think, why take my sacrifice if they're just going to force me to give up the majority of the meat that doesn't even ultimately belong to them.

So now, 1 Samuel 2, verse 22. Now, Eli was very old. And he kept hearing all that his sons were doing to all Israel.

Notice, he kept hearing. This isn't a one-time thing. This is an ongoing practice to all of Israel.

And then he adds another detail. It's not just they're taking from the meat, but they lay with the women who were serving at the interest of the tent of meeting. And so they didn't only just steal the sacrificial meat, but they took portions they shouldn't.

But obviously, if you can't control your desires in the area of food, you're obviously not going to control your desires in the area of sexual immorality and sin. And so these men were committing great acts of immorality, and they did this where? You know, the tent of the meeting? At the entrance? This wasn't on some hidden part of town where no one might see them, but the place you should fear the most was where they sinned. We go in Deuteronomy and it says, the Lord appeared in the tent in a pillar of cloud, and the pillar of cloud stood over the entrance of the tent.

And now these men are laying with women who were there at the entrance of the tent. I mean, this is how bad, how dark, you can understand why the Word would say that these sons were worthless sons. But they've got a dad.

They don't deserve any dad. They've got a dad who's in a high spiritual office. They've got a father.

This isn't just a burden thrown on a single mother and she's trying to figure out parenting. This isn't just someone who they get saved later in life and they look at their kids and now it's like, what can I do with my kids? They're all teenagers and I've led them so poorly up until this point. That's not what's happening here.

This man had the truth. He grew up with the truth. Eli.

Verse 23. What's he going to do? What's dad going to do? Listen to this. He said to them, why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people.

No, my sons, it is not a good report that I hear the people of the Lord spreading abroad. So the dad, he does say, no. If you think about how bad the testimony is, imagine the same thing today when Christian leaders abuse their power.

You think of what horrible testimony spreads abroad and how the name of Christ is blasphemed. And then you notice more in verse 25, the dad's rebuke. He says, if someone sins against a man, God will mediate for him.

But if someone sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? So the dad, in a way, he is giving verbal correction. He's saying, no, don't do this. No, this is spreading.

It's going very far and broad. And then he's even throwing in a threat there that look, you realize what you're doing, you're not going to have anyone to mediate for you. It's not going to go well for you.

You're not going to have any mediator here. That's what he says. But look what their response was.

But they would not listen to the voice of their father. And look what the next statement says. Why would these kids, who are adults, not listen to their father? For it was the will of the Lord to put them to death.

You mean God's will for Eli's sons that they would die? That he would kill them? Yes, they had gotten so wicked, so bad, so unrestrained to this point, that that's what the Lord's will was for them. I imagine. You know what? It doesn't have their childhood, but I imagine this whole trend started many decades earlier and has got them to this point.

You know, I imagine they thought if this is truly not a good report, Dad certainly is going to do something more serious. I mean, he said no, stop doing this, the report is bad, but that was kind of... He gave all the verbal correction and then that just, you know, we're able to keep doing it. There's no consequence.

Nothing affecting us. Nothing causing us to stop. You know what? I don't want my kids to get to a point where out of my own neglect and their own willful sin, there's a sense of hardness upon them where you get to the point where it's almost like there's no more hope in the dark situation they've now driven themselves into.

Almost like there's no chance to repent that they had such knowledge, they had such correction, but they went on willfully sinning after receiving that. And brethren, you know what? We've all experienced it. Our kids are growing up really fast.

I mean, our kids are growing up fast. I am amazed at how tall my kids are getting. And when a gardener plants a sapling, he often places a stake next to it, right? He places the stake.

He ties the young tree loosely around it. And that's not to restrict the tree's growth, but to guide it so that it grows upright, that it resists the forces of wind and the gravity, that it might not bend or break. But over time, the sapling, it gets strength, and it can now stand independently.

It's straight, and it's tall. It doesn't need that support. But the early supports were fundamental in getting that tree to grow in a certain direction.

If you don't have any of that early support, and there's some plants, they just grow sideways. It's like the tree's growing totally sideways. No one was there to bend it forward when it could be bent.

We face that reality. We say about our dogs, it's hard to teach an old dog new tricks, right? Well, you feel that with your own children. You look at things that maybe as a parent you've allowed and you were blind to it, you didn't recognize it, and then it's become so ingrained and rooted in, by the time they're five years old.

Well, what's it going to be when they're 15 years old? What are we going to do as fathers specifically? I know the text, from what I can tell, never directly comments on his children when they were really young. I mean, it mentions his sons, and it covers a long span of time here to the point where one of his son's wife is having a baby. Sadly, names that child Ichabod in the end when the sons die.

But brethren, we've got the great responsibility to not neglect our families and our children and do everything we can in our own means through the wisdom of God to train them, not just to give them a verbal reproof like Eli gave them a verbal reproof. He didn't lack to do that. He saw the problem and he said something to the problem.

We're going to recognize God comes in and looks at that as inappropriate correction from the Father. So verse 29 of chapter 2. Why then do you, Eli, scorn my sacrifices and my offerings that I commanded for my dwelling? Notice what he hits on. And honor your sons above me by fattening yourselves on the choicest parts of every offering of my people Israel.

You catch that? Eli took part. The meat the sons got that they shouldn't have been getting, guess who was also involved in eating that meat? Dad. I mean, that's a problem, right? I hope you see that's a big problem.

So you've got a man who's honoring his sons above the Lord. It's almost as if the Lord is saying, Eli, you'd rather see my offerings disgraced and profane my offerings than you remove your sons from their position and let them be disgraced. By not removing them from their position and disgracing them, you're approving of my offering being disgraced.

You're approving of the nation of Israel now looking on this with disdain. Verse 30, now the Lord declares, far be it from Me, for those who honor Me I will honor and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed. And so in the midst of all these chapters, you've got Samuel having a message from the Lord, communicating that to Eli.

A judgment is being set into place. Verse 34, And this shall come upon your two sons, Hopni and Phinehas, shall be the sign to you. Both of them shall die on the same day.

And I will raise up for Myself a faithful priest who shall do accordingly to what is in My heart and My mind. Meaning they're not doing accordingly to what is in God's heart and His mind. So in 1 Samuel 3, this is a vital verse that helps us get behind what's happening here.

Verse Samuel 3, verse 13, And I declare to him that I am about to punish his house forever, look what he says, for the iniquity that he knew. So he had knowledge because his sons were blaspheming God. And then he says this, he knew and he didn't restrain them.

He did not stop them. God looks at Eli and says, you could have stopped them. You could have actually stopped them and prevented this.

You didn't have to keep going. There's times we often dismiss ourselves and say, well, there's no way. I can't really prevent this or stop this.

God looks at Eli and says, you absolutely could have stopped this. And then what we have after that is the battle in chapter 4. The sons dying. The ark being taken.

A baby being born and being named. The glory has departed from Israel for the ark of God has been captured. And nothing is mentioned here that I could see of Eli's wife.

It's interesting. It's the father. The text focuses on the father.

And if one of Eli's sons responded in such a great way when her husband died and the ark was taken that she named the child Ichabod. And these two sons who died as blasphemers of God. What would the mom be thinking at this point? Her own daughter-in-law responded in such a way.

So I think all of this is relevant for us. The Old Testament Scriptures are given to us for teaching and reproof and doctrine and training and given for us to make observations and apply it into our lives. I'm sure you've heard of Eli and his parenting and this has been brought up before.

This classic example of a man who gave a rebuke, but he didn't put forth the discipline. He only lived out half of Proverbs 29.15. He didn't live out the whole text. And he had a false sense of comfort that you know what? I'm saying something to them, but the Lord comes along and says no, no, no.

You've not stopped them. You could have stopped them. You've not restrained them.

This is a dark set of events. Honestly, it's a miserable passage. It's not a happy passage.

Right? It's not a happy passage. But you know why we look at passages that aren't happy? Like King David and adultery and all of that and all these examples. We look at that so we gain wisdom that we don't end up like them.

Right? We don't want to end up like them. So what can we learn? What can we apply? So again, look at the Lord's rebuke. Chapter 3, verse 13.

This is how the NET reads it. Judge his house forever, because the sin he knew about for his sons were cursing God. And the NET even says he didn't rebuke them.

And then the whole minute says he has not stopped them. Right? In the ESV, he has not restrained them. I trust you see the idea that clearly the father said something verbal.

He gave a verbal correction. We saw that. He did.

But there was something further that was needed. He gave a slap on the wrist. They got off with a warning.

Basically, he let them off easy. And as you already saw from Proverbs 29, 19, we read this, but by mere words a servant is not disciplined. Though the servant understands, he does not respond.

Right? Listen to the NET. A servant cannot be corrected by words, for although he understands, there is no answer. Isn't that an amazing verse? We can forget about it.

We correct with words. We say a lot. And then it's like no real result happens.

You even talk to the person, do you understand what I'm saying? Yeah, I totally understand what you're saying. But then there's no actual change. There's no answer.

And so obviously in the text with Eli, we're not talking about he was neglecting to go and spank his adult kids. That wasn't the problem at that point in their lives. What was the problem at this point in their lives? He was supposed to remove them from the office, and he didn't.

He allowed them to continue to abuse the people and take advantage of the people. And Eli himself was being complicit in that, at least in the way that he was also partaking of the meat. I mean, this is terrifying that all this is happening right there in the nation of Israel.

He didn't strip them of their capacity for harm, which he could have done. He was the judge. He was the high priest.

And he didn't act. He didn't do that. You could think of this beyond anything in regards to parenting.

This is the same pressure we feel as a church. When you face disciplinary situations, you're looking at the situation and thinking, should we put this person out? We're wanting to rightly love them by doing the right discipline that's going to get the right message across. And if that's excommunication, then we've got to do that.

You don't want to give a slap on the wrist when the person actually needs something far more severe. At the same time, yes, you can reverse that. You don't want to overreact to something that actually wasn't as severe as you think it is.

And so we wrestle with this in church leadership, in parenting, in all manner of life. But you know what the thing we don't want to do, which is what Eli did, is we don't want to lose our authority. We don't want to get to the point where our word no longer has any significance, where we can say statements and the people recognize we're not serious in what we say.

They don't really have to obey those statements. And all of a sudden, people under our authority don't respect our authority. They don't really view what our word says as really being true.

Eli got to that point. In any sphere of leadership, you don't want to get to that point where you throw away your authority. And here, when Eli does that, God has to step in and protect the people by killing Eli's sons, and Eli dies, and he brings in a faithful priest.

Which ultimately, that priest is the Lord Jesus Christ. Which praise God for that priest who is a priest forever. We're going to look at our sins of neglect as parents are under the blood of Christ.

Praise the Lord. So Eli had multiple reports of abuse. He never took proper action.

He failed to use his authority to punish and restrain. 1 Samuel 2.22 He kept hearing. Is there anything in my life I keep hearing of? Not just in parenting.

Anything. Even in the church. Kept hearing this person is slandering or speaking ill.

Right? Is there anything that's repetitive in nature? And here the Lord says to Eli, you didn't restrain them. You didn't stop them. He attempted to reprove, but we saw they didn't listen to their father's voice.

Who has another dad like this? There's another dad in the Old Testament. He didn't even get to the point to give a verbal reproof. You see, Eli is verbally reproving the kids, but there's no real discipline and severe punishment, and they continue on.

King David? It says in 1 Kings, his father had never corrected him by even saying, why do you do these things? What great examples Eli and David are in parenting. No, they're not. You've got one dad who doesn't even verbally correct.

He just lets Adonijah do whatever. Then you've got another dad who verbally corrects, but he doesn't stop and restrain them from the conduct. These are sobering examples right here.

Eli reproves his children, and ultimately it was as good as nothing. In a way, it would have been better if he never would have reproved them than reproving them. What do I mean by that? By reproving them and not following through with the discipline, once they ignored the reproof, he all the more established in the mind of his children that my words don't really mean anything.

That's a practical thing, right? When you're a new parent and you have kids, you should recognize, don't give commands unless you're willing to follow through with whatever the command is. Some parents fall into this thing where they're given all manner of commands where they've got to be careful. They've got to give specific things, because if they're going to give a specific thing and it doesn't get obeyed, they've got to follow through on that command.

They've got to restrain the kid. They've got to not lose their authority, not get to the point where the kid no longer respects anything that the father says. You think about this in the world.

It becomes all the more obvious how important this is. You get a manager at a company. Some of you are managers, right? Mark's got a restaurant.

Others have different people you manage. And if you've got a few employees who are consistently missing deadlines, they're not meeting those deadlines, you know what? You verbally give them a reprimand. You give them that opportunity in this situation and they don't respond.

What happens if you don't take any further action? If you don't take any further action, over time the employees come to understand there's no real consequence for their actions. And all of a sudden, the lack of follow-through undermines your authority as a manager, and soon other team members adopt the same careless attitude, realizing the manager's warnings are not being taken seriously. He's just not serious.

He loves to notice what's wrong and tell us to change and stop doing this, man. The report is so bad on how this makes our company look. But then there's no punishment.

We keep doing the same thing and it's fine. You see, this is a problem. And how many times has parents... You get to the point where you're thinking you're doing well as a parent and then all of a sudden, God has one of those days where He opens your blind spots and you realize, whoa, I've lost my authority in a certain area.

I've gotten inconsistent in a certain area. I've given these commands and maybe I shouldn't have given them and I'm being way too command-oriented with my kids, where you get to the point where you realize I've got to enforce this. Eli got to the point where he should have enforced something and he did not.

Same thing at this imaginary company. The manager, if he doesn't do anything, is going to erode the company. It's going to erode their productivity.

It's going to affect it in a negative way. This happens in all of life, brethren. One question we should ask, what was in the heart of Eli? What was at the heart of Eli just using verbal reproof? Why didn't he go further? Why do I not as a parent go further in certain situations? Or a pastor.

There have been situations in other churches where pastors did not go further enough to deal with evil amongst them. And what's sometimes the reason? They're concerned about their reputation. And that's what we had right here with Eli.

The Lord said, you honor your sons above Me. So all going well with his sons was more important to him than all going in God's way. Rather than remove the disgraced sons, he let them keep on and he disgraced the Lord.

So that's a massive question. Is my desire in all of this to honor the Lord above all else? When parental partiality guides one's view, wisdom often bids a swift adieu. Right? You get affected with that parental partiality, it can massively affect your judgments.

We have so many repeated examples of that from godly men in the Bible. And since we have that in the Bible, the humble thing for us to do is recognize we could fall guilty of that as well. You know, it's easy to find problems in other people's families and other people's parenting or whatever.

It's easy to criticize others, but we've got to look at ourselves. So what was at the heart? Why didn't he fully deal with his sons in a serious way? He had to show partiality and honor the sons above God. He ultimately didn't have a great fear of God.

But a second thing, we already saw he was benefiting in what the sons were doing. And you know what? It's not an accident, the passage mentions when he dies that he was very fat. That's not there accidentally.

I think that's obviously there multiple times in the passage because it goes hand in hand with the sons abusing the system and taking parts and portions of meat that they should not have. To me, that's a safe conclusion of why would that even be right there in the passage. And so Eli was an accomplice.

And the Lord even reproves him and specifically says, you were fattening yourself. Chapter 2, verse 29. He says it.

You were fattening yourself on the choicest parts of every offering. So the sons took more than their share and he's taking part of that. You can almost picture in all of this.

Think how foolish this would be. You get a dad and it's at dinner time and he's hearing about the reports about what his sons are doing and he's got a piece of meat in his fork and he's about to take a bite of it and it's the very piece of meat that didn't belong to them but because they changed the customs, he's now in possession of that meat and they got it before it was boiled so they could season it in the way they wanted to season it to have the flavors they wanted it to have and the dad's eating on the piece of meat as he's telling the sons, you know, sons, boys, it's not good. It's not good, the report that's going around.

He's biting some more meat off. If you're the sons, you're not going to take your dad seriously if he's being a hypocrite and he's not taking a full stand against what you're doing and he's honoring you above God. How could you take him seriously? And that's another thing we should ask ourselves.

Is there an area in my life I don't restrain myself? You know, you tell your kids, kids, stop wanting to be in front of the iPad all the time and then the kids are looking and it's like, mom's always on her phone. I mean, she's always on the phone. The kids, they're not going to take you seriously.

If we don't exercise self-control, the kids aren't going to come along and exercise self-control. We can literally shoot ourselves in the foot with our own blindness at times. So is there anything in your life which the Lord has shown you, your conscience has been gripped with it, but you're not restraining yourself? Not just think about restraining the disobedient kids, but are you neglecting to deal with anything in your own life? That should be a question for us as fathers, as parents, as Christians.

So brethren, you know what? Why does, for example, discipline in child training, it kind of gets a bad rap in 2024. One reason is you've got a lot of sinfully angry fathers trying to apply the wisdom of God and doing it in the wrong way. Or you've got people who look back at their own upbringing and because their parents maybe were emotionally abusive or applied certain things in a certain way, they throw the whole baby out with the bathwater.

Brethren, please, don't throw out God's Word. Don't throw out all the Proverbs. We could go through six or seven Proverbs like that one we did that say the rod and reproof give wisdom.

The rod and reproof give wisdom. A child left to himself brings shame to his mother. And you say, well, I heard of some example where a parent didn't really have to live out these verses in the Bible and it all turned out okay.

Are you going to use that and just throw out God's Word? Are you going to take God's Word and say this is the standard, right? I've got to not just be verbally instructing my kids. There's got to be sufficient discipline to restrain them. And I realize some parents, their whole thing is they're basically drive-by disciplinarians and they have no time to sit down and have an hour-long talk with their child and pour out their heart to them and offer instruction in that way.

That's not going to go anywhere either if they just have the one aspect. And so, you know what? You could say parenting. I've got all these parenting questions.

And you're saying, well, I'm praying. As Tim said in his sermon, ask the Lord for wisdom. Well, you know what? You can go right to the Proverbs and you find a lot of wisdom spelled out.

But there are going to be certain nuances in how to apply some of these things and certain factors. Sure, I don't deny that. But we want to be men who lovingly lead our family in discipline and instruction.

Children should be a delight to the parent. That's what we read in the Bible. Who was it? I think Nadelka said something.

She was talking to Bob about parenting, how a delight kids were. He flipped it around and said how much of a burden and a grief your kids can be. And yeah, that can happen.

Absolutely. One pastor, he wrote, we must be convinced that it's not... the kids must be convinced it's not worth to continue with this attitude. The self-will must be broken.

And the Proverbs use that language. Shallow spankings lead to continual crankiness and outcries. Thus the child defeats the parents through weariness, from the outcries, and even fear.

The parent becomes afraid to cross the child. Now it makes too big of a mess. And he ends with saying what was Eli's infamous mistake? Shallow correction.

You know what? One way to find out in your life is a problem of shallow correction, an issue in my own parenting, is you ask others who are closer to you in the church. You get their perspective. Is my parenting shallow? Is that a problem? Eli had that problem.

Think about it. We were watching a documentary the other night on Pearl Harbor. You guys seen something on Pearl Harbor? You know what happens when you watch something on Pearl Harbor, at least for me? It was considered the greatest military intelligence failure.

Is that because they lacked the intelligence? It was not because they lacked the intelligence. There was even a mini Japanese sub trying to get into the harbor that morning that they fired at. But they wrongly identified the warning signs and didn't take action as soon as they should.

I just watched the movie and the way they portrayed it, you just were frustrated at how blind U.S. intelligence was. And I feel like I read this passage in the same way. I just feel like, Eli, how could you let this go on for so long? And then he eventually faces his Pearl Harbor and his sons die and there's all this destruction.

It's too late at that point to do anything different. I feel like the same can be true of us as parents. We get our own communications about some submarine or some problem and then life gets busy or we're discouraged or we've got other issues in our life that we're not adequately dealing with.

And the issues with the kids, they just disappear. And before you know it, there's a strike. And it's too late.

It's too late. And so brethren, what are we doing with the intelligence that comes to our eyes and God's providence, the things that we witness in our children, that others witness in our kids, that others witness in our character, in our response to our kids, right? That's a big thing that can be very helpful is others seeing how you respond to your children. And it's almost like, whoa, that's pretty harsh.

And the person might not even be aware that it's harsh because it's become a common custom for them. They don't even recognize how they're sinning and in what way. And you know what? Who had to take this message to Eli? A young single man named Samuel had to take the message and tell Eli of all this judgment that is going to happen.

I mean, God could use a young single person to point something out in your life. Or He could use a young single person to be really hypercritical of your parenting and discourage you in your life. I mean, it could go either way.

Or God could use Paul who never got married, didn't have kids, to say something in your life. So how not to respond? How not to respond? To this sermon right here. This sermon is not intended to help you grow in the area of self-pity.

Please, this is not about... This isn't a strategic way that I'm trying to get you to have a pity party later today. If you thought up until this point, that's what I'm trying to do, that's not what I'm trying to do. You know what? You feel overwhelmed about things in your life, you don't go and mope about it.

You go and pray about it and you ask God for grace. This is also not a time to respond in overreaction and harshness. You get the dad, he reads the book on parenting or something and he feels shame of his failures.

And then he ends up often responding in a shameful way. He goes home, he puts the hammer down thinking, now I'm going to live out the truth. But his passions are intermixed and he applies truth in an angry way.

And it does the opposite of what he was hoping to do. And so discipline, like I say, can have such a bad name in society due to angry parents. And parents who are angry and don't even recognize they're angry.

Because it's become the new normal in how they talk and how they treat. And it's been justified. One example.

You want an example of a father speaking to a son in an angry way? Listen to Saul towards Jonathan. You son of a perverse, rebellious woman, do I not know that you have chosen the son of Jesse to your shame and to the shame of your mother's nakedness? You want to talk in a harsh way? Saul, you're not winning Jonathan here. Here another thought is.

I was reading different men's comments. And to the question, what led Eli to this bad spot he found himself in? I thought someone has something that's true. But let me just say, I don't necessarily think it's explicitly said anywhere in these passages and in these Scriptures.

But I thought, you know what? There's truth here. And he pointed this out. Eli had how many offices? Two.

He was a priest. And then it says in chapter 4, he was the judge. And so someone had an observation on that.

And I think in general, it's a true Scriptural truth. So let me read this. This was actually impactful for me to consider my own life.

He said this. This is, I think, Alexander White with a Y. He said, A way back at the beginning of his life, Eli had taken far too much in hand. Eli was not a great man like Moses or Aaron, but he took both offices of Moses and the office of Aaron upon his single self.

Eli was both chief judge and high priest by himself for the whole house of Israel. The ablest and most laborious, the most devoted, the most tireless and sleepless of men could not have done what Eli undertook to do. In taking up what was beyond mortal power to perform, the certain result was that he did nothing well, but everything ill.

Both his high priesthood at the altar and his chief judgeship at the gate and his sole fatherhood in the house, both God's house and his own house and the whole house of Israel went to wreck and ruin under overladen Eli. It is startling and terrible to think that the unparalleled catastrophe of Eli's awful end had its first and far back roots in what is as much a virtue over committing yourself to too much, as surely as a vice, his determination to do two men's work with his own hands. But whatever Eli's motives for taking on multiple roles and benefits might be unclear.

But the tragic outcomes for himself, his sons, and Shiloh all stem from his excessive ambition which led to inability and neglect." And he goes on to say, "...and one worried week follows another worried week till his children are all grown up and they grow out of his knowledge." I thought, there's something to consider there. I don't think that's what the passage says, but you know what? Our kids are growing up fast. Are we in any way overworking and not making specific time to be with them, to invest in them, to love them? That's a massively valid question that we should be asking ourselves.

And so, you know what? This commentary says, "...Paul's instructions on one must rule his household well, having his children in his subjection." He said, "...it almost seems as if he had the downfall of Eli's household in mind when he penned these words." It's an interesting thought. Well, right here in closing, Robert Murray McShane, he had a sermon on this text, and in it I thought he shared a very helpful point. Think of the people group who got saved who most felt the horrors of their previous parenting.

Who could that be? People got saved, and they look back with horror the most on their parenting. You know who McShane mentioned? South Sea cannibals. South Sea cannibals.

And sure enough, you had South Sea cannibals who had murdered and eaten their own children, and as some were coming to Christ, they lamented in agony over 7, 17, or some 20 of their own children that they had murdered and eaten. And these people are coming to the knowledge of Jesus Christ. And McShane said, "...yet even these did at last find their souls cleansed in that full deep fountain, and you may find the same." And so you know what? There's such good news here today for Christ, right? I mean, 1 Samuel 2.35, a faithful priest is going to be raised up.

That is Jesus Christ. And even a parent who murdered 20 of their own children was not too far gone for the grace of God to cleanse of all known sin. Of all sin.

I mean, that's absolutely incredible. And so, some of us might have horrible regrets and things that have happened, but the grace of God is such. We want to glory in that grace.

We want to think of that grace to empower us. To live out the Word of God. And we want to think of how that grace has forgiven us.

Now, I do want to end with that thought. We're all ultimately cast on the grace of God. Look at 1 Samuel 8. 1 Samuel 8 says something interesting.

When Samuel became old, he made his sons judges over Israel. And if you know anything of Samuel's life, his life was not the same as Eli's. The name of his firstborn son was Joel.

The name of the second, Abijah. They were judges in Beersheba. Yet, his sons did not walk in his ways.

But it does say, the father had his ways. You see? He was a man of God. And you see that from his life.

But his sons turned aside after gain. They took bribes and perverted justice. And so, I close with that.

You know what, here a man is Samuel. Think of this. Guys, he's getting a word from the Lord on the judgment of Eli and his sons.

He's aware of all of this. He's witnessing Eli's sons die and be divinely judged by God. If you were to get married and have two sons, who do you think was some of the primary people on Samuel's mind as he's raising those boys? Eli and Eli's sons.

And you're thinking, Lord, don't let my sons end up like that. And what happened to his two sons? Just like Eli's sons, they pursued gain. It's shocking.

It's sad. I don't end that as a hopeless thing. There's no hope for our kids to be converted.

I'm just saying, look, brethren, I want to do everything in my power to be a consistent parent who doesn't lose his authority. But at the end of the day, I absolutely recognize the Bible clearly teaches I am totally cast upon the grace of God. There's no formula in five steps that I'm going to do, like Bill Gothard and others would teach, that's supposed to lead to your children's conversion.

But you know what? Let's not be hypocrites. Let's be like Samuel, where we have a way. And if our children, they go in after gain, at least the gain they're going after, they can know this wasn't Dad's way.

I've decided to go my own way. And I think it leads to life, but it's going to end in destruction. And we can pray for them that they'd come to their senses and recognize that.

So brethren, we have a responsibility, but ultimately we're cast upon the grace of Almighty God. McShane, he had a poem that they would quote at their church. With him, it represented lost children upbraiding their parents.

Crying from the lowest parts of hell. The children were pictured as saying this, Father, weep with shame and rueing. Weep for thy child's undoing.

For the days when I was young, and no prayer was taught my tongue, I ran the world's race well, and I find my portion hell. Weep, mother, weep, but know it will not shorten endless woes. Weep my lost spirit's fate, but know thy tears were too late.

Had they sooner fallen, well, I had not wept in hell. Father, in just such a fast, at least for me it feels like a fast-paced life. Lord, we do want to have real tears for our kids.

Lord, we don't want to be so busy, even with ministry-related things, with work, where there's a neglect there and it becomes a custom. And then where there's disobedience there. We say no, but we don't restrain, and then it becomes a custom.

Lord, Father, I pray You'd save my six kids. Lord, I want to see them know You. Lord, I want to see them follow after Your way, because Your way is the way of... You're the way, the truth, and the life.

Lord, You're their only hope. Lord, just as much as we want to see lost spouses saved as we looked at weeks ago, Father, I want to see children converted. And Lord, You have saved.

Lord, I pray You'd keep saving. Lord, help us. Lord, we do not want to be some hyper-Calvinistic parents that just feel like our own hypocrisy has no real effect.

Lord, help us. Help us to not be two-faced in any way. Lord, when we look in the mirror and we see a problem, Lord, we go away and we don't forget what we saw, but we're doers of the Word and not hearers only deceiving ourselves.

Lord, we need Your grace to do this. Father, all this, yes, it can feel overwhelming just to examine our lives, to be introspective, but Lord, aren't we called to exhort one another every day? But none of us are hardened by the deceitfulness of sin. Lord, we don't want to get hardened.

I don't want to get hardened in my own life and look at situations and just... Lord, things become normal when they shouldn't be normal. Lord, if it happened to Eli, oh Lord, it could happen to us. Lord, help us not be like that.

Lord, we look at churches in the world and some, they don't take sin seriously. Lord, it's happened to them. We don't want it to happen to our church.

Lord, same thing in parenting. I pray You give my brethren the grace. Lord, I know there's single mothers here today who don't even have a husband.

They've got no male leader in the family who can take the bull by the horns. Lord, there's other sisters whose husbands are lost and passive. Lord, there's men here who are brothers and struggling with taking initiative.

Lord, I pray You just give Your grace, Your help. Lord, yes, I pray none would have some sort of self-pity. Lord, we know self-pity doesn't... One sin doesn't lead to righteousness.

Lord, it doesn't produce a righteous response. Lord, would You help us men to be men of patience and love towards our children. Lord, would You help the tone of our voice.

Lord, we want to have a tone. Lord, that if all of us were videoed and we were watching during this one hour videos of us dealing with our children, Lord, that none of us would hide under our chair in shame and regret and look at the anger on our face. Lord, at the same time, we don't want to be cowards who just, Lord, give a little slap on the wrist and we're unable to really take a stand.

And so, Lord, we feel it, Lord, the burden, the balance, trying to get the balance right. Lord, we don't want to be too soft. We don't want to be too hard.

Lord, we don't want to be confused. So give us clarity. We ask You for wisdom.

Lord, strengthen the families in the church. Give them grace. Please, Lord, help our children not to be worthless.

But, Lord, to be so valuable in the kingdom of Christ. Lord, to be arrows that are not broken at the shaft and cannot be sent. But, Lord, arrows that have a sharp point that can be sent, Lord, right into the enemy and have an eternal impact.

Lord, I just think of the biographies I've read and, Lord, men like Whitefield and others who are bad parents. Father, help us to not imitate the evil they committed, but to copy the good. So, Father, strengthen us today.

In Christ's name, Amen.