Verse 12, now the sons of Eli were worthless men and they did not know the Lord and the custom of the priest with the people. When any man was offering a sacrifice, the priest servant would come up, would come while the meat was boiling with a three pronged fork in his hand and he would thrust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot. All that the fork brought up, the priest would take for himself. Thus they did at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Also, before they burned the fat, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, give the priest meat for roasting, as he will not take boiled meat from you, only raw. And if the man said to him, they must surely burn the fat first, then take as much as you desire. Then he would say, no, but you shall give it to me now, and if not, I will take it by force. Thus the sin of the young man was very great before the Lord, for the men despised the offering of the Lord. Now Samuel was ministering before the Lord as a boy wearing a linen ephod and his mother would make him a little robe and bring it to him from year to year when she would come up with her husband to offer the yearly sacrifice. When Eli would bless Elkanah and his wife and say, may the Lord give you children from this woman in place of the one she dedicated to the Lord, that is Samuel. And they went to their own home. The Lord visited Hannah, and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters. And the boy Samuel grew before the Lord. Now Eli was very old, and he heard all that his sons were doing to all Israel, and how they lay with the women who served at the doorway of the tent of meeting. And Eli said to them, why do you do such a thing, the evil things that I hear from all these people? No, my sons, for the report is not good, which I hear the Lord's people circulating. If one man sins against another, God will mediate for him. But if a man sins against the Lord, who can intercede for him? But they would not listen to the voice of their father for the Lord desired to put them to death. Now the boy Samuel was growing in stature and favor both with Lord and with men. Then a man of God came to Eli and said to him, thus says the Lord, uh, did I not indeed reveal myself to the house of your father when they were in Egypt in bondage to Pharaoh's house? Did I not choose them from all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, to carry an ephod before me? And did I not give to the house of your father all the fire offerings of the sons of Israel? Why do you kick at my sacrifice and at my offering, which I have commanded in my dwelling? And honor your sons above me by making yourselves fat with the choices of every, the choices of every offering of my people Israel. Therefore, The Lord God of Israel declares, I did indeed say to your house and the house of your father would walk before me forever. But now the Lord declares, far be it from me for those who honor me, I will honor and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed. Behold, the days are coming when I will break your strength and the strength of your father's house so that there will be not an old man in your house. You will see the distress of my dwelling in spite of all the good that I do for Israel, and an old man will not be in your house forever. Yet I will not cut off every man of yours from my altar so that your eyes will fail from weeping and your soul grieve, and all the increase of your house will die in the prime of life. This will be the sign to you which will come concerning your two sons. Hufnay and Finayas on the same day, both of them will die. But I will raise up for myself a faithful preach, a priest who will according, will do according to what is in my heart and in my soul. And I will build him an enduring house and he will walk before my anointing ways. Everyone who is left in your house will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread and say, please assign to me one of the priest's offices so that I may eat a piece of bread. Let's pray. Heavenly Fathers, we come now to your word. I pray that you would give us Holy Spirit enlightenment to understand lessons that you would be teaching us. You know, you have said that all scripture is profitable for us in the growth of our Christian lives. I pray that you would help us to understand what is being said here and what is going on here. I pray that you'd give ears to hear but also a mouth to speak. And we thank you for the spiritual food we're about to receive. In Christ's name we pray. Amen. We of course read this early on in our section of scripture reading. We started with 1st Annual and worked our way through it. When I came to this verse, I was this Sunday, I read the verse and I've got to thinking more about it. And I just, that was a couple of months ago, I believe we read this and just got more and more working in my mind. Cause I've, ever since I became a Christian in my late teens, I believe I'd read through the Bible every, it took me about a year and a half, something like that. A chapter a day from the Old Testament and the New Testament. And I'd read this before, of course, it's not some new passage, but my, I always in the past thought, well, what a, what a sort of a, Eli was sort of a loser, right? I mean, couldn't even control. I mean, it just seemed like, glancing over, it was like he wasn't a very good father. But then later, as I became a father, I started thinking, well, maybe I'm being a little bit too judgmental to this poor guy. I mean, he obviously did sin. I'm not minimizing the sin, but maybe there were other things going on in this passage that we should consider. It sort of happens to old men. They have a tendency to be a little more kind towards others, in a sense. At least they ought to, as they see their own sin and their own failures and struggles in life. I think that there is value in sanctified experience. But then again, Ben Franklin said, no fool like an old fool. So that's a possibility, too. Sometimes we get more foolish as we get older. But hopefully, by the Holy Spirit, we do as Christians grow. I started probably about five years ago preaching through the book of Judges and took a little pause there for a few years. This is actually an extension of that because Eli was in fact one of the Judges. He at least was acquainted to, or maybe knew him well, Samson. According to the tradition and genealogy of the Jews, He would have been the next judge after Samson. So he probably knew Samson. So he was a judge, as a matter of fact. He was a high priest as well. He was a high priest and a judge. The judgeship ended, of course, when the kings, King Saul was anointed as king. Probably Samuel was a judge too, but I don't see him being, he's more of a prophet than a priest. Although he did give sacrifices as well. Eli was also in the line of Aaron, but in the line of Aaron's younger son, and not the elder son. Quick word about the authorship, because we're going to run into it pretty soon. In 1 Samuel chapter 25, Samuel dies. So obviously Samuel didn't write the full 1st and 2nd Samuel, but it was about his life, just as a note there. Books of Samuel probably composed after the death of David from court records, eyewitness accounts, and some of the writings of Samuel as well. Writings of Samuel, Nathan, and Gad, too, for that matter. Certainly, the books of 1 and 2 Samuel have the mark of scriptural. So likely that Eli knew Samson, and he also knew the history of the judges. And I think, in my opinion, and some others, Samuel wrote the book of Judges, and he wrote that from his speaking with Eli. Remember, he was raised by Eli. He was Eli's favorite son, I'm sure, as he was a godly young boy. He was just a little boy when he came there, and I'm sure that they had many conversations with him together. Eli would have had those oral traditions and possibly some written records about the Judges. So Eli would have instructed Samuel in all that history. Eli loved Samuel, no doubt about it, and Samuel reciprocated in the way that these parts, if and likely Samuel wrote this, he writes this with some compassion with Eli. It's not all condemning, he's being compassionate. So they loved each other. Samuel was a devoted student to his master and he showed respect to him. Now clearly Eli's failures as a father resulted in condemnation and the curse of his descendants. I don't deny that. But I wonder about him and what would be more discouraging to him, the fact that he raised two basically devils or the fact that his family were cursed. The passage here clearly says that his family would be cursed. They'd be removed from the priesthood. But even more personally, just to think that his children would turn out to be unbelievers had to be pretty devastating. But the scripture is clear. As we just read, it says, I am about to judge this house forever by the iniquity which Eli knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and Eli did not rebuke them. However, nothing in those verses, I don't think, are clearly saying that Eli was an unbeliever. Very specifically, Eli's sons were unbelievers. But nothing about, because he says they did not loathe the Lord. But Eli, it seems to me, was a believer. So I'm not sure that I want to use Eli as an example of a thoroughly bad father. Was it possible that he was neglecting some important part of the responsibility of being a father? Yeah, of course. He was apparently not disciplining his sons appropriately. Of course, then we have to think, wow, what father here could claim that he had been a perfect father? And that causes us to think about that a little bit. I'm not sure I'd want to be the one. I know that when I was young, I was very critical of my father. A disease of the young and unexperienced is that they have a tendency to be very judgmental towards especially their own families. Maybe y'all are different than me, okay? I don't know. I was horrible as far as judging my own family. But I think we should be careful with how harshly we judge Eli. Now, obviously, Eli did not appropriately discipline his sons. There's no point. There's no argument about that. Many commentators, though, will assume that he was perhaps either overindulgent with them, you know, nice little boy, you know, boys, you do what you got to do, you know, and that's a temptation for fathers. Yeah, we want to be liked by our children. Sure. Or the opposite was he was way too strict and maybe whooping them for every little tiny thing and not explaining the gospel when they get whooping. You got to do both. You can't just whoop them and conform to my ideas. It's conform to what the Bible says. Look at the gospel when you discipline your child. By the way, I should have said this in the beginning. You know, we don't do, this is an expositional pulpit. We don't just pull things out. But have you ever noticed in Mother's Day, we always say good things about mothers? But then when it comes to Father's Day, we say, you guys better get with it. We're always sort of not accusing, but we're like exhorting fathers to be better fathers. But on Mother's Day, it's like, they're perfect. I just thought that was sort of odd, because I don't want this to come across as like Eli's a really bad guy, but I'm not putting him in a sainthood either, although he was a saint, I think. I just think that's sort of amusing to think how we treat people differently, whether it's mothers or fathers. Of course, grandparents are untouchable. We've got to say something good about them, obviously. And that's OK. Even if Eli would have appropriately disciplined his little children, can we say that that would have guaranteed that they would be believers? They just put aside the fact that, and we'll come back to that, that scripture says God had desired to put them to death. But before that, I mean, was there any guarantee that being a good father or a perfect father would guarantee godly children? I don't think we can say that. There's personal responsibility for a child as they grow and mature. So I think what's going on here, though, is less a passage about Eli's failures as a father, in raising his children, disciplining his children, and more about what he did about it afterwards. He apparently recognized that his adult sons were being unfaithful. It's not that he was ignorant. Verse 22 and 25 indicates he was aware of what his two sons were doing. And he did confront them. He told them about it. So let's look at the judgment for just a moment. The initial judgment comes first. There's two different judgment statements done here. This first one came through this unnamed prophet that comes and declares in the name of the Lord that Eli, the judgment was Eli's honoring his sons above the Lord. Chapter two, verse 29, honor your sons before me or above me. And then verse 30, he says this, powerful statement. For those who honor me, I will honor and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed. That's a pretty powerful statement. So, and it goes beyond that. Specifically, Eli was apparently participating in his son's sins because then it goes on and says, by making yourself fat with the choices of every offering of my people, Israel. Now we can take that two ways or take it both ways. I mean, he may be becoming physically fat, um, Or it may be more referring to his taking part in the offerings that were reserved for the Lord. And I think that's the major point here is that the sacrifice and offerings the Lord granted that the meat after it had been boiled and cleaned and boiled, then the priest would have their share of it. But first it went to the Lord. The first went to the Lord. The first of the fruit. Obviously to obey is to honor, same thing. The command was for the first and best of that was being offered to the Lord, not the first and best for the priests. So, okay, so these bad sons were stealing the, you know, going to the people's pots and grabbing the best part of the meat and taking it home and eating it. Not waiting till the whole process went down. There's a whole process with the sacrifices. It's not just bring the food and throw it on an offering on a plate or something like that, but it's a whole process. So what I'm trying to say here is Eli was participating in that. Now was he... It's not likely he was initiating it. He didn't tell the boys, okay, steal the meat from the people. I mean, he apparently was a godly man. He raised Samuel from a little boy to be a godly boy. That didn't just come out of nothing. There was some good fatherhood on his part and teaching on his part. So it's more likely that these two bad sons, like often happens in a church, next generation gets to be like, okay, this is a pretty cushy job. I don't, I'm guessing it's getting sort of a cushy job here. I mean, I just have to stand up and talk for 45 minutes. 45 minutes or so, okay? Pretty easy job. But was that what was going on there? But still Eli was guilty of the fact that when they brought the meat home, he ate it. Obviously he participated in that part of the sin. The Lord speaks again in chapter three, verse 13. Came to Samuel and said, I'm about to judge this house forever for the iniquity which he knew because his sons brought a curse on themselves and he did not rebuke them. It seems like Eli was not necessarily initiating the sin, but rather a passive participant after the fact. We often do rationalize our participation of the side benefits of someone else's sin. To my mind, the curse was obtained through a failure to remove the major curse here, or the curse, the major sin of Eli was that he failed to remove the wicked priest. Eli was the high priest because of his age and authority. He was responsible for removing wicked priests from office. Yeah, the office in those days was inherited by family, but certainly not irrevocable in cases where there might be a deficiency in a son. Right? Remember, I mentioned Aaron's youngest son carried on the tradition of the priest. What happened to the older sons? Typically, in the Old Testament, the older sons would have been the ones that done it. There must have been something with him that was deficient. It may not have been a believer. We don't know. It's not told. Whatever reason, Eli failed to initiate whatever discipline would have been appropriate in this case. The curse, by the way, the end of Eli's descendants being priests was not fulfilled till Solomon. So his sons and his descendants didn't see, or he definitely didn't see the curse come true, except for the fact that his sons were killed. Let's talk about his sons for just a moment as well. Hophni and Phinehas, the sons, Izzet I better slow down. I'm talking too fast. Sorry. But think about them for a second. Is it possible or even likely that they were raised in a believing home? Yeah. They heard the gospel, the gospel of the Old Testament over and over and over. They not only did that, but since they were the high priest's children, they observed the sacrifices. And for sure, one of the duties of the high priest, of any of the priests of God, would be to explain the gospel when you were doing it. You just didn't mechanically sacrifice the meat. That was part of the duty of it. The duty of the priest was to make the sacrifice, explain the gospel as they knew it. They didn't know about Jesus Christ, but they knew about a Messiah to come. They watched that, they observed that explanation. Every sacrifice would have been accompanied by an explanation of the curse. Surely they would have heard about the curse and their need for the shedding of blood for the remission of sins. That was what it was all about. They smelled the smells, the blood. They were explained to them the hope that they had in the Messiah to come. This is part of the duty of the priesthood. So these sons had upfront witness to all of this, along with the opportunity to ask questions to their father. I mean, do we think that Eli was a totally ungodly man? No, he was a believer, I think. There's nothing to say otherwise. And once they became priests, certainly they probably repeated this stuff to the people. They explained the gospel to other people. How strange to be unbelieving and yet be able to explain the gospel. Is that possible? Yeah, sadly, it is possible, I think. It's certainly possible to be an unbeliever and be a preacher, to be a gospel worker, to explain the gospel to people. Sure. It's possible to have knowledge but remain in rebellion. So I'm going to make some applications here. I have a lot of them. So just try to grab one or two of them. Don't try to grab all 74 of them. But Brandon calls them observations. I sort of like observations. But I'm going to call them applications just to be different. The guilt of adult sons falls on themselves. That's a really important thing to remember. Although good intentions as a father don't absolve them of their sin or for their failures, but there is at least some comfort in knowing that the Lord is sovereign over the will of men. Your will as a loving father or a loving parent for that matter, doesn't, that's not how people are saved. It doesn't regenerate dead souls. You don't become a Christian because your parents are Christians and tell you to become a Christian, obviously. On the other hand, the Lord is gracious to save. And while your children still live, we may live in optimistic hope that the Lord may yet save them just as you too were lost, but quickly by the Holy Spirit into repentance. This was a miracle of God. It wasn't by the will of man. So Hophne and Phinehas had all the opportunities of a godly home, as many of the people in this room today have had that opportunity to participate in weekly worship and to observe parents who, even though their parents are imperfect, they are still believers and who are trusting Christ and honor Christ by faithful attendance to the gathering of the saints and to the preaching of the word. There are the dreadful words of Hebrews to consider here. In the case of those who have once been enlightened, that is heard the gospel and have tasted of the heavenly gift, that is the benefits of being near believers. There are benefits of being near or being raised by believers. And have have tasted the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away. It is impossible to renew them again to repentance. That's a pretty dreadful statement and pretty frightening statement, really. In the case of those who have once been enlightened and have tasted the heavenly gift and have been made partakers of the Holy Spirit, have tasted the good word of God and the powers of the age to come and then have fallen away, it is impossible to renew them again to repentance. Of course, we all believe that once saved, always saved. It's not, that's not what, obviously not what the, Apostle was saying here, he wasn't saying people could lose their salvation, but he was saying there are some people in the church. Churches are always, until Christ comes, churches are always a mixture of believers and unbelievers. And that's great. I'm so glad there are unbelievers here because they get an opportunity to hear the gospel. But there are some unbelievers who will not believe and there's a greater condemnation on them. But hope is not lost. Hope is not lost until we're dead. There is always hope for unbelievers. Your child may attend weekly meetings and exposure to repeated explanations of the gospel and still remain in rebellious unbelief. And that has to be like it was for Eli. It has to be a great grief that only the gospel may relieve, not by flesh, nor the will of parents or children saved. But as many as received him to them, he gave the rights to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name, who were born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. Fathers and mothers and grandmas and grandpas can live in great hope that the Lord is gracious and kind and merciful. Eli's honor towards his son and dishonor to the Lord reflects a thing that happens often today in churches. where the sins of leaders get winked at and unchallenged just as Eli merely declared the sin of his sons but did not remove him from office. It's a really important point. And it's a sad thing. The New Testament church is administered by men whom the local body of believers choose from among them according to the directives and qualifications given by 1st, 2nd Timothy and Titus. Since there are qualifications, it's reasonable to assume that there are disqualifications. And there will be times when an elder or a pastor must be removed or at least challenged when he no longer meets those qualifications. And we call that church discipline. Church discipline is merely a time when the church needs to make a decision about whether they want to honor man, honor the man, just as Eli was challenged by the Lord, or are they going to honor the Lord? I fear many churches around the world are or will be highly or lightly esteemed by man and by the Lord. But then do we just stop with church leaders or is church discipline about believers? Winking at sin among church members is essentially the same thing. We're in danger of honoring people and dishonoring the Lord. A local church is supposed to be different, right? How are we going to be the light if unbelievers rule in the church? Looking like the world makes the church salt that's no longer salty. Failure to recognize and even remove an unrepentant sinner like Hophni and Phineas from the assembly of the saints is pretty much honoring people. Now, does a local church need to remove all sinners? Wow, that'd be a jump, wouldn't it? I hope you haven't made that conclusion, because it would all be gone. We can't say that. We are sinners. And how do you identify an unbeliever? Christ told us pretty specifically. I mean, Jesus told us himself, if you love me and keep my commandments. And then he said, he who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by a father And I will love him, I will disclose myself to him. Again, if I have to say it again, obedience to his commandments is a goal. When we fail in sin, what do we do? We're going to fail in sin. We repent, ask for forgiveness, knowing that, again, if we confess our sins, he has faith in us to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. I do encourage you to read the back of the bullet, actually it's probably on the website, because Brandon did make a point in his commentary about the difference between cultural sin and biblical sin. The church does not, or should not, discipline people for cultural sin, like women wearing pants in the church. We all have our opinions about those cultural things, but that's not how we, it's specifically what the Bible says about that. And the church is not on a mission to root out every sin in the church either. So, it's sad to say, but whenever we talk about church discipline, we have to be almost defensive because it's such a frowned on thing in culture. But maybe that's what will make us different if we actually do this. So it's not on a mission to root out every little sin. Church discipline, it actually is opposite. It's our effort, our attempt as a church to restore the man, woman, child who is wandering away from the faith. I mean, it's like, whoa, stop. The way you're behaving in biblical sin may mean that you're not a believer. Maybe not. We're not trying to one-up each other on who could be the holiest. And we're certainly not trying to force conformity to some kind of a personal extra-biblical rule, like no dancing or whatever. Okay, so church discipline. I think that is really the major failure of Eli in this whole situation. And the curse on his whole family was because Eli had the opportunity to remove his, and not only the opportunity, but the obligation to remove his sons from office. Didn't do it. Due to the weakness of our flesh, we should not be surprised when we discover our weaknesses as fathers and mothers. Yes, we're called to nurture our own sanctification, right? We work on that. The Holy Spirit works with us. So we're constantly learning to put on Christ and obedience to his word. Yes. When it's in our power to do so, we study and we try to understand his word and we put our best efforts to live as a light in the world and to be good fathers and mothers. And, and, you know, there's some people here without children that doesn't negate your responsibility to be a good, a good witness to these other children in the church and to other people outside the church. Nevertheless, in retrospect, the severity of judgment to Eli and to us for our performance of our biblical duties, it should be moderated by the knowledge of God's sovereignty. And this was a huge help to me and my family when the doctrine of grace and all of this, all these things we've been learning over the years, when it finally understood this. God is sovereign even over our sins, of our sins of neglect, the things we fail to do. He's sovereign over the things that we did that were wrong. Living in constant guilt or despair over our failures as parents is to fail to trust in the Lord's sovereign providence and in his forgiveness as well. Yes, we're going to suffer the consequences of our sin, yet knowing God is sovereign over even our own sin ought to help us to accept His forgiveness and move on in faith. If we try to bear our own sins after Christ has paid for them, well, we're not trusting Him. And this is the glory of the gospel, that even in our sin and unbelief, the Lord loved us when we were yet sinners. Even when we were in total rebellion against the Lord, He loved us. We weren't just flawed or sick, but we were dead in our trespasses and sin. We were shaking our fist at Him. Then when all seemed lost, Christ came. He fulfilled all the demands of the law, and beyond that, He took on our sin debt. The one who sins shall surely die. We know that. By His death, He paid full that debt. The work of Christ even did more than that, though. We are now adopted into his family, heirs of salvation and all the privileges and all the blessings, the unfathomable riches of Christ and glory, our King and Savior forever. All our sins are now forgiven and worked out for the glory of the Father. We need to remember that. We need to come away encouraged this morning, even though we see Eli and see his struggles and all that he did wrong and all that maybe he did right. And we look back at ourselves. This is not about that. This is about the gospel and about the hope that we have in Christ. Let's pray. Father, thank you again for the gospel. We were utterly lost and you saved us. This is a miracle that came from you alone. I pray that you would help us, of course, to be better fathers and mothers and better grandmothers and grandpas and and better church members that we might encourage one another in the faith, even our children as well. I pray that these curses against unbelieving children would not come true, that you would be merciful to them and save them in your good timing and keep them safe. And meanwhile, we trust in your providence. You are wise, you're all wise, and we have no right to stand in judgment of your judgment. What you did And the condemnation that fell upon Eli and his family was just and right. And we acknowledge that. And we pray that you would help us to not make these same kind of errors. And when we do, I pray for your mercy and grace. We thank you again for your love and care for us. In Christ's name, we do pray. Amen.