Speak, Lord: Part 2
How does a faithful parent love their sinning children? Or, more broadly, how does a faithful Christian love a sinning family member? That is a question that we've been asked in various ways over the past few weeks by the book of 1 Samuel. Eli the priest had two sons who used their position to serve their own appetites. Eli knew it, and he gave them a scolding, but he didn't do anything actively to stop them.
And two times, two separate occasions, God rebuked Eli for his failure as a priest and as a parent. The first time was in chapter 2, where an unnamed prophet condemned Eli for honouring his sons above God by actually enjoying the fruits of their theft. The second time came in chapter 3, God spoke through the boy Samuel, and he rebuked Eli not so much for sharing in his sons’ sins, but simply for not stopping them for what they were doing. “His sons were blaspheming God, and he did not restrain them,” says verse 13.
So twice over the last two weeks, as we've just been following along with what God has said in his book, we've heard about different aspects of this relationship between Eli and his sons and we've talked, briefly, about what lessons we might learn about this for the present day.
But there's a lot more to say, and at some point it was clear that we just needed a part two to last week's sermon, which is what we're doing here today.
Speak, Lord
So let's pick up on where we left off last week, and not actually on the issue of Eli and his sons, but on the issue of God speaking the message about Eli and his sons to Samuel.
Samuel said, "Speak, Lord," and received God's message, whatever it was. And he passed it on without tinkering with it at all.
And like we saw last week, that was a hard message. It was a hard message that didn't come padded with any padding of encouragement. God spoke directly and without apology, even though He knew better than anybody else how much his message would upset His hearers.
Just consider that. Today, if we find out that we've upset people by something we've said, we tend to assume we've made a mistake. And often enough that's true, but not always. God upset Samuel. Jesus upset his own disciples all the time, on purpose. And part of being a Christian means that Jesus has the permission to rock our boats as often as he wants to.
Let's learn from both Samuel and Eli about our posture when we hear something from God's word that rocks our boats. Of course it's okay to ask questions to try to understand better. Of course it's okay to say, "How do I actually work that out? How does that apply to this or that situation?" But our default posture should be like Samuel: "Speak, Lord." Or like Eli: “It is the Lord. Let him do what seems good to him” (1 Samuel 3:18).
1. Family is From God
Let's keep that in mind as we listen now to a number of passages from across the whole Bible, some of which we might find reassuring and comforting, some of which we might find profoundly challenging.
Let's start back at the beginning: families are a part of God's good design. God created marriage and childbirth and all of the connections between parents and children and siblings, and this was a part of His good design.
There are bonds of love between members of a family forged in shared experiences and connections that begin at birth and, if all goes well, get only stronger as years go on. And this was God's idea, and God's good design.
So if we ever feel like our families are something that we need to protect from God's interference, we're missing something. Family itself was God's good idea and design. Our family is God's gift to us.
2. Family is About God
Second, we want to remember that even in the goodness of the original creation, family was never an end unto itself. Just like nothing God created was ever an end unto itself. Everything in creation, from waterfalls to water bears, was made to declare the glory of God, and family does so in particularly unique ways.
Out of all of his creation, God made us in His image, which applies to our relationships as well. The clearest example is marriage, and how Ephesians 5:32 tells us that all the way back in Genesis 2:24, God designed human marriage to be a picture of the divine relationship between Christ and His church. It's not like Jesus and His Church are kind of like a husband and a wife. It's that a husband and a wife are kind of like Jesus and His church.
The same goes for fathers and their children. Long before human fathers and sons existed, God the Father lived in perfect eternal relationship with God the Son, and planned to draw us into that same eternal love relationship. So it's not like God is like a human father—it's that the best human fathers are kind of like God. He came first.
And if God is our Father, then we're brothers and sisters, "members of the household of God" (Eph 2:19, 1 Tim 3:15). Which, if we're putting the pieces together, doesn't mean that the church is like a family. It means that a family is like the church. The family is a picture of the people of God, just like fathers are a picture of God, and marriage is a picture of Jesus.
So family is not just from God, family is about God.
Family is about God in other ways, as well. Families were designed by God to be greenhouses for training and discipleship in godliness, and families work best when God is actively at the centre of their life together.
That's one reason we've poured hours into training parents and husbands and wives and dating couples—all of which you can find on our website. And the point here is that families are about God.
3. Satan vs. Family
Not surprisingly, then, family is one of the first and repeated things that Satan has attacked in his long war against God.
It's right there in the garden, where he works to weasel in between Eve and Adam. It's right there in Cain's murder of Abel. It's there in Ham's sin against Noah, Lot and his daughters, the sons of Jacob selling Joseph into slavery. It's there in our world today in every unmarried mom, every deadbeat dad, every rebellious teenager, every divorce, every act of abuse or neglect.
The family is one of Satan's favourite places to attack because when he attacks the family, he attacks one of the places where we're supposed to see God's truth displayed and where God's truth is supposed to be taught and lived out.
And that's why the Bible and our modern world give us no end of examples of families broken by sin in countless ways.
4. Family vs. God
And one of the saddest ways that this can happen is when some members of a family choose to reject their creator and rebel against him, while others in the family want to stay faithful to him.
That puts those faithful members of a family in a really, really tough spot. If family is from God and about God, what happens when part of your family starts working against God, and you need to choose between your family and God?
And the Lord knew that these situations would arise, and told His people how to respond to these situations. Consider Deuteronomy 13. The first five verses announce that anybody in Israel who tried to entice the people to forsake God and worship other gods was to receive the death penalty.
Anybody. Does that include your own flesh and blood? Listen to verses 6-11:
“6 ‘If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son or your daughter or the wife you embrace or your friend who is as your own soul entices you secretly, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which neither you nor your fathers have known, 7 some of the gods of the peoples who are around you, whether near you or far off from you, from the one end of the earth to the other, 8 you shall not yield to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall you conceal him. 9 But you shall kill him. Your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people.
10 You shall stone him to death with stones, because he sought to draw you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. 11 And all Israel shall hear and fear and never again do any such wickedness as this among you” (Deuteronomy 13:6–11).
God knows that the people are going to hear the first five verses and say "uh-huh. Got it." And then when it's their own son or daughter or brother or wife, they're going to say "ahh, maybe things aren't so black and white." The natural thing for families to do in a situation like that is to yield, to listen to them, to pity them, to spare them, to conceal them from what the law required.
That's what years of bonding and attachment and familial love make you want to do. That's what feels natural. But in reality, it's profoundly unnatural. Because families are from God and for God, a family that is actively working to pull its members away from God is a family that is working against what God designed them to do.
And so the Lord is clear: your family doesn't get a pass when it comes to obeying and applying the law of God. There's no spiritual nepotism. No exceptions. Another example, slightly different, is found in Deuteronomy 21:
“18 ‘If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they discipline him, will not listen to them, 19 then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, 20 and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ 21 Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones. So you shall purge the evil from your midst, and all Israel shall hear, and fear” (Deuteronomy 21:18–21).
That's intense. But please understand that this passage is not showing us that parents shouldn't care about their sons. It's showing us that there is something more important than a parent's love for their son: namely, God's people knowing and obeying Him. It shows us that there are things worse than death: namely, rebellion against God. It would be better to die under a pile of rocks than live in rebellion to God and cause others to do the same.
Family is from God and about God, but family is never allowed to come before God.
We also see this theme in other ways, when people choose to follow God and as a result experience various levels of disruption in their family relationships. Like Moses, who was opposed by his sister and brother (Numbers 12), or David, who was forsaken by his family and despised by his wife and had his own son try and kill him (Psalm 27:10, 69:8; 2 Sam 6:16-23, ch 14-18), or Abraham and Elisha who left their families to follow the Lord (Gen 12:1, 1 Ki 20:20).
In this fallen world, with the corruption of sin all around us, God's people have often had to make a painful choice between their families and Him. And so it's not entirely a surprise that when Jesus arrives, he tells us, straight up, that this is going to be the case.
When he sent out his disciples and warned them about the troubles they'd face, he said, “21 Brother will deliver brother over to death, and the father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death, 22 and you will be hated by all for my name’s sake. But the one who endures to the end will be saved” (Matthew 10:21–22).
In that same teaching, he said, “34 ‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 36 And a person’s enemies will be those of his own household. 37 Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. 38 And whoever does not take his cross and follow me is not worthy of me. 39 Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it” (Matthew 10:34–39).
In Luke's gospel, we read, “25 Now great crowds accompanied him, and he turned and said to them, 26 ‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.
27 Whoever does not bear his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple…So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple’” (Luke 14:25–27, 33).
Notice, in both of these passages, how quickly Jesus moves from surrendering our families to surrendering our lives. Basic discipleship 101 is that Jesus gets a blank cheque to our lives. We give up everything for Him.
And Jesus wants us to really understand what this means, so he goes for the most precious thing in most people's lives—their family. Especially for his original hearers, who, like many people around the world today, don't live mainly as individuals. Their life, career, beliefs—everything was done together with their family.
And that's a big challenge to following Jesus. Because Jesus says, "Follow me." And what do you do when Jesus says follow me, and your dad, mom, or sisters or brothers say, "No way"? The cultural, the human, the most natural thing to do since childbirth would be to side with your family.
For many people, breaking with their families would feel like death—maybe worse than death. And that's where we realize that picking up our crosses isn't just a metaphor. Following Jesus means that He is so valuable to us that we die to all else for His sake.
Jesus practiced what he preached on this. He had a family that he had grown up with and spent 30 years with as a human. And when his ministry began, they thought he was out of his mind, and in Mark 3:21 they set out to seize him. They were staging an intervention, trying to stop His ministry in its tracks.
And that's the background to this well-known passage: “31 And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, ‘Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.’" And in that culture, what do you do when your mother and brothers are seeking you? You respond!
But instead, "33 .. he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother’” (Mark 3:31–35).
Let's put some pieces together. Jesus is saying that his true family is the household of God. Which, like we've seen, was always the point. The household of God is what human families have always been pictures of. And here, Jesus is faced with a decision to honour his human family or to honour the real thing. To listen to his human mother, or to obey His heavenly Father who had given him this work to do.
And He made a choice. Which meant doing something very radical in that culture: leaving his family outside and ignoring their request.
Now, very importantly, this was not a permanent disowning of his family. We know that because, on the cross, while he was dying, He put John in charge of taking care of his mother (John 19:23-24). As the oldest son, she was His responsibility, and He made sure she was taken care of, and he did that, even as he maintained polite distance by referring to her as "woman" instead of "mother."
So back in Mark 3, this was not "I'm done with you and am never talking to you again." But it was a case of saying no to them when saying yes to them would have meant disobeying His Father who had given Him that work to do.
5. Family and Church
So, let's get to the really specific situation that 1 Samuel has put before us: what happens when we find ourselves in the modern equivalent of an Eli/Hophni/Phinehas situation? What is the New Testament, New Covenant expectation on us?
Well, let's make some distinctions. First, it really matters if our family member is claiming the name of Christ or not. Remember that Matthew 18 and 1 Corinthians 5, the two passages that tell Christians how to deal with Hophnis and Phinehas' in general, are talking about people who are claiming to be followers of Christ.
1 Corinthians 5:9-10 says, “9 I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—10 not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of the world.”
So when a Christian parent has a child or any family member who is not claiming to be a follower of Christ, then these passages don't apply.
What does a Christian do in that kind of situation? No doubt they are going to be grieved, they are going to be heartbroken, but the door of relationship stands wide open. Like with our unbelieving friends or neighbours, we love them, we care for them, we don't endorse their sin, we don't hide our Christianity from them, and we make sure they know that, because we love them, we want them to know Christ.
So with our unbelieving family members, which includes those who might have considered themselves believers at some point in the past. We show them as much love as we can, and when it's appropriate, we show them the ultimate act of love by calling them to repent and turn back to Christ. And if they want to keep on having a relationship with us on those terms, then great. We'll do it.
I'm getting some cues here from 1 Corinthians 7, where Paul talks to people who became Christians after they got married. And he says, “12 …if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him” (1 Corinthians 7:12–13). He goes on to talk about the good influence that such a believer can have on their spouse. In fact, in verse 16, he says, “For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” (1 Corinthians 7:16).
And that's only going to happen if the gospel is being shared and consistently lived out. So, with an unbelieving family member who knows they are an unbeliever? Love them, be an influence on them, and share Christ with them.
Now what happens when the situation is different? When a family member is claiming the name of Christ but is living in persistent, public, unrepentant sin?
God has told us what we, as Christians, should do with any other Christian in that spot. And I'm not going to unpack or defend why Jesus told us to do this—I've done that in other sermons—but just review what's actually said. In Matthew 18, we give them multiple chances to repent, and finally, if they don't listen even to the church, we treat them “as a Gentile and a tax collector” (Matthew 18:17). Which sounds like strange words, but it's a phrase that Jesus' audience would have understood.
Jesus' audience had a clear sense of "insider" and "outsider." And in this situation, "gentile and tax collector" meant "outsider."
It didn't mean "shunning" them or "disowning" them in the sense of pretending they didn't exist, refusing to speak to them, avoiding eye contact when you saw them in public. But it meant you stopped treating them like they were a part of your church. It meant that you didn't act like brothers and sisters in the family of God together.
And here's where 1 Corinthians 5 is helpful as it teaches on the same thing. Verse 11: “But now I am writing to you not to associate with anyone who bears the name of brother if he is guilty of sexual immorality or greed, or is an idolater, reviler, drunkard, or swindler—not even to eat with such a one” (1 Corinthians 5:11).
Eating together in that time and culture was a sign of closeness. It was a sign that things were good between you. And Paul says, when someone bears the name of Christ, and keeps living in unrepentant, public sin, things aren't good between you. And you need to make that clear. So you don't eat with them. You don't "associate" with them, which speaks about mixing or being involved with them.
It doesn't mean not talking to them. We know that because of 2 Thessalonians 3:14, which says, “14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed." "Have nothing to do with them" is using that same word for "associate." Don't mix and mingle with them like everything is fine.
But, verse 15 says: "15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.”
So you're not hanging out with this person, having them over for BBQ and games like it's all fine. But you have no problem sitting down with them to call them back to faithfully following the Lord.
So what happens when we put that together with family? I think that everything we've seen up until now in the Bible, Old and New Testaments, shows us that our family doesn't get a pass just because they are family. Old or New Testament, we do what God has told us to do, and the line doesn't move just because someone is family.
And, at the same time, the example of Jesus shows us that it is possible to do this while still discharging your family duties. He could resist Mary's attempts to interfere with His ministry while still making sure to take care of her.
So let's think of a couple of examples of what this might look like. Let's say you had a grandparent who committed adultery and refused to repent, and was disciplined by their church, just picked a new church to go to, and kept right on acting like they're a Christian and everything is fine.
You could go to them and say something like, "Grandpa, what you've done here is so wrong, and your actions don't line up at all with someone who says they follow Christ. So our relationship is going to change. I can't treat you like a Christian. I can't just come hang out like everything is fine. I can't come celebrate Christmas—Christ's birth—with you as if we're still on the same team.
But anytime you need a ride to your doctor's appointment, I'll come pick you up, because 1 Timothy 5 tells me to care for my relatives and I'm still going to do that."
And he calls you, and you go pick him up, and you sit with him in the doctor's office, and when you drop him off at home and he says "come on in for a cup of coffee" like everything is fine, you say "No, grandpa, unless you want to talk about the issues here. But I'm praying for you. Let me know if I can get anything from the grocery store for you."
Now, I'm not pulling this script right from the pages of Scripture. But what I'm trying to do here is sketch out what it might look like to listen to all of God's word, and, like Jesus, know when to say yes and when to say no.
Think of a tougher situation. Think about a wife of a man who has been disciplined by the church—and she agrees with the church. She knew her husband was in sin, and she voted with everybody else to remove him from membership and treat him like an unbeliever.
She's a member of that church, which means she's made a covenant to be the body of Christ with them. But she's also his wife, which means she's made vows to him. Can she do both? I think so. It won't be easy at all. It will feel like constant tension. But I think she can say, "I can't treat you like a Christian, but I'm still your wife. I will pray for you, but no longer with you."
What does that look like on a daily basis? Does she still eat meals with him? Paul said not to eat with such a one. But in the context of a marriage, I don't think that eating a meal together means the same thing as any two other people eating together. A husband and wife eating breakfast together is different than the guy and his grandpa, or even a big family holiday meal. It's not a celebration that says "we're okay with each other;" it's an expectation, a duty even, for people who have made marriage vows to each other.
But I'll be honest here again—I'm uncomfortable getting too specific with these situations and saying "this is exactly how to do it" right now. All I'm doing is showing what it might look like to apply the commands and the wisdom of the Bible to some tough situations that the Bible does not directly address. Each situation and each relationship is going to have slightly different nuances to it.
"What do these truths look like in my unique situation?" is a question for you to have in your small group, or maybe over a cup of coffee in my office sometime if you want to make that happen.
What I can say for sure, with all of the authority of God's word, is that in any of these situations, if God's word does apply clearly to our situation, we should do what He's said. If God's word has wisdom for our situation, we'll apply it as closely and as obediently as we can, even if it means making some hard decisions and saying some hard things. Because all we are belongs to Jesus, and His way is always best. Best for us, and even best for the people we are having to make hard decisions with.
It's maybe not a coincidence that yesterday, before I started working on some of this message, I read a post that Tom Schreiner, a respected biblical scholar and theologian, had posted just the day before. He wrote, “It is tempting to compromise when our kids stray from the Lord since we love them so much. But when we do this, we are falling into idolatry (putting our kids above the Lord), & we hinder our children from coming back to the Lord since we implicitly bless their sin.”
And then he referenced Matthew 10:37: “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matthew 10:37).
So it really does come back to Jesus. We want Jesus, and we want to love Jesus more than anything else—because He's loved us more than anything else. He made us a part of His family when we were rebels against Him. Could it be that some of the hard conversations we might have as we obey Him could be the means of drawing some of His straying children back to Himself? May it be.