Skip to main content

Family First?



  Samuel had watched as the sons of Eli defiled the sacrifice of the Lord. He was around to know how Eli warned, scolded and begged with his boys to straighten up. He also knew how they had ignored Eli.

  Samuel was the one thru whom God proclaimed the end of Eli families’ reign as priests since Eli had not heeded God’s earlier warning and disciplined his sons. He knew of the fate Eli, a man broken when he heard his son’s death and the loss of the ark.

  Samuel had seen what happens when a man serving the Lord forgets to instill that in his offspring. When he doesn’t bring up his children ‘in the discipline and instruction of the Lord’.  Yet, he went and did it himself

And it came about when Samuel was old that he appointed his sons judges over Israel….. His sons, however, did not walk in his ways, but turned aside after dishonest gain and took bribes and perverted justice.
1 Samuel 8:1,3

 How could the one who had seen it happen and knew the consequences fall into the same mistake? I guess he was just like all of us. It’s easier to see sin and fault in others but not in ourselves and our own.


  Family is a great blessing but it is never to be put before God (Luke 14:26, Deuteronomy 13:6-8). While it might be easy to make exceptions for family, in the long run, it brings pain and misery. In our desire to keep them close, we might just be leading them to destruction.

Discipline your son while there is hope, And do not desire his death.

Proverbs 19:18

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Mighty Gulf

  It is hard to get people on two sides of an issue to come together. Each has their own viewpoint, their perceptive, their own foibles, their own understanding.  To gain any common ground there must be something in common. Something or someone that can bridge the gulf between the two.   Could there be a greater gulf than there was between God and man? How could a holy perfect God find a way to connect to the fallen, imperfect mankind? How can one without temptation connect to those who are beset by it? How could limited mortal beings understand an omnipotent eternal God?   In 1 Timothy 2:5, we read, “ For there is one God, and one mediator also between God and men, the man Christ Jesus .” The phrase mediator here describes a person that bridges the gap, a go-between. Jesus was one who could stand in both worlds. A perfect holy one who can understand our temptations, a man who would die yet live eternally, One who was God yet became flesh and dwelt among us. ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...
Post a Comment
Read more