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This is why God will not forsake His people.

Good beginnings are worthless without a strong ending.

Jesus is not just a beloved character from a book. He's really alive.

Good Friday is a time to celebrate, not mourn.

Saul’s fear is not humility. Jesus’s humility is not fear.

God is telling a story. We might not be able to guess the ending, but that doesn't mean He's not in control.

One of God's strategies is to bring the greatest good through the worst evils... How may He do that in your life?

"Here I raise my Ebenezer."

We become what we worship. Is that good news or bad news for us?

God can handle Himself. Isn't it good, though, that He wants to use us?

God keeps His promises. Even the ones we wish He wouldn't.

Passage: 1 Samuel 3:10-18 | Message By: Chris Hutchison | Series: The Rise and Fall of the House of Saul - 1 Samuel 1-15How 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,

When we encounter something in the Bible, whether we're reading it or hearing it being faithfully preached, and we don't like what we hear for one reason or another, how do we respond?

As we think about our participation in the life of the church, do we think like priests in a holy temple whose priority is offering God acceptable worship, or do we think like consumers in a buffet line, coming in with the big fork to take the best for ourselves and leave the rest behind?

Samuel spent his days being taught, not by pop culture, but by older, godly people. He made the best use of time by learning good things from these people—things that lasted more than a few seconds or minutes.