Dysfunctional Families
August 12, 2012 Evening Service
Immanuel Baptist Church, Wagoner, OK
Rick Boyne
Message Point: We must rise above our dysfunctions to love and support each other.
Focus Passage: 2 Samuel 13:15-22
Supplemental Passage: Therefore, confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another so that you may be healed. The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much. (James 5:16 NASB)
Introduction: Relate the personal story of my daughter’s first car, a 1970 VW Beetle. While it was cute and a collector car, it wouldn’t run right. Even though it had been a gift from her grandparents, it cost as much in repairs as a new car would have cost in payments. While it had brakes, the brakes weren’t installed properly and the car would pull to the left so hard that it put you in oncoming traffic. While it had a fancy radio, we didn’t have an owner’s manual and we could just barely figure out how to save a station. When you turned hard to the right, the radio would quit working altogether. It had a brand new battery, but often wouldn’t start because of other electrical system problems. Twice it caught fire. Only I could move the front seat forward or backward, and it would often recline, on its own, at the most inopportune moments. The blinker mechanism broke. I replaced it, but could never get the horn to honk after that. We should have known something was up when the man we bought it from, brought over the tow bar he had installed on the front bumper!
I. A Dysfunctional Father
a. King David was a bad example of sexual purity
b. King David learned about the rape, was angry, but didn’t do anything about it
c. Why didn’t the king deal with the problem?
II. Dysfunctional Siblings
a. Amnon tricked his half sister and raped her, then sent her away and hated her
b. Absalom told Tamar to keep it a secret
c. Tamar kept it a secret
d. Absalom held a grudge against Amnon resulting in his murder
III. A Dysfunctional System
a. The family continued, but outside of what is considered “normal”
b. The family ignored the problems and it all boiled over in the end
c. When families ignore problems, they function, but outside the boundaries of what pleases God
Invitation:
