Title: Pass It On-Respect
Place: BLCC
Date:6/15/2014
Text: 1 Samuel 2.12-29
CT: May all who come behind us find us faithful in our respect to God.
Mother’s Day
FAS: We live in a fast-paced culture, but some things just ought to happen slowly.
The book Final Salute tells the story of Major Steve Beck, a U.S. Marine whose heart-wrenching task is to inform the nearest of kin when a Marine is killed in Iraq. Beck doesn't just break the sad news and then leave; for several days he may help the family through the process of the funeral. That includes supervising the Marine honor guard that stands near the fallen soldier's body.
The honor guard learns from Beck how to salute their fallen fellow-Marine as they leave or resume guard with a slow salute that isn't taught in basic training. The slow salute requires a three second raising of the hand to the head, a three second hold, and then a three second lowering of the hand—a gesture of respect that takes about nine times longer than normal. Beck explains: "A salute to your fallen comrade should take time."
Indeed, those who die serving their country are worthy of great honor, worthy of a slow salute, worthy of extra time. To do some things fast, just to get them done so we can move on to the next thing in our lives, sends a subtle message of disrespect.
So it is with our worship of God. God deserves a slow salute. The Savior who gave his life for us is worthy of our time and our best effort.
LS. How we worship at church and by putting God first in our lives in all things demonstrates volumes to those coming behind us.
This week we are dealing with the respect we are to have for one another and God. Our job as Christian adults and leaders is to pass the baton of our faith to those who come behind us. If the baton is dropped the consequences can be eternal.
We must show in our faith, respect for God and his Son’s church. We as parents and Christian adults must teach this respect to those coming behind us. We must teach them about authority.
1.Divine authority-Matthew 28.18, Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me.” That authority is delegated to three other spheres of authority on earth.
i.Civil authority-Romans 13.1-7. Paul tells us to submit to civil authorities. 1 Peter 2.13, 13 Submit yourselves for the Lord’s sake to every human authority: whether to the emperor, as the supreme authority, 14 or to governors, who are sent by him to punish those who do wrong and to commend those who do right.
ii.Church authority-Hebrews 13.17, Have confidence in your leaders and submit to their authority, because they keep watch over you as those who must give an account. Do this so that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that would be of no benefit to you.
iii.Parental authority-Ephesians 6.1-3, 1 Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. 2 “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— 3 “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.”
We live in a time when all types of authority are disrespected. God is mocked and people question his existence. Government officials are not trusted. Police are seen as the enemy rather than protectors of society. Even the church, a once respected source of moral authority is ridiculed for its stand on God’s ideal as the standard we should live by.
But the home is where respect is truly strengthened or weakened. “As the home goes, so goes the nation.”
B. Once again we find in our text today an example of what not to do.
1 Samuel 2.12-17, Although Eli’s sons, Hophni and Phineas served as priests, they were really worthless men with no understanding or respect for God or of their priestly duties. When someone presented meat as a ritual offering to the Lord, the priest would send a servant with a three-pronged fork to probe around in the pot or kettle as the sacrifice boiled; and whatever he brought up with the fork, the priest would keep as his own. They did this at Shiloh to all the Israelites who came to sacrifice. 15The priest’s servant would even tell those who were going to burn fat as a sacrifice,
Servant: Give the priest meat to roast. He won’t accept boiled meat from you, only raw meat.
16And if the worshiper protested, saying the priest could take whatever he wanted after the fat was burned, the servant would say,
Servant: Give it to me now; if necessary, it will be taken from you by force.
17Because they despised the God’s ritual offerings, God judged that the sons of Eli had sinned greatly.
Eli was an important man in Israel. He was a priest and a judge. He had led Israel for forty years and was respected as a man who represented God to the people. He believed in God and followed his commands.
His sons, Hophni and Phineas took the same career path as their father, but the comparison ends there. They did not respect God. Although they were children of a priest and a priest by profession, their hearts were far from God.
They did not respect the house of God. Priests were to receive a portion of the meat sacrificed to the temple. It was spelled out how to do this in Lev.7.28-36. The problem for Eli was his sons did not follow these rules because they wanted the best and most for themselves. We read in v.15, But even before the fat was burned, the servant of the priest would come and say to the man who was sacrificing, “ Give the priest some meat to roast, he won’t accept boiled meat from you, but only raw.”
You see taking their portion before the fat was burned allowed the sons to take a bigger and more valuable portion of the meat. They were stealing from God. If the person giving the offering protested, he was threatened with force. They were making a mockery of these people’s worship of God. God was not pleased.
In v.17 we read, This sin of the young men was very great in the Lord’s sight, for they were treating the Lord ’s offering with contempt.
C. They did not respect other people
1 Samuel 2.22-25. 22 Eli, who had grown old and tired, heard what his sons were doing to all those Israelites who came to Shiloh to perform their sacrifices. He heard that they were even having sexual relations with the women who worked at the door of the meeting tent.
Eli (to his sons): 23 Why do you do such horrible things? The people have told me about all the evil you have done. 24 No, my sons, I do not hear good words spoken about you by the people of God. But Eli’s sons did not listen to his words, for God had already decided to destroy them.
These sons of Eli were supposed to be the leaders of this community. They were engaging in sinful practices with the women who served at the tabernacle. Rather than leading by the example of godly lives they were using their position to gratify their own desires. Everyone knew it.
They did not respect their father. The basis for their disrespect of God and others was their total disrespect of Eli, their father. He rebuked them but it had no effect on them.
Bottom line Eli was a weak father. Look at it this way. Here were his sons showing no respect for God, they were basically stealing from God, threatening God’s people with violence and sleeping with the temple servant girls. What does Eli do? He says, “I’ve been hearing some bad things about you.”
What! The least that should have been done by Eli was to fire them from their priestly positions. Nothing was done. There were no consequences, at least none from Eli.
II Day of Reckoning 1 Samuel 2.27-
A. 27A man sent by the God came to Eli.
Man: This is the message of God : “I made Myself known to your family when Israel was enslaved under Pharaoh in Egypt. I chose your ancestor Aaron from among all the tribes of Israel to be My priest: to serve at the altar, to offer incense, and to wear the priestly vest in My presence. And I repaid your family by presenting them with all the offerings made to Me by fire from all the people of Israel. Why do you look with such greedy eyes on all the sacrifices and offerings I have directed the people to bring to My house? Why do you honor your sons more than you honor Me by feasting on the choicest parts of every single offering made by My people Israel?” Therefore the Eternal God of Israel declares: “I promised that your family would go in and out of My presence forever. But now I surely declare, those who honor Me I will honor, but people who choose to despise Me, I, in turn, will consider contemptible: those who hate Me will not matter to Me. 31Look, the time approaches when I will cut away your strength and the strength of your family, so that none of you will live to old age. 32Then, in agony, you will see all the good things I do for Israel; there will be great distress, and no one in your family will live to old age ever again. 33“ Any of your family not cut off will grieve continually and will cry their eyes out. All the other members of your household will die violently in the prime of life. The fate of your sons Hophni and Phinehas will be a sign of the future. Both of them will die on the very same day.
Pretty sad way for Eli to end up. Obviously he had dropped the baton when he tried to instill in his sons the values and respect they were to need to serve as God’s priests. Maybe his ministry had become more important than his family. Maybe he put work before his kids like a lot of folks do today. The consequences were severe. The eternal consequences for not passing the baton of faith and respect can be just as severe.
Eli learned too late that his passive attitude toward his sons was not the most loving thing he could have done for them. God kept his promise and both sons died at a young age on the same day.
We read in 1 Samuel 4.17-18, The man who brought the news said, “Israel fled before the Philistines, and the army has suffered heavy losses. Also your two sons, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God has been captured.” When he mentioned the ark of God, Eli fell backward off his chair by the side of the gate. His neck was broken and he died, for he was an old man, and he was heavy. He had led Israel forty years.
What a sad story this is. Though parents have the greatest challenge, all Christian adults have the responsibility to teach respect for authority to those who come behind us.
III. A How do we pass the baton of respect?
A. Second-hand stress is a big problem for kids. In a recent survey, researcher Ellen Galinsky interviewed more than 1,000 children in grades 3-12 and asked them, "If you were granted one wish to change the way your mother's/father's work affects your life, what would that wish be?" Kid's answers were striking. They rarely wished for extra face time with their parents. Instead, they wished that their parents would be less stressed out and tired. But the parents in the survey were completely out of touch. Virtually none guessed that their kids would use their one wish to reduce their stress.
Galinsky then asked the children to grade their parents on a dozen scales. Overall, the parents came out with high marks from their kids. Moms had an overall GPA of 3.14 and dads got an average grade of 2.98. But anger management was most parents' Achilles heel. More than 40 percent of kids gave their moms and dads a C, D, or F for "controlling his/her temper when I do something that makes him/her angry." That was the worst rating on the parental report card.
Adapted from Bryan D. Caplan, Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, (Basic Books, 2011), pp. 32-33
B. This leads to the first point on respect. Respect should be earned not merely demanded. Bursts of anger and frustration do not help us gain respect from our children.
Leonardo Da Vinci said something pretty profound. “He who truly knows has no occasion to shout.” Our children will respect us if we give them confidence that we believe and truly know the standards we expect of them. As a model of respect an adult who constantly tries to avoid getting caught for speeding and then degrades the policeman for stopping him teaches the children he has influence over something about respect. Adults who constantly criticize and complain about decisions the church leaders make are demonstrating something about respect for the authority of the church.
Point 2. Disrespect must be corrected. If respect for authority is not taught at home it will rarely be learned outside the home. There must be consistency and communication. Specifics.
Point 3. Friendship should not be achieved until adulthood. We as parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, etc. tend to want to be buddies with the children in our family and church.
John 15.15, I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.
Jesus was not ready to call his disciples friends until they were ready. They had gone through a process to have that type of relationship with him.
Children have to go through a process as well. The Ezzo’s in their book on raising Godly children use the method of discipleship.
a. First phase is discipline (birth to age 5). You have to gain the control to be able to train him or her.
b. Second phase is training (6-12). Similar to a trainer working with an athlete. The child is stopped and corrected as needed.
c. The third phase is coaching (13-19). Children are entering the game of life themselves. We can send in advice from the sidelines, but they have to play the game of life themselves.
d. The last phase is friendship.
Problems arise any time phases are skipped in this process. I know this may not jive with a lot of people who feel the modern family is to be different.
Perhaps Eli’s sons did not respect him for the same reasons. He attempted to avoid conflict with them and be their friend. As a result he lost their respect for himself and anyone else including God.
The Ezzos write in their book. “Parents who try to be buddies early with their child only succeed in raising a fool.”
Moms have to be the mom and dads have to be the dad.
It has been said that parents and Christian adult’s role is to give the next generation roots so that they might grow wings and fly. The roots of discipline must proceed the wings of freedom. When a person learns early to respect parents, legal authorities, the church and God, then a lifetime of productive service will be the result. And we are left, not with the regrets of Eli, but with children who serve and love the Lord.
CT: May All Who Come Behind Us Find Us Faithful In Our Respect To God
Conclusion: How do we demonstrate our respect to God. Does he get a slow salute or just a nippy acknowledgement on the Sundays we make it to church. Does he get our best or does he get what we have left over after we get what we want. God has to come first if we are going to pass the baton of faith on to the next generation. If God is not first, think about what the eternal consequences can be. If you are yet to accept Christ? If you need to come today and make him first by humbly submitting to the baptism of grace and forgiveness? Now is the time as we sing together.
