Parenting Can Be Messy

we obsess with immediate gratification over long-term discipline and long-term results that's what our phones are we get dopamine hits when we open our phones and we see things and we want things now we don't want to do the hard work of a discipline that takes a long time for paying off dividends it's come up hugely in our parenting one of the hardest things to deal with is [Music] children uh but we are so glad that you are here as we continue on in this series and talking about the messes of our families and today we're going to talk about the mess of parenting now here's what I have for you today before we get started is if you are a perfect parent if you have all your stuff together if you are like "No I got it i'm good." Leave all right cuz the rest of us are jacked up and we're going to have a little therapeutic session through God's word together as we talk about parenting and if you have your Bible you can flip open to 1st Samuel chapter 2 and that's where we're really going to be diving into to see kind of the messiness that comes through in our parenting and in life and this is not a new issue but if you're honest you always want to give off the best impression of your parenting you want to show the best of your families most of us we want to post pictures like this all right can you guys say a that's my beautiful wife my four amazing children this was on Mother's Day here at Cross Church uh this was actually a candid shot of as they're trying to pose one of our church photographers got this and I posted this one online what I did not post is this one all right tears too bright arlo finally the little boy smiles when he's not supposed to be smiling when no one else is and then my wife taking a deep breath and saying "All I want for Mother's Day is one picture where they're all smiling and she's coming to the realization she might not get that." Okay and our families are messy maybe your family more often feels something like this right you've experienced these moments anyone ever had a blue kid before oh that just gives me like that makes me hurt just looking at it cuz I know when you scrub your kid in the bath after that permanent marker's on it's not coming off like they're blue for a week all right um there's a lot of bass that are involved in that but if we're honest our families get messy our our families get hard and sometimes as a parent it's easy to feel like you've missed the mark easy to feel like maybe you're not doing what's best for your children and today as we come to 1 Samuel chapter 2 the comfort we're going to get is this is not a new issue but this is an issue that's been happening for many years but in this we also face some conviction right off the bat and as we dive into God's text here's kind of a biblical test that we're going to talk about when it comes to our parenting and how do we know if we're successful as a parent or we're failing as a parent and here this is this might cut straight to your heart but stay with us as we're going to walk through this together is the success of our parenting is seen in the character of our children the success of our parenting is seen in the character of our children now hear that is it's not seen in the success by a worldly standard of your children this the success of your parent and isn't whether or not your kid becomes rich or they become famous or they come into some model of what our world's seen it's do they have a character that lasts and if we're honest there's a lot of people we see in our culture that lack character and as we dive in here today in 1st Samuel chapter 2 we're going to starting in verse 12 we see this biblical test put to Eli right away and it says this that Eli's sons were wicked men all right we're we're starting off in a good place it's already saying these kids they're jerks all right uh Eli's sons were wicked men they did not respect the Lord or the priest's share of the sacrifices from the people when anyone offered a sacrifice the priest's servant uh would come with a three-pronged meat fork while the meat was boiling and they would plunge it in the container kettle cauldron or cooking pot the priest would claim for himself whatever the meat fork brought up this is the way they treated all the Israelites who came there to Shiloh verse 15 even before the fat was burned the priest servant would come and say to the one who was sacrificing give the priest some meat to roast because he won't accept boiled meat from you only raw if the person said to him the fat must be burned first this was following the rituals of that day then you can take whatever you want for yourself the servant would reply this is Eli's wicked sons no I insist that you hand it over right now if you don't I'll take it by force so the servant's sin his sons was very severe in the presence of the Lord because the men treated the Lord's offering with contempt you see Eli he failed as a parent because of the character of his sons and as we walk through and we're going to get a sneak peek into how Eli parent and where he fell short it really begs this question that comes up is how did Eli fail his children how did he fall short in what God had for him and how did he mess up his kids to where they were at this point now let me give you a little caveat because maybe you hear this and you're either like encouraged or you're depressed right now okay and and let me say this is like parenting has a huge impact but there are godly amazing parents who have raised kids in the right way and they have made bad choices that have put them in a weward path and inexplicably and by God's grace there have been terrible parents who have not done anything to raise their children in the right path but God has intervened and they've made good choices that have put them on a godly path and a great character so it's not always a straightforward answer but I think we see in a practical sense and through the biblical narrative as a whole that our parenting impacts greatly the success and how our kids will turn out in the character they possess now as we go through this we're we're going to see some revealing parts of Eli's life and even in that first blurb I don't know about you you read that and it probably makes your stomach turn a little bit you see Eli was a priest or a pastor uh in that time he was overseeing the temple his sons were PKs they were supposed to be models and helpers instead they were stealing from offering plates essentially we don't know what offering plates are postco anymore used to pass a plate right and then you feel guilty if you didn't like put any money in the plate so you'd like pretend to throw something in and it was just like an old receipt you're like you know throwing in there um now we have give boxers so less judgment from the people around you right you don't even have to but like they were stealing from offering plates they were going and they were terrorizing the people inside the church they were like the worst pastor kids you could ever want and but we see it wasn't just some one-off thing that just all of a sudden they woke up one day and decided to be to act this way but that there is problems that Eli presented and how he was parenting through this and the first failure we see of Eli is that he practiced passive work over engaged parenting pick up in verse 18 as we continue down this it says Samuel served in the Lord's presence now throughout the beginning chapters of this book of 2 Samuel uh Samuel is or first Samuel Samuel is the character of this and we see Eli's wicked sons but then we see this other boy who is devoted to serving the Lord and his his mom prayed for him his mom prepped him for this and we're going to see hair influence on this and it's called 1 Samuel so you know Samuel actually turns out pretty well in this story and it's here we see him contrast to these boys who are wreaking havoc samuel instead served in the Lord's presence this mere boy was dressed in the linen ephod each year his mother made him a little robe and took it to him when she went with her husband to offer the annual sacrifice eli would bless Alana that is Samuel's father and his wife and say "May the Lord give you children by this woman in place of the one she's given to the Lord." Then they would go home the Lord paid attention to Hannah's need and she conceived and gave birth to three sons and two daughters meanwhile the boy Samuel grew up in the presence of the Lord notice the contrast here we see this while Eli's sons are out wreaking havoc around them Samuel is growing up properly and and who does this text mention uh for him it mentions Samuel's mother Hannah and Hannah is actively engaged in her life she prayed that God would bless him and God actually says "Dvote her child." And she gives her child to the temple to be raised but then she visits regularly she brings him a nice linen ephod like a new top of her beginning of the year school clothes all right i picked out your school clothes from Target i got you a linen ephod here you know change out your clothes every now once in a while this past week my wife posted a or she took a picture of my kids she had a first day of school picture and a last day of school picture and it had like all their stats on it like height weight like you know smarts I don't know um and apparently it's a thing cuz I saw like 30 other pictures on Instagram doing exactly the same thing but we see Samuel's mother Hannah she cares for him she loves him she's praying for him she's staying connected to him even though he's serving in the temple eli on the other hand he seems to be passively watching from the sidelines his boy grow up and he's so busy with his ministry work that he's neglecting the most important ministry his family i think this speaks directly to our culture today according to recent studies the average parent spends less than 10 minutes a day in meaningful conversations with their children and there's studies show that we're working more hours than ever to provide more things for our kids while giving them less of what they actually need ourselves i've had to confront this in my own life too it's easy for me as a pastor to justify like I got to do God's work i got to be in charge i got to be involved in everything at the church i I had a mentor once tell me he's like "Hey this isn't like a normal job it's not a 9 to5." And and I'm like "Okay cool." He's like "You work a 9 to5?" I'm like "All right I'm listening." He's like "Then you put your kids to bed and then you go back to church after." I'm like "Like like all the time." He's like "As much as you can." And like as I was thinking through I'm like "Okay I'll be involved in stuff but there's a lot of things that happen in my church." And people are people ask me like "Hey what's this or what time does this mean?" I'm like "I have no idea you're asking the wrong person." Okay if you think I'm going to know everything that's going on in our church I do not okay um I have a good idea but I I can't know everything and I'm not going to be involved in every single ministry and I made a choice very early on that my family is the first thing God has called me to not my congregation and here Eli he he's doing God's work he He's doing what God called him to but his family has been put on the back burner and is suffering because of it you look at our world today I think we've had a weird shift happen and I don't have data to back this up this is more observational kind of cultural trends we're seeing more and more happening but in baby boomers and and Gen Xers they worked so hard and so many hours to provide so much stuff for their families to make sure they had no needs and could live out the dreams they had for them but in the process of doing that they weren't around for their kids now my generation millennials have taken an overcorrection and we said "Hey we're not going to work a lot of hours we're barely going to work and we're just going to spend all the time with our family." but they neglect some of the things of like working hard and building a career and then Gen Z's growing up in knowing not which way to go and just be like I'm just going to scroll my phone all day cuz that's what I know what to do and I think we're in a crisis of parenting and navigating this that is as old as time that there is this balance to be had how do we work hard to make sure we provide for our families to make sure our families are without need they have what they need but also being actively engaged in their life but we see Eli's failures continue not only was he not engaged with his kids but we also see that he preached empty threats over consistent discipline keep going in verse 22 it says "Now Eli was very old he heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel." Okay this is probably not the first time that Eli has heard this he's probably heard this over and over again of like being like "Hey do you know your sons are jerks hey do you know your sons are jerks hey they're getting even jerkier like are you going to do something about this Eli?" He knew this was a problem but it wasn't addressed and and listen it gets worse he heard about his sons everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they were sleeping with the women who served at the entrance of the tent of meeting he said to them this is being Eli to his sons "Why are you doing these things i have heard about your evil actions from all these people know my sons the news I hear the Lord's people spreading is not good if one person sins against another God can intercede for him what if a person sins against the Lord who can intercede for him but they would not listen to their father since the Lord intended to kill them you know what I find interesting in scripture it doesn't always give us like you know exclamation points and a lot of things but there are times when it says like someone said angrily like something burned inside them or it's said with emphasis and here you read this Eli's just a chill old guy no exclamation points no anger no malice no flipping tables Jesus style he's just like "Guys I heard you've done some bad things and it needs to stop." And these grownup sons who had probably heard their dad never really get after them cuz if he did it probably would have taken a path all of a sudden it just becomes white noise behind them and you see they've gotten worse and worse before we hear early in the chapter they were stealing from God's offering plates but now they're going as far as they are sexually exploiting women who serve inside the church and this is horrific behavior especially for priests inside the church and what is Eli's response a mild verbal rebuke and we see in this that there's no real discipline there's there's no real action being taken it's just words and predictably his sons just ignore him as I read this last week I felt extremely convicted because I confess before you i am a yeller as a parent okay like when I kids like I I only I I'm pretty I try to be patient and I'm not the most patient person but I quick like my I get a little angry too fast so I've had to work on that like how do I go slow to anger and then erupt at the right time right but I'll make empty threats i'll be like I'm going to you know I'll like I'm going to spank you or I'm going to spray your mouth we have apple cider vinegar to spray your kids mouth okay it's awesome they hate it okay um like one of my sons will like spit on the floor like on the like carpet i'm like I have to clean that later spit outside okay um but I'm like I'll be like I'm going to burn all your Pokemon cards okay i've yet to had a Pokémon card bonfire all right but we Something me and my wife have talked about Hi um have talked about over the years is how do we be more structured and how do we make sure when we say something we have the discipline to follow it up and we're not just saying it over and over and over again cuz our kids are smart and your kids are smart they know when you say something and you don't follow through they're like "Oh yeah mom and dad are a pushover i can just keep doing what I want i can keep testing these boundaries i can keep going with this negative behavior." And then guess what they grow up to be giant jerks like Eli's sons and we see this is just a microcosm of this is is we don't know what it looked like throughout his childhood but we know that there probably wasn't the heavy hand there because even in his old age Eli had the authority to remove them as priests but he didn't he could have had the consequences come down he could have enforced something but he chose the path of least resistance a verbal rebuke that his sons had likely heard many times before and just kept on ignoring and we see Eli failed and and having something meaningful be attached behind his empty threats but we see his failure continues as he prioritized shallow relationships over generational building keep going in verse 26 it says "By contrast," I love this "the boy Samuel grew in stature and in favor with the Lord and with people a man of God came to Eli and said to him "This is what the Lord says didn't I reveal myself to your forefather's family when they were in Egypt and they belonged to Pharaoh's palace out of all the tribes I chose your house Eli to be my priests to offer sacrifices on my altar to burn incense and to wear an ephod in my presence i also gave your forefather's family all the Israelite food offerings in verse 29 this is so revealing this is God talking through someone else not talking through Eli but talking through someone else to rebuke Eli and in verse 29 he says this why then do all of you he's including Eli in this despise my sacrifices and offerings that I require at the place of worship you have honored your sons more than me by making yourselves fat with the best part of all the offerings of my people Israel you see here's the heart of the issue that God gets to in the failure of Eli's parenting is ultimately he honored his sons more than he honored God and Eli was prioritizing his relationship with his sons over his relationship with God and here's the way he did it is it's like you're like well it doesn't seem like he was even actively engaged you said he was passive he wasn't even like involved in rebuking and disciplining him but here's where I think Eli failed is he didn't want to upset his boys even when they were blatantly sinning he wanted to be their friend more than he wanted to be their father he was more concerned about maintaining peace in his home than about integrity in their hearts and this is actually a huge move in our world today uh child family therapists have called this the friendship model of parenting the friendship model of parenting is instead of trying to be their parent you want to be their friends and listen you want your kids to love you that there is nothing worse and I'm not even at the teenage years so I'm bracing for that okay my oldest is 8 years old i know it's going to get so much worse but there are going to be those times where you discipline your kid and they say "I don't want to live here." They might say "I hate you." They might say those words that they do not mean but the little sinful flesh comes out of them and that pierces your heart and no parent wants to hear that no parent welcomes those conversations and Eli when he was faced with having that tension in those conversations he ran the other way and said "I'd rather just keep the peace i'd rather be friends with you than to be your father." But here's the thing is they've even shown today in statistics that that friendship model of parenting is actually contributed significantly to rising anxiety in behavioral issues you don't say and you see here our our world has tried to embrace this idea that is such an old sinful mind is I just want to be friends with my kids when sometimes you need to be your parent to your kids and it's going to hurt you're going to have tension but God ultimately honors that but this leads to our last failure we see in our text today is how Eli pursued fleeting pleasures over holy purpose pick up in verse 30 he says "Therefore this is the declaration of the Lord the God of Israel i did say that your family and your forefather's family would walk before me forever god's saying to Eli he's like "Hey I said you'd always be with me you would you'd be part of this you would walk with me i would use your family to do my work but now because of your actions because of your son's actions because of your passivity in your family but now this is the Lord's declaration no longer." God doesn't say that no longer they put an exclamation point there this is God the Father coming out and he says "For those who honor me I will honor i will honor but those who despise me will be disgraced look the days are coming when I will cut off your strength in the strength of your forefather's family so that none in your family will reach old age you will see distress in the place of worship in spite of all that is good in Israel and no one in your family will ever again reach old age." This is some Old Testament God here okay verse 33 any man from your family I do not cut off from my altar will bring grief and sadness to you all your descendants will die violently this will be the sign that you that will come to you concerning your two sons Hoffne and Phineas the sons we've been talking about this whole time both of them will die on the same day you see these verses they reveal that part of the problem wasn't just Eli's sons but it was Eli himself you go to verse 29 and it talks about the sacrifices and the misuse of the sacrifices and and his family including Eli himself they despised God with how they attempted to honor him and they were stealing the fat of those sacrifices and the way they were handling it they were indulging in the same wrong priorities as his sons just to a lesser degree and one of the things we've said throughout scripture that we see is what we do in the minimum our kids usually do in the maximum you see this in David's life is he sinned in lust in the minimum and his son Solomon just said "Hey look what I can do." And it just destroyed his life but here because of Eli his sin because of his son's greater sin God now pronounces judgment on Eli's entire family line this story specifically mentions that Eli and his family as we mentioned with these sacrifices were specifically fattening themselves on the sacrifices and and here's what's important of that is they chose immediate physical gratification over spiritual legacy they were living their lives for the moment rather than for all of eternity eli cared more about keeping the peace with his sons now rather than doing something greater for God i think our culture we've said this over and over and over again falls into this trap where we obsess with immediate gratification over long-term discipline and long-term results you want a case study of it that's what our phones are we get dopamine hits when we open our phones and we see things and we want things now and now and now and we don't want to do the hard work of a discipline that takes a long time for paying off dividends it's come up hugely in our parenting one of the hardest things to deal with is children i think that's the end of the line right um I don't know what else to say about uh but children and children in public okay me and my wife we don't go to a lot to a sit down restaurant because we got you know a lot of kids and little kids and uh we go to a sit down restaurant and it's hard to keep their attention for very long all right we like bring a bag full of activities like we give one out they're like done i'm like we haven't even ordered yet all right give them another one done with that one too i'm like can you take longer on coloring the picture or like being intent for this but one of the things my wife and I refuse to do in those moments is give him our phone or give him an iPad and say like "Keep the piece you'll be happy and and I'm being real and and if there's some conviction that comes in here uh no this is not said in a judgmental way this is said in a loving and graceful way because I believe our culture has divided and delegated our parenting to tablets and social media for the quick easy fixes than the long-term discipline of trying to parent kids when it is oh so hard amen and Eli failed and showed us this thousands of years ago that he fell into the same trap he didn't want to fight the battles with his kids of knowing at times they would be mad at times they would embarrass him in public at times they would kind of draw on him and make him go crazy and want to rip his hair off he didn't have those hard conversations of tension instead he just simply did everything he could to keep the peace so this is a lot and this is heavy and maybe you like me less after all this okay just kidding i hope I hope so um but here's the real question how do we apply this how do we take all of Eli's failures and see how he didn't just do the right things as a dad how do we do this and how do we attempt to apply this in our life and put this into practice in our parenting well four things that I think we've walked through and I just want to kind of re-emphasize and talk about one more time and kind of give you this is your action steps if you're a parent in the room of how do I take this forward is first is choose engaged parenting over passive presence it's not about quantity of time alone it is good to be with your kids a lot but it is about the quality of time when you are with them you can be with your kids scrolling on your phone you can be with your kids and be like I'm queuing up 70 blueies we're going to knock this thing out right on the couch which is a quality time watching Blue together okay but it's like you can be with your kid without being with your kid and engaged with them and choose to be engaged in your parenting rather than just passing the time and watching the clock until bedtime i know I am guilty of that practice consistent discipline over empty threats our children need to know that our words have meaning and our boundaries are real when we show that we don't have true boundaries when we won't follow through on our words and have real consequences our kids know that and they will push that prioritize generational impact over shallow peace choose the hard conversations live in the tension of those moments that your kids seem to despise you for in the moment but that build character and even create uh something greater in the years to come and lastly pursue holy purpose over fleeting pleasures model for your children what it means to live for something better than something immediate it's great to have a nice house it's great to have things that comfort us to go on vacations and none of those things are bad but when we live for that stuff rather than living on purpose for Christ and his kingdom then we are communicating to our kids what our true God is and Eli was just getting by he showed that his work was our priority but his family was not he was not showing them the true love in his heart that he had for God and it destroyed his family maybe if you're feeling a little defeated in this time here's the next step in applying these things is just start small studies show that even 10 to 15 minutes of meaningful conversation with your kids a day can have profound impacts now and I say this as someone who I feel guilty of this because I my kids go to school here so I get to drive them to school and home usually with me and as I have there's times where I'm like I have a podcast in and they'll say things like cuz they say the same thing like 30 times all right so I'm like I already heard the Pokemon story so I'm like uh-huh uh-huh uh-huh and I'm like trying to listen to this podcast in my ear and I'm like man I just need to take this out and be with my children and then yell at traffic while I'm listening to my kids instead of trying to listen to a podcast while I yell at traffic um but it's like just be engaged and it doesn't mean all of a sudden your entire life gets reorganized overnight but maybe for 10 to 15 minutes you need to say "Hey I need to practically engage and listen and have a conversation with my children that start to change the course for how we're going to live." But maybe as you hear all this and maybe you're from different you're either you're not a parent or or you're a grown parent of grown children and you get to very lightly parent from a distance but it's different or maybe you don't have kids maybe you never want to have kids of how does this impact us and impact us today in a profound way and I think all of this story leads to an ultimate biblical truth that we see today that God will always work through his children the only question is if we are a part of his family check out verse 35 as this story this little blip on Eli's son starts to wrap up and as God sees the sins of his sons a as he pronounces judgment on Eli and his family as he says "I am cutting you off because you have not honored me because you have despised me with how you have handled things." Check out 35 he says "Then I will raise up a faithful priest for myself." God's like "Eli you weren't my final plan eli I don't need you to accomplish my will i have been doing my will this whole time and I will raise another faithful one up to be a part of my family to do this." He says "He will do whatever is in my heart and my mind." this faithful priest i will establish a lasting dynasty for him and he will walk before my anointed one for all time anyone who is left in your family will come and bow down to him for a piece of silver or a loaf of bread he will say "Please anoint me to some priestly office so I can have a piece of bread to eat here's what I love in these last two verses is there are two prophecies being made here one that Samuel would come to replace Eli and he would be part of this next chapter of Israel of anointing King David of being the hand of God to guide the nation of Israel and keep the central worship of God but it also fortells to Jesus Christ the priestly king who had come the one as is described in this verse who will do whatever is in his heart and mind jesus didn't come to do his own will but he came to do the will of the father that Jesus came to establish a lasting dynasty he came so that we will bow down to him that we will get a piece of bread his body to eat so we've been part of his family and here's what I love in this passage it shows us that even though Eli failed as a father our father in heaven has not i'm pretty excited for tonight because uh it's the season finale of a zombie apocalypse show I watch it's good man it's good but last week part of the show there's these two characters Joel and Ellie and Joel's like the father figure and Ellie's kind of like almost like an adopted daughter that he has and as they're going throughout this this kind of crazy post-apocalyptic world Ellie is immune to this zombie virus and there comes this point where Joel can sacrifice her to kind of a medical community they would destroy her but they would create a cure that could save the world then when Joel reaches with that decision he doesn't give her up and said "He protects her and saves her from all of it." As she confronts him later about this and as they go and talk through this conversation she says "It was my destiny to do this." She's like "Why did you do this?" And he's like "I can't believe you did it." And he said "If I had a second chance I would make the same exact decision." And she says in response to that "Because you're selfish." She says "Because I love you in a way that you just can't understand." As I'm sitting and watching this zombie show where someone was just eating brains before that I'm listening to this dialogue and crying crying at the thought of could I give up one of my kids to save other strangers in the world could I give up my kid and say it's for the greater world you can die so others can be saved and as a father I'd probably say no because I love them probably cuz I'm selfish but I just don't have the capacity to do that but church this book tells us God the Father who reigns in heaven he made that choice because of the song we sang because of John 3:16 he so loved us that he gave us his one and only son in Jesus Christ that he sent him here to be ridiculed to be beaten to be foggged to go through the worst misery possible in a place we deserve because he loves us so much and he wants to see us become part of his family and as we reflect on the failures of Eli it points to the faithfulness of God the Father when we look at how Eli didn't parent his children well we see how God the Father he had a perfect son but he did everything he could to redeem us and no matter who you are in this room if you are a parent who has fallen short if you are a child that has had parents who've fallen short for you wherever aspect you're in we have a heavenly father who sent his son Jesus Christ to die on a cross to raise again and in him by declaring him as savior by declaring him as lord by following his path we no longer have to be defined by our mess but we can be part of the masterpiece of his family we can be part of the will of his kingdom and that is the good news of the failure of Eli that is the good news when you feel like a failure as a parent that we have a perfect father who redeems us who restores us and who changes the world for all eternity let's pray to our heavenly father this morning [Music]