Wednesday 7 August 2013

The Sin Of Prophet Eli

1 Samuel 2:22-25, 27-33
Now Eli, who was very old, heard about everything his sons were doing to all Israel and how they slept with the women who served at the entrance to the Tent of Meeting. So he said to them, “Why do you do such things? I hear from all people about these wicked deeds of yours. No, my sons; it is not a good report that I hear spreading among the Lord’s people. If a man sins against another man, God may mediate for him; but if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him?” His sons, did not listen to their father’s rebuke, for it was the Lord’s will to put them to death. 

Now a man of God came to Eli and said to him, “This is what the Lord says: ‘Did I not clearly reveal myself to your father’s house when they were in Egypt under Pharaoh? I chose your father out of all the tribes of Israel to be my priest, to go up to my altar, to burn incense, and to wear an ephod in my presence. I also gave your father’s house all the offerings made with fire by the Israelites. Why do you scorn my sacrifice and offering that I prescribed for my dwelling? Why do you honour your sons more than me by fattening yourselves on the choice parts of every offering made by my people Israel?’
Therefore the Lord, the God of Israel declares: ‘I promised that your house and your father’s house would minister before me for ever. But now the Lord declares: ‘Far be it from me! Those who honour me I will honour, but those who despise me will be disdained. The time is coming when I will cut short your strength and the strength of your father’s house, so that there will not be a old man in your family line and you will see distress in my dwelling. Although good will be done in Israel, in your family line there will never be an old man. Every one of you that I do not cut off from my altar will be spared only to blind your eyes with tears and to grieve your hearts, and all your descendants will die in the prime of life. 

1 Samuel 3:11-14
And the Lord said to Samuel: “See, I am about to do something in Israel that will make the ears of everyone who hears it tingle. At that time I will carry out against Eli everything I spoke against    his family - from beginning to end. For I told him I would judge his family for ever because of the sin he knew about; his sons made themselves contemptible, and he failed to restrain them. Therefore, I swore to the house of Eli, ‘The guilt of Eli’s house will never be atoned for by sacrifice or offering.’”

In my last post I wrote about the instructions of Moses to the Israelites and to all the people of God all over the world, to impress the commandments of God on their children and household, then will they and their children be able to live long on the land the Lord promised to give them. In continuation to the revelations we got from the last post we will be looking at the effect that the characters and attitudes of our children have on our own life and walk with the Lord.
In one of my previous posts, I wrote about the ripple effects of our deeds and actions on our children, but this post will be the other way round. What the Bible is revealing to us is that just as much as we take the time to reverence and obey the commands of God, it is of high priority that we teach and ensure that our children after us follow in the same manner. 
Looking at the passages above, we will notice that Prophet Eli understood the ways of the Lord, he knew the word of God and had inherited a priesthood that the Lord had promised his father’s house. I want to believe that Eli’s father must have taken time to train and prepare him to continue in the line of that promise, otherwise he would have not been eligible to take up the mantel of priesthood after his father. So Eli in himself, his personal attitude and character did not commit any sin before the Lord. 
But Eli’s sin was his inability to raise a successor in the life’s of his children who will diligent respect the Lord’s altar and treat it with reverence and dignity. Eli did not train his children right. As a priest he was a okay, but as a father he was a failure. 
We will note that when report started reaching Eli about his children’s attitude he was already old. He rebuked them as much as his strength could permit (or so I think), but if he had trained them well when he was much younger when he had the strength to impact proper discipline in them, the children will probably have grown up to be better adults than they turned out to be. Proverbs 22:6 says “Train a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not turn from it.” The adults that the children of Eli turned out to be reflected the training they got from their father when they were young or the absence of a training at all. 
And then following the caution of God for Eli through the man of God in 1 Samuel 2:27-33, the Lord expects that Eli will take some stern measures on his sons to check their misdeeds and give honour to the Lord's altar, but he did no such thing. He had already given up on his sons and accepted his fate. The sin of Eli were not the sins he committed himself, but the sins of his sons that he knew about and failed to restrain them. 
In the last blog post we saw the Lord instructing the parents to impress His commandments on their children. Making a mark of God’s word on their hearts and mind such that it is not easily removed. And that instruction is still applicable to all godly parents today.  The numerous stories of moral decay we hear and read of in our world today is largely due to the lapse on the parts of the parents to impress the word of God in the hearts and minds of their children as the Lord instructed through Moses. 
The Lord will not come down from His throne to train our children for us, but He will leads us in the direction and manner to train them such that they will be generals usable by Him for good works and help birth the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven if only we call on Him for help and direction and also follow His leading. 

1 Timothy 3:2-5, 12
Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money. He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him with proper respect. (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)

 A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and household well.

What I see from this passages above is that no ministerial assignment that a man receives from the Lord is far above the ministry of home management and children management. The first point of test for a man who is to be used by God for mighty works is his ability to do well in managing the small unit of his home and his children as his first disciples. If he has excelled well in this regard, then he has shown God his readiness to do exploits for Him. 
When we start to desire a better environment and a better world to live in, then we need to start to put ourselves to work in creating a better home that we have to manage, and then imbibe good discipline and training in the children that the Lord has entrusted under our care and as the population of these glorious upright and wonderful children start to grow, in no time we start to have a better world as a whole. 
It’s not just our misdeeds that affects our children either negatively or positively, but the sins of our children will also affect our effectiveness in our service for the Lord. The training of our children also impact on our score card before the Lord. The sins of our children can erase all our good deeds before the Lord if we are not careful, so we cannot afford to take this matter lightly. It is time to start to act right in this regard if we have not be up to God’s standard before now. May the Lord help us.      

1 comment:

  1. Wonderful word. May God bless you and grant you the desires of your heart.

    ReplyDelete

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