In this message, Gavin Beers preaches from 2 Samuel 7 and provides a brief overview of the history of Israel. He starts by describing the families of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham's family eventually grows into a nation. He looks at four influential families in this book of the Bible and important lessons that we can learn from each family. He begins with the household of Elkanah.

Romans 15:4 (NKJV) - "For whatever things were written before were written for our learning, that we through the patience and comfort of the Scriptures might have hope."

Please open your Bibles this evening to 2 Samuel chapter 7. We will read God's Word. In a moment I will speak to you. I trust I will expound and apply the Word faithfully, but this is God's word. God speaks directly to you now.

2 Samuel 7, verse 12 through 17. And when thy days be fulfilled, and thou shalt sleep with thy fathers, I will set up thy seed after thee, which shall proceed out of thy bowels. And I will establish his kingdom. He shall build an house for my name. And I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever.

I will be his father, and he shall be my son. If he commit iniquity, I will chasten him with the rod of men and with the stripes of the children of men. But my mercy shall not depart away from him as I took it from Saul whom I put away before thee. And thine house and thy kingdom shall be established forever before thee. Thy throne shall be established forever.

According to all these words and according to all this vision, so did Nathan speak unto David. And then if you would turn to chapter 23, one verse from chapter 23, namely verse 5. David says, although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure, for this is all my salvation and all my desire, although he make it not to grow. Let's spend a moment to seek the Lord in prayer. Oh Lord our God we come to peer into the glory and the wonders of your holy word.

We pray that you would give light. The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God. They are foolishness unto him. Neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. Lord that's true absolutely of those who are not yet born of your spirit it's also true in part to those who are your people for if we lean upon the arm of flesh or merely sit passively hearing that we will hear to no profit Lord come solemnize our hearts gather up all of our wondering thoughts, and speak so that Thy servants hear.

We pray in Jesus' name, amen. Well, in our journey through the biblical history to see what the Bible is teaching us about the family. We arrive this evening at a new epoch in redemptive history that is the rise of Israel's monarchy. Israel begins with a family, the family of Abraham, then Isaac and Jacob. That family grows into a nation.

God redeems them from Israel or from Egypt, establishes them with his law as their constitution, and they live as an association of tribes within the land of Canaan. Now the tribes unite under a king. The monarchy rises in a time of darkness that was described for us earlier in the chaos of the judges. And the initial experience of the kingdom is a response to Israel's ungodly demand that they might have a king like the nations. And so God gave them a king, Saul, in his wrath, but it was always his purpose to give them a king in his mercy.

And so we see David rise in 1 Samuel 16, but it takes him 21 chapters and a number of years to come to the throne. And it's not until seven years after the death of Saul that we find David enthroned in Jerusalem, king over all Israel. 2 Samuel 5. Then there's encouragement. David consolidates the kingdom.

And we reach the high point in 2 Samuel 7, where God establishes his covenant with David and his seed. But after that, catastrophe strikes. The man after God's own heart acts like a devil, falls into an horrendous sin, and the aftershocks of the earthquake of David's sin reverberate from 2 Samuel 7 through to the end of the book. Now, we're looking at the period of the monarchy this evening. I'm going to limit that to 1 and 2 Samuel.

I can't get into the book of the kings. But we'll observe the beginning of the kingdom and we'll see at the same time that family is very prominent. Things happen in households that are huge in the kingdom of God. In particular, I propose to look at four important families and target specific lessons from each of these households, beginning in the first place with Elkanah's house. Elkanah's house, and there we encounter a praying mother.

The books of Samuel begin with a woman weeping in Shiloh. Her name is Hannah. She is the wife of Elkanah, who is the head of a relatively godly family. Remember, it is the period of the judges, but his family is not happy. The reason for this is there is a division in the home.

We might call it the problem of bigamy. Elkanah has more than one wife and although no comment is made in the narrative concerning this, it is usually the cue for sorrow when we read this in Scripture. And so looking through the window of Elkanah's house, we find two unhappy wives and one unhappy husband confirming to us what we've already established in our conference, that God's purpose is for one man and one woman to unite together as one flesh in the institution of marriage. And anything else we bring into this brings trouble, misery, and strife. So many of the tears shed in our nation are because of infidelity in marriage and sad to say many tears now shed in conservative and evangelical churches.

So there's a division in the home. The second thing we note is a desire in the heart, a desire that is born out of the pain of Hannah's barrenness, because Hannah can't have children and her co-wife Peninnah makes fun of her, especially when they make their annual trip to Shiloh to bring their sacrifices before the Lord. And on one such occasion Hannah slips off from the rest of the family to go along to the sanctuary to seek God in prayer. And her desire is that the Lord would give her this child that she so much creates. And as Hannah prays, she recognizes that it is the Lord who has shut the womb.

But this broken and barren woman has the boldness to lift up her soul to the Lord of hosts. Imagine it, there she is alone in the sanctuary but she lifts up her soul to one who is Lord of heaven and earth, Lord of the armies of heaven, Lord of the sun and the moon and the stars because she believes that this Lord of hosts has an interest in her pain. When she cries the Lord answers. She returns home with her family. She conceives a child, and she bears a son.

She calls his name Samuel, a name that is significant to her, meaning heard of God, but a name that is very significant to us because of what God does with Samuel. So we find in this house division and then the desire of this woman's heart, but in the third place here, the devotion of a son. You see, Hannah vowed that if God gave her a son, she would give that son back to God. And so after the child is weaned, She takes him to Shiloh and she leaves him with Eli devoted to the service of the Lord. Don't we see in that that Hannah not only desired a son, many women who are barren desire children, but Hannah desired a son for the glory of God.

It's implicit in her prayer, it's explicit in her vow that she would give the son that God gave to her back to God, Why? Because that child was in the first place, God's. I do premarital counseling. First question I ask the starry-eyed couple is why do you want to get married? And the right answer is, for the glory of God.

We could ask another question here this evening, why do you want to have children? The answer is the same. You have children not because you feel maternal, not because you feel paternal, not because you think children are nice and cute, but in the first place, for the glory of God. Because the Bible reveals that your children are only secondarily yours. In fact, the prophet Ezekiel speaks on God's behalf to Israel and charges Israel what they had done, not with their children, but with his children.

Hannah recognizes this and so she devotes this child to God from the start And surely an understanding of this in our lives would have us do the same from before we have children, and then from the moment of conception, and through gestation, and birth, and all their days, this is hovering over the whole of our child rearing. We are doing it for the glory of God. But then God raises up this child for his own glory. Because he turns out to be a very significant son. He will be the last judge of Israel, he will be the prophet that heralds the dawn of the kingdom of God, he will be the kingmaker in that he anoints the first two kings of Israel and Hannah had no idea what God was going to do in answer to her prayer.

But God was doing something extraordinary through the ordinary. And that's how God works. God ushers in his kingdom in the ordinary, in the messy, painful circumstances in our lives, through mothers praying for children, through children devoted to God, through people and through relation, through pain and through sorrow. God worked in Hannah's circumstances in that way. God works in our circumstances in that way and we have no idea what he's doing in this very building through children who are crying or children who are sleeping, children who are dreaming, children who are not even aware of what we're talking about today.

What may the Lord do through the ordinary cries of Christian families in this place? Elkanas' house, a godly mother. Secondly, Eli's house, an abdicating father. Hannah leaves Samuel in Shiloh, but all is not well there. Trouble is introduced to us when we discover the sons of Eli.

And we can rightly call them abominable sons. 1 Samuel 2, verse 12, Now the sons of Eli were sons of Belial, they knew not the Lord. They were children of the priesthood but they were like Cain, children of the devil. Verse 13 through 17 they steal the sacrifices of God. Verse 22 they have sex with the women at the threshold of the sanctuary.

And when challenged with their sin by their father, they refuse his rebuke. And in verse 24 and 25 of chapter 2, we are told why they did not hear that rebuke. Eli says to them, "'Nay, my sons, for it is no good report that I hear, ye make the Lord's people to transgress. If one man sin against another, the judge shall judge him. But if a man sin against the Lord who shall entreat for him notwithstanding they hearkened not unto the voice of their father listen because the Lord would slay them That's the same kind of language that we read about Pharaoh.

Now spoken to paganizing priests in the sanctuary of God. Pay attention friends, There are worthless men, children of the devil, men of Belial, men who know not God, at our family altars, in our pews, in our pulpits, and, yes, at our family conferences. And as Eli's sons, we may tremble to read that such are destined for destruction. And you might say, well, what can a man do? Well, you should look to what was manifested in their lives.

What did these men who were destined for destruction look like? They looked like those who had turned their heart and hardened it from the knowledge of God. Study the features of the narrative, not just the extreme features so that you can excuse yourself and say, well I'm not fornicating at the door of the sanctuary. I'm not stealing the sacrifices of God. The general contours.

Here are the marks of those who are destined for destruction. Sin gets a hold of them. God is low in their esteem. Worship is held in contempt and they refuse to hear the rebuke of those that God has appointed in authority over them to bring them to repentance. These men of Belial reject God's grace to them in the rebuke of their father or their elder.

And God says to you through them, beware of their apostasy. Beware of their apostasy. These are the marks. Given up to an obstinate nature is a sign of everlasting destruction. If you find it in your own heart, flee to Christ now.

If you see it in your children, Do everything that you can do to address it biblically, and bring them in prayer incessantly to Jesus Christ. Now. But these abominable sons have an abdicating father. He's not apostate like them but he is compromised. In chapter 2 verse 28 through 30 God accuses him of kicking at his sacrifices not because he was doing what they were doing, but because he was complicit in their sins by his abdication.

Yes, in the chapter we read that he rebuked his sons, verse 23, but he did not act. Their sin, according to the law of Moses, warranted death but their father tolerated it could I say to you this evening as I say to myself, don't be that dad. Don't be that dad, because all of your abdication is subtle idolatry. You know that well-known text in Scripture, they that honor me will I honor? Do you know where it's found?

It's found here in the charge of God against Eli. You honored your sons more than me. You put them in my place. How many times as fathers are we subtly tempted to do that? In the home, in the church, we put our children above God.

We fail to do the difficult thing. We don't rebuke them. Pastors and elders have wayward sons in the church, and if anybody reads it or the other elders try to deal with it, they get offended. Why? Because they're honoring their children rather than honoring God.

It's a subtle idolatry, but it's also sinful leniency, isn't it? Because where we abdicate our responsibility, we are unfaithful to God and our children. Where you feel in this way, you hate both God and your children at the point of your refusal to exercise godly discipline. Now I'm sure we'll hear more about that from the book of Proverbs but this is not the way to save your children. This is the way to destroy your children because God has appointed your loving firm biblical discipline in the home combined with instruction as a means to save your children from sin and from ruin.

But Eli abdicated. What happened next? God avenged. The man of God told Eli of the destruction of his house and it will end in the reign of Solomon. But immediately in 1 Samuel 4, the Philistines attack, Israel thinks they'll take the Ark of the Covenant with them and all will be well in battle but God doesn't care about that.

Israel are defeated, Eli's sons are killed, the Ark is captured, news reaches Eli, he falls of his chair in shock, he breaks his neck, His daughter-in-law goes into early labor. She dies in childbirth but not before naming her son Iqbal. No glory! It's gone! Not because the Philistines stole the ark, it already had gone because this kind of sinful, paganizing and abdication of the priest in Shiloh had ruined the nation of Israel.

That's what your sins and that's what my sins do to the church. That's what happens when we tolerate and abdicate rather than acting. Eli refused to discipline his children so God brought the sword himself against his household. Thirdly, we meet Saul's house. And in Saul's house, we find a godly son.

A new day begins in Israel with a false dawn. Saul is the first king, and he takes up chapters 9 through 31 of 1 Samuel, but the early promise of his reign quickly fades. You have to conclude that Saul is a godless father. Even though at the beginning he does do things well, he steps onto the stage of history every inch, a king, tall, dark, and handsome. He begins by acting for Israel's defense, Messiah-like, delivering them from cruel Nahash, the serpent king of the Ammonites.

But cracks soon appear. And by chapter 13 we are already at the beginning of Saul's end. Because under Philistine threat, having been told by Samuel to wait before he offered sacrifice, Saul disobeyed the word of the Lord. We heard about that last night. God said, don't do it.

No excuses. Saul did it. God says, your kingdom's finished. Chapter 15, he refuses to kill the Amalekites and all of their livestock. His rejection is further confirmed in chapter 15, verse 23 and verse 28.

Familiar words, no doubt to you, for rebellion is as the sin of witchcraft and stubbornness as the iniquity and idolatry, because thou hast rejected the word of the Lord, he hath also rejected thee from being king. And from that point on, David is on the rise. Samuel anoints him but Saul sees the popularity of David and he sets himself against light knowing exactly what he is doing against God's anointed king. Persecuted him into the wilderness but God keeps and preserves David and by the end of 1st Samuel, Saul has been abandoned by God. Abandoned by God.

There's no word from heaven. He goes to the witch of Endor. Samuel appears to him only to confirm the same thing that he said before. In a sense, God has numbered your kingdom and finished it, Saul. It's over, you're done.

And he goes off to the battlefield against the Philistines, and he takes his own life in utter despair. Yet this godless father has a godly son. One of the most surprising things in the books of Samuel, the standout son is the son of Saul, Not the sons of Eli, not the sons of Samuel, not even the sons of David. God's telling us things there. He's telling us in the first place that though there are covenant promises to our children, grace does not flow in the veins.

And he's telling us that no matter how significant these other prophets and kings are, they're not the answer. Someone greater has to come. Jonathan enters into a covenanted friendship with David in chapter 18. And in verse 3 and 4, we read there, Then Jonathan and David made a covenant because he loved him as his own soul. And Jonathan stripped himself of the robe that was upon him and gave it to David and his garments, even to his sword and his bow and to his girdle.

Now, he's a godly son, and throughout the narrative, he honors his father. But he obeys God and honors God above his father. He chooses the right king. People make much of the friendship between David and Jonathan, but listen, there's more than friendship going on here. This is the recognition by Jonathan that David is the Lord's anointed king of Israel.

And at the same time, it is the resignation of Jonathan's royal privileges to another who will be the heir. Now that is not what heirs to the throne normally do. In this day and age, Jonathan would have eliminated David. But he abdicates his rights, he gives up his privileges and he says, David, you were the king. Chapter 20 he commits his own future and that of his family into the hand of David and Saul knows what's going on and he says you're a shame to me you're a madman you're giving up all of your rights and privileges to the son of Jesse.

But don't we have a wonderful gospel picture here? This son of Saul, the king who refused to give the kingdom to God's Messiah, The son of that king gives up his rights and lays them at the feet of David, despite his father and no doubt all of the courtiers and everyone else in the kingdom thinking this is utter madness. That's the way you need to come to Christ. That's the way you need to come to Christ. You give up all of your false claims to sovereignty.

You abandon all of your pretended rights and interests, and you surrender as a sinner at the feet of Jesus and by faith you take the crown and you place it upon his head as Savior and Lord admitting no rival. What a picture of the gospel! But then there's a moral lesson. The way each member of any family must determine to live is illustrated for you here in the life of Jonathan. There's authority and submission and love between family members, but Christ must be supreme.

Here the Son will honor God and submit to his Father where he may, but he will own God's anointed King. So every father in this place tonight, So every mother, so every husband, so every wife, so every parent, so every child, our covenant loyalty is not first to our spouse or our children or our parents, but to Jesus Christ above all. Fourthly, we encounter David's house. And here we discover a devastating sin. David is introduced in 1 Samuel 16, but he doesn't reign, to 2 Samuel 5.

2 Samuel 7, David desires to build God a house, a good desire, but God refuses, but instead covenants to build David a house forever. I will establish an everlasting dynasty of kings through your loins. It's an epochal movement in the old, or moment in the Old Testament, like the covenant with Abraham, like the covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. And when David hears the terms of it, he is speechless, who am I? And stunned, what can I say?

We're buoyed up. The kingdom advances, and the surrounding nations are defeated. And from this marvelous height, everything comes crashing down through David's sin. You know the story. His army are out fighting, he should have been with them.

Instead, he's walking one evening upon his rooftop, and he sees Bathsheba bathing. And from that look, lust conceived, and sin was brought forth, and by the end of that sin, death was everywhere. David commits adultery, then he has Uriah killed, but not just Uriah. Read the passage at your leisure. Joab had to send Uriah with many of the servants of David to the hardest part of the battle to be killed.

One man, David, to cover his sin, sacrifices many of his servants, the very opposite of what Jesus does. One man sacrifices himself to cover the sins of many. Well, there are consequences. God did not leave him in his sin. He sends Nathan, the prophet, with the parable to bring him to repentance.

And in 2 Samuel 12, David is assured of two things. The first thing is glorious. God is merciful and David will be forgiven for his sins. But the second is solemn. Your sin has consequences.

Let me read chapter 12, verse 10 and 11. Now therefore, the sword shall never depart from thine house, because thou hast despised me, and hast taken the wife of Uriah the Hittite to be thy wife. Thus saith the Lord, Behold, I will raise up evil against thee out of thine own house, and I will take thy wives before thine eyes, and give them unto thy neighbor, and he shall lie with thy wives in the sight of this son. For thou didst it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel and before the son. These verses govern the rest of 2 Samuel.

They make tragic reading for the house of David, but make no mistake, They are clarion calls to every one of us here this evening. The sword of God falls, the child conceived dies. Then Amnon, his firstborn son, rapes Tamar, his half-sister. Absalom, her full brother, takes vengeance himself and murders Amnon, then flees from the house of David and comes back only to rise up in rebellion, stealing the hearts of Israel and staging a coup so that his father is sent out of the city and a civil war ensues, where Absalom is himself killed. And at the end of it all we hear this painful cry issued in chapter 18 and verse 33.

The king was much moved and went up to the chamber over the gate and wept and as he went thus he said, oh my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom, would God I had died for thee, oh Absalom, my son, my son. Sin has consequences in your family. God is merciful and God forgives but in this instance he returns David sin in kind and more intensely. David commits sexual sin secretly. It's repaid with the rape of his own daughter.

David secretly kills Uriah. It's repaid in the murder of his own son. And then that son publicly violates his concubines in the city of Jerusalem before the son. Oh friends this is the house of David. This is the household of the man after God's own heart.

Fathers, you can sin in secret, and you can try to cover your tracks, but there are consequences. Even when your sins remain private there are consequences and you can destroy your family. God may return your own secret sins in your family, and you may see them and know. You're here at a family conference, desiring or professing a desire to build your house. And yet you may be ruining it in secret.

Sexual lust, walking on your secret rooftops, lust conceiving, bringing forth sin, sin when it is finished, bringing all kinds of death within your household. David compounded his sin by inaction. When his daughter was raped, he got angry, but he didn't act. Like another Eli. A terrible sin with tremendous consequences compounded by abdication.

And chapter 18 verse 33, when he cries, Absalom, my son, my son, my son. Friends, his mind is going back to that night when he was walking upon that rooftop because he knows that all of He knows that all of this has happened in his house because of his sin. Sin is devastating. Sin is devastating to you as an individual. Sin is devastating to your household.

Sin is devastating to your churches. Don't play about with temptation and sin. Finally, we meet Christ's house. And in Christ's house, we find a glorious hope. That covenant of chapter 7, where God promised an everlasting throne, predicts the coming of David's greater son, the true king, in whom alone the kingdom will ultimately come and be safe.

His footprints and his shadow are found throughout the whole of the books of Samuel. Where do we see them? Well, four places. First of all, Hannah sings of his house. Hannah sings of his house.

Remember she took the child up to Shiloh and she left him there. What would you do, women? You would weep. You would weep the whole way home. What does Hannah do?

She sings. And she sings of the triumph of a kingdom that she never even saw start. And do you know what the last word of the song of Hannah is? The first time it's mentioned in this regard in scripture? Messiah.

How is he going to do it all? How is he going to put down his emenies? How is he going to destroy the wicked? How is he going to exalt Israel? He's going to do it through his king.

Israel didn't have a king. He's going to do it through his anointed, his Messiah, his Christ. And when the Christ comes, his mother quotes from the song of Hannah and sings the same song when she's told by the angel that she will bring forth the Savior of the world. Hannah sings, and in her song she preaches, She says there's either destruction or there's salvation and it is all to do with your relationship to this Messiah, this Christ, this King. Come to Him, says Mary, and sing with me, my soul doth magnify the Lord and my spirit doth rejoice in God my Savior.

His name shall endure forever, His name shall continue as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed in Him, and all nations shall call Him blessed. And let the whole earth be full of his glory. The prayers of David, the son of Jesse, are ended. Hannah sings of his house. Saul rejects his house.

He increasingly grows into the role of the Antichrist, rejecting God's anointed king knowingly and lifting up his hand against him. He's a memorial to everyone within the church who sets themselves against Jesus Christ, knowing who Jesus Christ is and hating Him without cause. In spite of all of your light and all of your privileges, if you reject Jesus Christ, you will die abandoned by God in utter despair and experience the horror and hopelessness of a lost eternity. Is all you have this evening a form of godliness? Do I preach to Saul's in this conference?

Privileged but perishing. Saul rejects his house. Jonathan chooses his house. We saw that. He gave up all of his prospects to claim David to be the rightful king.

Every sinner comes to Jesus Christ that way. But when Jonathan spoke to David, he didn't just ask for himself, he asked for his household. Do you know what we go on to read in chapter nine of 2 Samuel? David says, is there anyone left of the household of Saul that I might show chesed, the loving kindness of God to him? And they say well there's one Mephibosheth he's in the place of no pastor.

David says go get him and Mephibosheth thinks his days are up, he's going to die. And David brings him and says, you take your seat at my table. Your father made a covenant with me, not just for himself, but for his household. You come to Christ as individuals, you come to Christ like Jonathan to David and say extend your mercy to my household, bring my Mephibosheth into your kingdom. But then finally David himself directs all of our hope to Christ's house.

By the end of the books, David is not sure of much, and you can understand why. But he's sure of one thing, the covenant of God. Although he had sinned and the fallout was horrendous, although my house be not so with God, yet he hath made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure, for this is all of my salvation and all of my desire although he make it not to grow my household is not what I desired it to be how many of us can say that my household is not all that I hoped it would be. What then is my hope? My hope is in God.

My hope is in His covenant. My hope is in His promise. My hope is not even in the covenant that God established with David. But in the covenant that the Father made with the Son for my salvation in eternity. The whole of these books, they drive you there.

You're not going to look to Eli to save you or Samuel to save you or Saul or Jonathan to save you or David to save you. They all say another must come, a greater King. You must build all of your individual hopes there, you must build all your family hopes there. You're at this conference to learn, You're at this conference to put things into practice, to reform your family house and to order it biblically. But listen, if you do not start here, all that you will have is some form of legalistic externalism.

Modest dress, ordered household, behaviour of my children conformed. The Amish have that. The Muslims have that? You can have all of that and go to hell. You need Christ.

We've met a praying mother, an abdicating father, a godly son, a devastating sin. They all point us to Jesus. And it is only in Jesus we can be godly fathers, godly mothers, godly sons, godly daughters, and godly families. May the Lord bless His word to all of our hearts.