The sermon titled 'The Crime of Eli' by Paul Carrington explores the biblical account of Eli, a high priest and judge during the time of the judges, and the grievous sins committed by his sons, Hophni and Phinehas. Despite being in positions of spiritual authority, Eli's sons desecrated the sacrifices and the temple, leading others into sin. Eli's sin of omission, his failure to adequately reprimand and restrain his sons, resulted in severe divine judgment. The sermon emphasizes the importance of parental responsibility and the consequences of dishonoring parents. Eli's story serves as a warning to both parents and children, highlighting the danger of negligence and the necessity of honoring God above all. Through this narrative, Carrington calls for reflection on spiritual diligence and the cultivation of a heart that honors both parental and divine authority.

Okay, well as our brother said, if you could kindly open your Bibles to 1 Samuel chapter three. We're going to be primarily in chapter three and then going back to chapter two, but we'll be here in this early part of the book of Samuel. And in this series on keeping the heart, We've had the opportunity, we've looked at different people all the way through scripture. A lot of good examples, men like Josiah and Joseph. We've looked at Simeon and Barnabas.

But there's also examples of men and women who being believers, yet were poor examples and yet we can still learn and gain something from examining their lives and looking at their lives, believing that the Lord has put them there for a reason that we might learn and be warned, as well as with those that are good examples that we might be encouraged. I don't know if you've heard this story. There was a story of a boy who lived in France. This is kind of right before the French Revolution. And he had been caught stealing, and his Sins and crimes had gone beyond stealing.

He'd got into some other things as well, and he had been condemned to be executed Well he desired to see his mother and to speak with her one last time right before execution. And of course, they wouldn't let him be with her alone. But when his mother came to him, he said to her, I want to whisper to you. And when she brought her ear near, he nearly bit it off. Could you imagine?

The bystanders were horrified, asked him, what does this mean? What are you doing with such a brutal and human act as what you just did? And he says, it is to punish her, he said. When I was young, I began stealing little things and brought them home. And instead of punishing me, she laughed and said, it will not be noticed.

It's because of her that I'm here today. Well the book that we're in today, First Samuel, it's a book that introduces us to some very godly young men. We meet young men on the one side like Samuel, and on the other side men like David, the young David. But in between, right in between, smack dab in the middle, we meet two boys. And though their father was a believer, these were godless boys.

See, something miscarried from one generation to the next. Something was wrong. It says in chapter two, verse 12 of these boys, it says, now the sons of Eli were corrupt. And that word corrupt, it means scoundrels, worthless, good for nothing, belial. They did not know the Lord.

And every time, I don't know about you, but every time I read or hear something, someone preach a sermon about Eli, it's a little bit fearful, to be honest with you, as a father, and I find myself saying, oh Lord, have mercy on me, because I know how far short I've fallen not just at certain times but all the way through I wish I'd been a better father All my failures as a parent kind of come to the fore when I hear a sermon about Eli, because again, we're laid bare before the word of God. But Eli's sons, Hophany and Finnehas by name, they sinned terribly before the Lord, and they ended up paying the price. Both in this life they ended up being killed on the same day as we'll see, but also where they're gonna spend eternity and where they've been for the last few thousand years. But you know the Lord laid the blame squarely at the feet of the one who had the power to fix things but neglected to. And that's who we're going to be looking at.

You see, his great crime was that he took his son's sins lightly, but God did not. Really, he's the first one we've looked at here where his most glaring sin was a sin of omission. He didn't act, and it carried ominous consequences. There's a man by the name of James Usher, an Irish Puritan, and he's there lying on his deathbed and his very last words to come out of his mouth were, oh Lord, forgive me, especially for my sins of omission. So Eli, he was a saved man, He had a soft heart, but he did have a fatal flaw.

He allowed the vilest sort of evil to abide underneath his own roof, and he just kind of let it go largely undisturbed. And though he's saved, he's not someone that we want to emulate. He's more like a Solomon and a lot. And so I'm gonna read us here these five verses in First Samuel chapter three verse 11. Actually, let's start in verse 10.

And then we'll read down to 14. It says, now the Lord came and stood and called, as at other times, Samuel, Samuel. And Samuel answered, speak Lord, for your servant hears. Then the Lord said to Samuel, Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end.

For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity that he knows, because his sons made themselves vile and he did not restrain them. And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. Well, let's pray. Heavenly Father, we ask you this afternoon for help. Lord, I especially ask you for help as a father myself and for the other fathers in the room, but also Lord for the young people that live under our roofs.

Lord that they would have ears to hear and take warning. Lord that you would help us all as we look at this example and Lord we do pray that we would be among those that keep our heart with all diligence. Help us, oh Father, we pray. Be with us now in Jesus' name, amen, amen. Well, this morning, As our brother, he was preaching, he made a statement at the early part of his sermon where he said, sanctification involves both diligence and effort.

And that's part of what we'll be seeing here today. A saved man, but he's called to be diligent and exert effort in all areas of his life. Well, the timing of Eli, we find him living kind of at the twilight of the time of the judges. He's actually the second to last judge. And if anything describes the time of the judges I think we're all familiar with those famous words that every man did that which was right in his own eyes.

There were godly people men like Boaz and Naomi, you had Ruth, You had people like Jesse, other people like Hannah and Alkanah. But that was kind of the descriptor of the people as they lived underneath the judges. It was a time marked by apostasy, a time marked by backsliding. And here we meet a man, Eli. He happens to be a father, but beyond just being a father, he's a high priest, and he's also the judge of Israel.

He actually ends up judging Israel for about 40 years. And one commentator, he describes it like this, he says, the tragedy that played itself out in Eli's life ought to be a shrill warning to all of us who are prone to be lazy and spiritually apathetic. His whole life is a reminder to us that when we tolerate sin in our lives, we expose ourselves to the Lord's discipline, and he will discipline those whom he loves. And so parents, really the call for us today as we look at this is to deal with sin before God does. And he gets into really looking at the peril of negligence.

And for children, you know what the greatest thing you should fear if you're a child living underneath your parents' roof? You know what that is? It's being left alone. Fear being left to yourself. Not left alone in the house a night or anything like that.

I'm talking about being left to do whatever you want to do. The greatest fear should be that. Well, we've been talking about keeping the heart, as I said, and we've been dealing with these different men, some of them warriors of the faith, women, and some bad, and we're gonna be looking at this man and what he actually, he failed to do. And you know, 1 Corinthians chapter 10 kind of describes maybe the theology of learning from bad examples, where Paul, he recounts the passage of the Israelites as they left Egypt and made their way to the promised land. And he recounts all their sins, their grumbling, sexual immorality, complaining, all these things.

And he says, now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition upon whom the ends of the ages have come. That's what we're here to learn from even a negative or a bad example. And I wanna look at a few different things. There's four sins. The first thing, the four sins that his sons ended up committing.

And then Eli's response. And then finally we'll look at God's response. Well, what were the sins that his sons ended up committing? Well, in chapter two, verse 12 to 17, we can find, I'm not gonna read the whole thing, but we don't have time to go through all of their sins in detail. But the great sin to start off was this.

In verse 12, it says, Now the sons of Eli were corrupt. They did not know the Lord. We read that already. And the priest's custom with the people was that when any man offered a sacrifice, the priest's servants would come with a three-pronged flesh hook in his hand while the meat was boiling. Then he would thrust it into the pan or kettle or cauldron or pot, and the priest would take for himself all that the flesh hook brought up.

So they did in Shiloh to all the Israelites who came there. Also, before they burned the fat, the priest's servant would come and say to the man who sacrificed, give meat for roasting to the priest, for he will not take boiled meat from you but raw. And if the man said to him, they should really burn the fat first, then you may take as much as your heart desires. He would then answer him, no, but you must give it now, and if not, I will take it by force. Therefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord, for men abhorred the offering of the Lord." And so these men, they started by desecrating the sacrifice of God.

They overthrew the law of the priests that was laid down in Leviticus. You see the priests were to wait until the meat was ready and then sacrifice it and their portion was only to be the breast and the thigh of the animal. You can read about it, it's in Leviticus chapter seven. But they would send out their goons, if you will, these servants, so to speak, and they would go and basically take the meat. And if anyone resisted them, they would just steal it.

This is what the men are doing who are representing God. And for this sin alone, we'll find out other sins that they committed, but for this sin alone, Eli should have taken radical action and removed his sons from the office. Here they are, he's high priest, and they're serving beneath him as priests of the Lord. But he was a weak and indulgent man. He just tolerated it and so he refrained from really doing anything.

Well the second sin is found in verse 22. It says, now Eli was very old and he heard everything his sons did to all Israel and how they lay with the women who assembled at the door of the tabernacle of meeting. So not only do they desecrate the sacrifice, but now they desecrate the temple. They're abusing the women who were dedicated to serving in the tabernacle. And then in verse 24, it says, their third sin, know my sons, for it is not a good report that I hear.

You make the Lord's people transgress. So here you see these two brothers, they're sinning in these two different ways, maybe other ways, but their sin is causing other people to sin, which is a sin in that sense as well. They're causing this fatal example that they're setting as priests. It's like a gangrene that's filtering and going throughout the whole body, poisoning everything that it touches. And in Verse 17, the reason that this sin was so great, you can see it says, because men abhorred the offering of the Lord, men hated to come and offer what God commanded, because they see these men abusing everything that is supposed to be Holy.

And you would say, well, so far so good, you know, I don't desecrate the temple, I don't desecrate the sacrifice or take light, these types of things. But you know, their fourth sin, their fourth sin is the mother of the rest of those sins that we just read. And you can read about that sin in verse 25 of chapter two. If one man sins against another, this is Eli speaking to his sons, God will judge him, but if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him? That's his last question.

Nevertheless, they did not heed the voice of their father because the Lord desired to kill them. You see, their fourth sin, the mother of the other sins, was the dishonor with which they held their father. They dishonored their father. And this is a commandment, you know, the fifth commandment is a command that's not just for those who are believing children, but it's for all children. If you're an unbelieving child, guess what?

God still holds you accountable to keep the fifth commandment, to honor your father and your mother. Do you heed the voice of your father and your mother? It's an important question. See, because God's gonna hold you responsible for how you honor your parents. And what's amazing, I always, when we're going through the Bible as a family and we get to Romans one, it's one of those startling things, you know, lodged between some very great evils.

You've got homosexuality, you've got murder, you've got strife, and all these things on the one side. On the other side, you've got untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving. But right in there, and you've probably noticed this, it says disobedient to parents. Seems like a kind of harmless sin, certainly not at the level of murder, homosexuality, some of these other things, but in an age such as the one we're living in, right, the one that we're currently in now, it's a sin that we're most likely to look upon more lightly than we would some of those other sins. Abortion, godless living, men pretending to be women, people even pretending to be animals.

And it's a race to the bottom, morally speaking, in the age that we're living in. You know, you could say as a young person, I come to church, I fellowship, I do these things. Hey, I even take notes, and if you ask me a question, I can pare it back to you what the pastor said. But that's not the measure of what God expects of you, is it? There's something more to it.

And Paul in Ephesians, when he's going through and he's itemizing the responsibilities of wives and then he goes to husbands, he goes to children and he says honor your father and your mother which is the first commandment with promise that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth. And I always say this, I've said this to my children for years, I say to them, go back in history, travel to any land you want to, pick any country in the world. You can even scour the internet, and here's the challenge. Try to find a single person who dishonored their parents, whether saved or unsaved, doesn't matter, and actually prospered in the true sense. Try to find, I'm not saying that they became wealthy, that's not necessarily the definition of prospering and having life go well with you.

But there's something to do with honoring God, it's like the law of, honoring your parents, that is like the law of gravity. If you break it, you do it at your own peril. You're the one that's gonna pay the price. And what does it mean to honor? The word honor literally means to be heavy.

Kind of seems like a strange thing. But as you look into it, something heavy like gold for example, it goes beyond just what you say. It includes what you say and how you say things, but it has to do really with an attitude or a disposition of the heart, a high regard. It's prizing your parents highly. It's caring for them.

It's showing respect to them. It's the manner in which you conduct yourself around them. And if you don't regard your parents as weighty, you know, their advice and so on. That's not a good thing, is it? Sometimes we can think, well, I love God, but at the same time you could dishonor your parents.

If I say, well, what's one plus one to the smallest child that can speak in here? He's probably going to be able to tell me two, right? But the law of God is very simple as well. You cannot honor God and dishonor your parents at the same time. Those things can never go together.

And these young men, Eli's sons, Haphne and Phineas, they were about to reap the whirlwind. And if you look at our culture today, is it not a very appropriate way to describe our culture? The dishonor for authorities? It started with the first authority in the home, and then it cascades into rebellion and to other parts. And so this is something to consider and ask yourself as a young person, do you perhaps need to repent for your dishonor, your lack of heeding, or perhaps thinking that you know better?

The question isn't so much every time, you know, if you rebel or you do something wrong, well, I didn't dishonor you mom or dad or whatever the case may be, but the question is, do you honor? Did you honor? Was there active honor in your way of speaking. Are you an honorable young person in the home? And so God is, he's instituted the family with these key markers that husbands, the predominant thing that he commands is to love.

One of the things he commands wives to do is to operate with a submissive spirit. And for children, the dominant thing is that he commands them to honor. Well, we've seen the sins of Eli's sons, those four sins there. Now we're gonna see Eli's response. And he didn't secure any honor or obedience for his sons.

He didn't wanna upset or annoy his boys. That was one of his big, big problems. He kinda had the vehicle set to cruise control. And they're just going down the highway. They're going through, you know, the things that the law says, check, they're doing sacrifices, but they're not doing them in any way that honors the God to whom they are actually sacrificing.

He was their father. He's a real authority, but he does nothing. He's the high priest who's supposed to be the encourager of holiness in Israel, but he does nothing. He's the judge of Israel, he's the chief magistrate. He's the one that is to govern and enforce God's moral law, but he does nothing.

And in verse 27, we read just now what he says. He says, Why do you do such things? For I hear of your evil dealings from all the people. Everyone's talking about Eli's sons and what they're doing, know my sons for this is not a good report that I hear. You make the Lord's people transgress.

If one man sins against another, God will judge him, but if a man sins against the Lord, who will intercede for him? Well, he makes that appeal, and he thinks he's done his job, but the Lord's not gonna let him off the hook, and so the Lord sends a Nathan-like prophet to come and to speak to Eli in verse 29 of chapter two. He comes, this man, it doesn't give his name, but it says, why do you kick, this is the message here he's proclaiming to Eli, why do you kick at my sacrifice and my offering which I have commanded in my dwelling place and honor your sons more than me, to make yourselves fat with the best of all the offerings of Israel my people. Therefore the Lord God of Israel says, I said indeed that your house and the house of your father would walk before me forever. What a promise.

But now, the Lord says, far be it from me, for those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me will be lightly esteemed. This is his sin. He was too easy, he was too gentle in his manner, and he was content with a mild reproof, a kind of, you know, just a tongue lashing, if you will, but there's no actual restraint from their headlong course of destruction. And so it's a good question for us as fathers. You know, father, dad, how careful are you to secure the honor of your children?

It's a very important thing. And one of the questions, it's worth asking, how careful are you as fathers to secure honor for your wife, that she's also honored by them. It's easy for children to dishonor their mom who they see and spend time with all day and see their failings and so on throughout the course of a day or all of that, but it's easy for them to maybe give more respect to Dad, but really the honor should be to the father and to the mother. And so if you were to interview Eli at the very end of his life, You can imagine how much he would have probably wished he had done things differently. But now his sons are about to fall beneath God's wrath and he's gonna be chastised in a very, very severe manner.

And so we've seen Eli's response. Well now let's look at God's response. We read it to open up here this morning, or this afternoon in chapter three, verse 11. Then the Lord said to Samuel, and what's interesting here is I was reading one commentator. He said, Eli said something to his sons, but he didn't really take it all that seriously himself, so he sends a prophet, right?

The prophet comes and speaks to Eli and gives him this abrasive warning. But even that, the commentator was saying, Eli probably didn't register all that deeply with Eli. He probably didn't actually make any radical changes and it's likely he didn't because now little Samuel is telling him what God said. Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. For those of you who have ever played sports, if you've ever had a concussion, if you've played some sort of contact sport, you know probably what that means, where your ears are ringing, and maybe you're just out of it for a second, you've heard something, that's kind of the intent here.

You've taken such a blow that you're stunned. You're in utter horror. It's like thundering of great guns. It just All of a sudden all you hear is like a shrill, just high pitched sound because everything else has been blocked out. That's kind of what he's saying here.

When people hear what I'm about to do to your house, Eli, people are gonna be putting a hand over their mouth in shock and amazement. And then he says this, in that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows." Do you see that? Because his sons made themselves vile and he did not restrain them. Matthew Henry put it like this, he says, those who do not restrain the sins of others when it is in their power to do it, make themselves partakers of the guilt and will be charged with joining in it." And so he knew their wickedness.

He knew that he should have punished it, but he did not restrain them. The Hebrew word there is like he didn't frown on them. He didn't knit his brow in consternation. That's kind of what the word is saying. It didn't register with him as such a terrible, terrible thing.

So he gave this light, mild reproof, but nothing else. And this is the thing here, that the jurisdiction was his. It wasn't his wife's or someone else's, but it was his. The buck stopped with Eli. And we find out later that he acknowledges, He submits to God's judgment here.

And in verse 14 it says this, and therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli's house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever. What a unbelievable consequence of negligence. And in chapter four, I won't go through it in detail, but one of the amazing things about chapter four is it actually takes place, some people think, 20 or 30 years after these declarations. Imagine the long suffering of God. He sends a prophet, then he sends another prophet in the form of the boy Samuel, and then he waits a couple of decades, maybe three decades, and then the hammer falls.

And there's the war that takes place with the Israelites and the Philistines and 30, 000 Israelites are slaughtered in a day. The brothers die on the same day. The ark is taken by the Philistines. And of course, you know, this, the ark at this point is almost treated like a good luck charm, you know, something to kind of bring along like a talisman. It was something that they thought, well, if we have that with us, God's bound to protect us.

But it was brought by his sons, Hophany and Finihans, the guys who were committing all those atrocities that we just read about. They had no regard for God, and they thought, perhaps they'll be cloaked and protected by God's ark. Well, they miscalculated. Eli's now 98 years old and he's waiting on the road for word to come back from the battle. And there he is, he's sitting down and he's told about his sons and he's told about the losses of life among the Israelites.

And then he hears about the ark. And here he is, a heavy man, it says he was a fat man. And he's sitting there and he fell backward and he breaks his neck, and that's how he dies at 98 years old. And perhaps everything about Eli's life is summed up by the dying words of his pregnant daughter-in-law, Phineas's wife. All this news comes to her, she hears about Eli's death on top of everything, And then she goes into labor, she gives birth, and she ends up dying, but the son lived.

And her dying words were to let the little boy, let his name become Ichabod. The glory has departed. What a tragedy here. And so, just some lessons here. I know it's not an encouraging message in the sense of sending us out with smiles and encouragement, but there's warning for all of us.

And there's some lessons here. I think one of the lessons is perhaps you hear something like we've heard here this afternoon, and a knee-jerk reaction, as parents could be, to kind of clamp down on every single infraction that your child makes. Everything is now a nail, and you come with a hammer, and you end up beating it over the head. Well, we're called to lead in a wise and discerning way. Not every situation is the same.

You know, is it a rebellion or is it a mistake? Is it a misunderstanding? You as a parent are given that authority but also hopefully that wisdom to discern between the two. You have authority but you don't want to abuse that authority. And one of the things that's so helpful is that, you know, one of the signs I notice like in business or in anywhere where there's a position, When someone just leads with their title, well I'm your father or I'm your boss, that's a very weak way to lead.

That might, it's important to acknowledge that. But a lot of times, if you just appeal to your role as an authority, you're never gonna have the heart of your child. But leading with love and so on, that's really important to have a good solid relationship to cultivate that love over time, so that when you actually do punish or when you chastise, it's done, even that is done out of a spirit of kindness and love toward that child. The second lesson is, is honor. And this was all really a matter of heart, isn't it?

See, that word I said earlier, To give honor, it means to be heavy. Well, the opposite of being heavy is to make light. And Eli's sons made light of Eli. And Eli, he made light of God. Everything was out of order.

Instead of his sons honoring him and then him honoring God, everything's been topsy-turvy. God says, for those who honor me, I will honor, and those who despise me shall be lightly esteemed. You see that heavy and light right there? Those who give weight to me, I will give weight too. And those who make light of me will be regarded as sawdust and ash.

That's kind of me putting it in my own terms. And so, you know, this is so important that we see this personally, the way that we honor one another, we honor our leaders here in the church, we also see it even as a nation. We were reading just the other day the Mayflower Compact and the very opening, in the name of God, amen. See, the foundation was to honor God. And the foundation of this nation was wonderful.

But now look at the state of things. It's unbelievable, but it has a root in dishonor. And so I would just say what an error it is to make light of God, to trifle with God. One thing we don't want to do is minimize either the blessings of honor or the consequence of dishonor. It's a tragedy that he had ended up actually honoring his sons above God.

And by honoring his sons above God, guess what he demonstrated? He demonstrated that he actually hated his own sons because he ended up destroying them. And he lost out with God and all he had at the end of the day was a legacy in tatters. It's like what Paul says in 1 Corinthians chapter three, that man will be saved yet so as by fire, but everything is burned up like wood, hay, and stubble, a legacy in tatters and shambles. And I would just say to you children, just as we started off today, fear being left, fear being left alone to your own advice or just to the counsel of your own buddies, your own friends, but seek to honor your parents.

And then the last thing is to learn from Eli. He was a good man in other respects. There's other things that he did that were good. He was a man who had a certain love for God, but he didn't keep his heart with all diligence. And that was his fatal flaw.

Spiritually and physically, he was a fat and lazy man. He was undisciplined, and he was careless of the authority that God had invested in him. And so, don't honor your children above God, but honor God supremely. That's something we can do, all of us, whether we have children, whether you are a child, whether you're single, whatever your state, to honor God with all your heart. So let's pray.

Well, Heavenly Father, we come to you here this afternoon. Lord, I know it is a heavy thing to hear the account of Eli and his sons, Lord, and I just pray that all of us would be helped and instructed and carried forward, oh Lord, as families, as individuals. Father, our great need is you, and we ask you to please help us as parents. We can't do it in our own strength. Lord, even for the young ones among us, that you would give them great power to honor you, to honor their parents, and Lord, that you would help us to live in the order that you've designed and intended.

And as doing so, Lord, that we would give glory and honor to you as is your do. Thank you for being so merciful to us, Lord. Thank you for Your word, thank you for your laws, they're all good. And we give you thanks for being with us, oh God, in Jesus' name, amen, amen.